By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 20, 1998; Page A01

The modest war that broke off yesterday evening, overspending its 70-hour budget by an hour or so, may turn out to force more change on Iraq than first appears. But one thing apparent already is that it has altered the political and diplomatic landscape elsewhere.

Collateral impacts shook the United Nations Security Council, confronted gallingly with its irrelevance. It marked an end to the disarmament effort until now led by the U.N. Special Commission's Richard Butler, who is said by a confidant to be close to resigning.

The effects of the war, in the minds of its planners, may have been greatest on Washington itself. Without resolving the grave doubts that led them three times in a year to step back from the brink with Iraq, President Clinton and his top advisers became seized in the end most urgently with the need to vindicate their word and the credibility of the United States as a military power.

"We're going to continue to have to contain [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein, just as we have for the last seven years, and the most important instrument is the credible threat of force," National Security Adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger said in a White House interview yesterday. "For me the most important reason for why we had to do this was that to have failed to do so not only would have lost UNSCOM but would have lost the credible threat of force."

Over the last month, the confrontation approached with a sense of inevitability, foreshadowed in government briefings, scorned with rehearsed defiance in Baghdad, and lamented in advance in foreign capitals and by diplomats in Washington and New York. When war finally came, it produced unexpected consequences in each of these theaters.

Origins of a Hair Trigger

What brought the Clinton administration to its moment of reckoning this week, according to accounts from several of the major decision-makers, was a conviction that there was a finite window of opportunity for the attack. In the long political and diplomatic struggle with Baghdad, Washington had reached a momentary advantage in early November, after Saddam Hussein overreached by halting UNSCOM's work entirely.

Berger described it as a favorable "constellation of forces" -- a softening of Russian and French support and a hardening of Gulf Arab resolve against Iraq -- that he and other advisers believed "would have dissipated" with the new year.

"That is why I thought we couldn't [wait to] let this thing go on the other end of Ramadan," he said, referring to the end of the Moslem holy month in mid-January. Russia, France and China would have pressed to begin a "comprehensive review" of Iraq's performance of its U.N. obligations, with an eye toward weakening sanctions. January would have passed in public disagreements among the council's permanent members, and "suddenly you're in February and there's no predicate. There's no predicate for the world, and there's no predicate for the American people: 'Why are you all of a sudden attacking Iraq?' "

Administration officials emphasized that they did not wish to use force for its own sake and would have preferred that Iraq take meaningful steps to shed its hidden programs of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them. But in the absence of that cooperation, which they did not expect, the president's advisers wanted to strike as soon as possible.

Planning began on Nov. 15, shortly after Clinton announced on television that he had called off a substantial air campaign because "Iraq agreed to meet the demands of the international community to cooperate fully with the United Nations weapons inspectors." Berger chaired a meeting in the Situation Room of the president's "principals," the Cabinet-rank foreign policy advisers, that directed the Pentagon's Joint Staff to draw up a war plan and deploy forces in the Persian Gulf on a "24-hour trigger."

They came up with an air tasking order defining what Berger described as a "70-hour operation" that was larger than what the president had just aborted -- "more targets, more strikes."

"The decision was made on the 15th," said a participant from another government agency. "I remember Sandy ending that meeting by saying, 'I expect we'll be using force within a month.' "

That surprised some of those present, who thought Saddam Hussein would not provide a clear, public justification for bombing so soon.

"I thought he would cooperate for three weeks, get the comprehensive review and put us in a corner, because once you get to the comprehensive review, the differences between us and the Russians, the French, the Chinese and even the British become a real problem for us," said another official in the Situation Room that day. "But Saddam didn't pursue that course."

As the military planning proceeded, the Joint Staff and U.S. Central Command put great emphasis on the desirability of surprise. Even November's abbreviated 11-day buildup toward war, far briefer than the six weeks taken in a confrontation that started last January, gave Iraqi forces more than enough time to move from their peacetime garrisons and fortify themselves against attack.

Especially because the war plan called for killing Republican Guard loyalists in large numbers as they slept, the mission's designers needed to catch Iraq unawares. The first warning sign to the Baghdad government, they said, should be the sudden departure of U.N. inspectors in the final hours before the first missiles fell.

