Conflicts Shaped Two Presidencies

At a debate a couple of weeks later, Bush was more explicit. "If I found that in any way, shape, or form that he was developing weapons of mass destruction, I'd take him out," he said.

At Bush's first National Security Council meeting after taking office, he seemed to some aides to be ready to go. "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," Paul O'Neill, Bush's first treasury secretary, later told CBS News. In Ron Suskind's book, "The Price of Loyalty," O'Neill was quoted as saying that Bush told aides to prepare to remove Hussein: "That was the tone of it, the president saying . . . 'Go find me a way to do this.' "

Others on the inside came to a similar conclusion. In a memo in March 2002, Peter Ricketts, a top British official, sounded skeptical of U.S. motivations: "For Iraq, 'regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam."

That impression was fueled by both father and son that fall. "I hate Saddam Hussein, and I don't hate a lot of people," George H.W. Bush told CNN. "I don't hate easily, but I think he is -- as I say, his word is no good, and he is a brute. He has used poison gas on his own people. So, there's nothing redeeming about this man, and I have nothing but hatred in my heart for him."

Six days after that aired, his son mused about Hussein at a Texas fundraiser. "There's no doubt his hatred is mainly directed at us," he said. "There's no doubt he can't stand us. After all, this is the guy that tried to kill my dad at one time."

Bush later talked with then-Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) aboard Air Force One about assassinating Hussein, saying he would repeal the executive order banning assassination of foreign leaders if intelligence gave him a clear shot. "The fact that he tried to kill my father and my wife shows the nature of the man," Bush told interviewers in March 2003. "And he not only tried to kill my father and wife, he's killed thousands of his own citizens." But he denied a vendetta. "Nah, no," he said. "I'm doing my job as the president, based upon the threats that face this country."

When Bush launched the invasion weeks later, he ordered it to start earlier than planned with a missile strike targeting Hussein. The Iraqi leader survived, but U.S. troops quickly toppled his government. Soldiers went to the Al Rashid Hotel and destroyed a mosaic, of the elder Bush's face over the slogan "Bush Is Criminal," that Hussein had laid in the lobby entrance so every guest would step on it.

Eight months later, other soldiers found Hussein in a "spider hole." "President Bush sends his regards," one soldier told the disheveled Iraqi leader.

Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld delivered the news in Washington. "Mr. President, the first reports are not always accurate," he started cautiously.

"This sounds like it's going to be good news," Bush interrupted.

Rumsfeld said reports indicate "that we got Saddam Hussein."

"Well, that is good news."

Aides said the president made a point of not personalizing it. "I never heard him take any particular relish in Saddam's capture or the fate that obviously awaited him," said Matthew Scully, a former White House speechwriter who helped prepare Bush's remarks about Hussein's capture. "I remember vividly that the president's reaction that day was kind of businesslike. He always saw Saddam as part of the larger picture."

Still, in his White House study, the president keeps a memento -- the pistol taken from Hussein when he was captured. If there ever was a duel, it is now over.