There was another reason for the hair trigger: fear that someone would find a diplomatic ploy to preempt the American attack.

In November, nearly all of Clinton's closest advisers were disappointed at the eleventh-hour Iraqi capitulation that led the president to abort a military strike with minutes to spare. "You can't shoot a man who's waving a white flag," as one adviser put it, but no one believed Saddam Hussein's surrender to U.N. inspectors was sincere.

American intelligence agencies had put great effort into discovering how Iraq timed its capitulation so fortuitously. One explanation -- it is unclear whether the administration is aware of it -- went back to U.N. headquarters in New York.

Sources close to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he learned through unofficial channels on the evening of Nov. 13 that the American-led attack would begin at 11 a.m. the next day. He strongly preferred a diplomatic solution. An aide pulled him out of the Security Council's deliberations, and Annan faxed an urgent letter to Saddam Hussein.

"Excellency," it began. "As you may know already, I interrupted an official visit to North Africa yesterday and returned to New York in view of the worsening crisis with regard to Iraq." Annan went on to "strongly urge" the Iraqi leader to reverse his ban on UNSCOM and "resume immediate cooperation." He asked pointedly for "an early response to my appeal."

Within hours, Iraq signaled its willingness to give in.

'He Was Quite Decisive About It'

The Baghdad government began balking at UNSCOM's requests for information and access within a matter of days, but the Clinton administration held to neutral statements and adopted a strategy of waiting for Butler to reach a verdict. "I think it is important that we do not overreact here," Clinton told reporters in Seoul on Nov. 22. But in the days before Butler's Dec. 15 report, Washington assembled the final pieces for a strike.

On Dec. 10, the Pentagon dispatched three Patriot antimissile batteries of three launchers each from a U.S. base in Germany to Israel, describing it as a routine "deployment exercise." In fact, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, chief of the U.S. Central Command, insisted it was an essential defensive precursor to bombarding Iraq, lest the Baghdad government retaliate with Scud missiles, as it had in 1991.

"Nobody really put two and two together," said one senior official. "We already had Patriots in the gulf, where they needed to be."

Last Sunday, in Jerusalem's new Hilton Hotel astride the Old City's Jaffa Gate, the president's top Iraq advisers met -- without Clinton present -- in a ninth-floor suite. Berger, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and their senior Iraq advisers, Bruce Riedel and Martin Indyk, were in the room, while Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry H. Shelton, Berger deputy James Steinberg, vice presidential adviser Leon S. Fuerth, CIA Director George J. Tenet and White House Chief of Staff John D. Podesta patched in via secure video link from Washington.

Albright and Berger walked the unanimous recommendation up a floor to Clinton's suite. Would he authorize Cohen to transmit the "prepare to execute" order for a Wednesday afternoon attack?

"He was quite decisive about it," Berger said. "He said, 'Go ahead and let's get ready.' "

Aboard Air Force One en route home Tuesday, Clinton reinforced the decision after reviewing the language Butler would use in his final report of Iraqi obstruction and obfuscation, due to be finished that night in New York.

Berger, confirming another account, first said they had the final language aboard the plane in its first two hours of flight, a timetable that long preceded delivery to its official first recipient, Annan. When asked about the sequence, Berger said he was not sure when the final text came.

Clinton directed Cohen to sign the "execute order" the next morning at 7:30, but left himself one final out. At 2 p.m. Wednesday, Berger phoned Clinton and said, " 'Mr. President, we're going ahead. This is the last moment at which you can turn this off.' And he said, 'Let's go forward.' "

The first Tomahawk missile burst free from its launcher and ignited its rocket toward Iraq at 3:08 p.m. eastern time.

'It's a Go'

Less than two hours later, a few minutes before 5 p.m., diplomats from 15 nations packed a drab conference room on the second floor of the green-sheathed U.N. skyscraper built as a monument to international peace. Members of the Security Council stood two and three deep around a horseshoe table, sharing interpreters' headphones to hear Butler explain why he thought Iraq had violated the council's binding demands.

The ostensible question at hand was what the United Nations' highest lawmaking body should do about it, a subject on which the members differed profoundly. But mid-sentence in Butler's presentation, a senior official named Benon Sevan burst in to whisper in Annan's ear. The other diplomats got the same news from the television tuned to CNN in the anteroom just beyond the door: Air raid sirens were sounding in Baghdad.

Soon every beeper and cellular phone in the room began clamoring as Iraqi antiaircraft fire commenced. Bahrain's U.N. ambassador, Jassim Mohammed Buallay, who this month holds the revolving presidency of the council, inquired whether the American or British representatives would "care to inform us what is going on." Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador, replied that he might have something to say in half an hour.

"There was pandemonium, and everyone was shouting into their cell phones," said one participant. "The meeting just sort of melted down," said another.

Most of the diplomats adjourned sloppily to the anteroom, where they watched CNN's Christiane Amanpour search the night skies of Baghdad. She, and they, were looking for incoming missiles launched in the name of the council's unanimous will.

At the White House, Berger watched the same scene wordlessly with his deputies, James Steinberg and Maj. Gen. Donald L. Kerrick, on a television stored behind white folding doors on a bookshelf. When his wristwatch showed 5:06 p.m., the scheduled "time on target" of the first wave of the attack, Berger dialed Shelton to confirm he could order a public announcement.

"It's a go," he said when he hung up.

"It was somber," recalled David C. Leavy, an aide who was also in the room. "People weren't high-fiving at all. It was very serious and businesslike."

'Who Do We Talk To?'

Caught in its barracks and in the open, the Iraqi military suffered harder blows than U.S. intelligence believes Saddam Hussein had expected. This was not exactly the Persian Gulf War -- it would amount to 650 sorties against 97 targets, compared with 47,630 against 1,222 targets in the Gulf War -- but the early signs were that it hurt.

In New York, Iraq's U.N. Ambassador, Nizar Hamdoon, pulled aside a Western diplomat, searching for answers on what exactly Washington and London might want.

"What is it we're supposed to do? Who do we talk to?" Hamdoon implored, according to a witness.

Albright gave a stark reply when the Public Broadcasting Service's Jim Lehrer asked the same question later that evening. Iraq was not supposed to do anything, because nothing it could do or say would cut short the attack, she suggested.

"Well, this attack is going to go through to its completion, and what Saddam Hussein can do after it is to comply," she said.

Cumulative frustration with Iraq, and the strong sense that his credibility was on the line, led Clinton for the first time in his presidency to launch a military action that his military advisers predicted would kill thousands of enemy troops -- the majority as they slept, unaware yet that their country was at war.

"His very strong judgment was that in the final analysis, there was a greater risk of greater conflict and greater death and destruction if Saddam reasonably came to the conclusion that force was no longer out there," Berger said.

"That goes to the heart of this thing, in my judgment. Part of it is WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. Part of it, in my judgment, is if this guy believes he can destroy UNSCOM, it's only a matter of time before he redevelops that WMD and fires it at Riyadh and fires it at Kuwait or fires it at Israel."

Similar thoughts appeared to be in the minds of some of the pilots halfway around the world who came as close as any American to the "up close and personal" killing that a Clinton adviser said was in the plan.

Aboard the USS Enterprise Friday night, Lt. Frank Marston, 28, spoke quietly about a target he described only as a large secluded building. He said he almost didn't find it because a ground marker to guide him was cloaked. Finally, he zeroed in on the building, imaged on a screen before him in his cockpit. He fired, scoring a direct hit, and hellish flames blossomed black on his infrared scope.

The pilot wasn't boastful. Aware of the distancing effect of relating on one screen how he destroyed something on another screen, he spoke regretfully of the business of death.

"The mission, he said, "was justified."

The Ramadan Problem

This was a conflict distinguished, among many other things, by a political-theological debate over Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar and the holiest of its faith. Observant Muslims refrain from food, drink and cigarettes until sundown each day. The question for Clinton and company was, did they have to refrain from war?

Washington hit on the awkward argument that it tried to show respect by ensuring it would not "initiate" killing after the crescent moon over Mecca announced the new month. Clinton stated again yesterday "my deep respect for the holy month of Ramadan," while experts working for him noted that Arab and Arab-Israeli wars had been fought through the holy month.

The political problem was the allegiance of Arab moderates and the passions of the public opinion on which they relied. "Just because it's okay for the faithful to attack the infidels on Ramadan," one senior military officer observed, "doesn't mean it's okay for the infidels to attack the faithful."

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, in a news conference from Baghdad on Friday, tried to play on that view with a veiled appeal to the antisemitic themes of the radical Arab press, taking particular note of U.S. officials of Jewish or partial Jewish heritage.

"How do we expect a Zionist like Clinton, a Zionist like [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair, to respect the holy month of the Muslims?" Aziz demanded, saying Clinton is "surrounded by a clique of Zionists" composed of Albright, Cohen and Berger.

"The Baath Party came to power in a bloody coup in February 1963" during the holy month, replied Bakhtiar Amin, an Iraqi Kurd who directs the Washington-based Human Rights Alliance. "They call that military coup the Ramadan Revolution. It's one of the darkest days in the history of Iraq. The best gift that people can give the Iraqi people in this holy period is Saddam Hussein's head on a silver tray."

When the Bombing Stops

Permutations of the Ramadan argument echoed at Christmas parties all over official Washington as the bombing pressed on. One of them was at Quarters One, the turn-of-the-century brick mansion inhabited by Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, the Army chief of staff.

As staff sergeants played "Frosty the Snowman" on flute and harp, an assembly of active and retired generals dined on shrimp from an ice-sculpted sleigh on which a camouflage-fatigued Santa Claus drove a team of four lobsters.

Anxious and sardonic, the senior officers spoke of unanswered questions about a mission they had walked back and forth for more than a year.

Retired Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, Clinton's first Army chief of staff, leaned forward with a slightly conspiratorial smile.

"Somebody tell me," he said. "What do we do when the bombing stops?"

Political leaders were asking themselves, and each other, exactly the same question.

On Thursday night, as Annan prepared to put in an appearance at his own Christmas reception, aides intercepted him for a telephone call placed by Blair.

Do you have any ideas, Blair asked the secretary general, according to a confidant who heard Annan's account, on what we should do now? British officials in New York and Washington, queried about the conversation, did not return telephone calls from a reporter.

Annan's circle of advisers reacted with disbelief.

"That's what we're here for, a sense of comic relief and irony," said one senior member of the secretariat. Annan, he added, was "much too polite" to say what he and his advisers were all thinking: that London and Washington should have given more thought to that question before they launched the war.

In Baghdad yesterday, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan announced that UNSCOM would not return until the United Nations ends the oil embargo.

"Butler's not going to go back? Okay, sanctions aren't ever going to be lifted," said one American policymaker. "If UNSCOM doesn't go back, the Security Council has no mechanism for disarming Iraq, and therefore there's no mechanism for lifting sanctions."

That remains to be seen. French President Jacques Chirac phoned Annan Friday morning to discuss, among other things, the possibility of a transition to some new form of remote monitoring of the Baghdad government's compliance. "You could have the cameras set up, and you could do it from Washington or Paris or anywhere," said one diplomat familiar with the proposal.

Annan, after the phone call from Blair, formed a task force of five top aides to devise, as one confidant put it, "how to build a post-UNSCOM regime the U.S. and U.K. will accept but cleans up after the mess the United States has made. They have this fantasy that Saddam is going to cry uncle and invite them back in. It's going to be up to Kofi to maneuver that."

In the Netherlands, the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, is angling to take on UNSCOM's responsibility for chemical and biological weapons inspections. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, which has worked in some tension with Butler and his predecessor, is similarly interested in the "nuclear file."

"It would be a less effective solution than UNSCOM," said another adviser to Annan. "However, it may be a choice of that or nothing."

How the United States will navigate this is no more clear now than before the bombing began.

"What comes next," said a high-ranking flag officer who has taken part in many of the planning debates, "is our long-term strategy, part two. Whatever that is."

Staff writers Dana Priest, Rick Atkinson and Vernon Loeb in Washington, David Hoffman in Moscow and Peter Finn aboard the USS Enterprise contributed to this report.