WASHINGTON — Declaring “the game is over,” President Bush on Thursday said the United States would take “whatever action is necessary” to disarm Iraq now that the world has seen Washington’s evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has lied about possessing weapons of mass destruction.
In his harshest terms yet about the crisis in the Persian Gulf, Bush rhetorically took the world to the brink of war but stopped short of declaring it. Bush said Hussein is throwing away his last chance for peace and challenged the U.N. Security Council to approve a new resolution authorizing the use of force to disarm Iraq.
“The United States, along with a growing coalition of nations, is resolved to take whatever action is necessary to defend ourselves and disarm the Iraqi regime,” Bush said after meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, one day after Powell presented the Security Council extensive U.S. evidence of Iraq’s efforts to hide its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons materials.
“Saddam Hussein has the motive and the means and the recklessness and the hatred to threaten the American people,” Bush said. “Saddam Hussein will be stopped.”
Even as the president spoke, the Defense Department was ordering the Army’s storied 101st Airborne Division to deploy to the gulf region to join an estimated 110,000 troops already in position for a possible war. The elite rapid deployment division played a key role in the ground phase of the 1991 gulf war.
The Turkish parliament, meanwhile, voted Thursday to allow U.S. troops to renovate Turkish bases for use in a possible war. Turkish officials said they expected the parliament would also soon approve the stationing of tens of thousands of U.S. combat troops, which would permit the Pentagon to open a crucial northern front in any war against Baghdad.
With war preparations accelerating, the State Department issued a “worldwide caution” to all Americans that they faced a growing danger of attacks from terrorist groups everywhere in the world.
Bush dramatized the potential threat as he recounted Powell’s evidence of Iraq’s continuing weapons programs. The president warned that a single unmanned Iraqi aircraft, rigged to spray biological agents, could be launched off the American coast and “reach hundreds of miles inland.”
Bush did not specify a deadline for the Security Council to act, or for his own decision whether to launch a war. But White House officials noted that the president pointedly refrained from repeating his earlier timeline of “weeks, not months,” suggesting that further consultations might not last even that long.
Nor did Bush repeat that Hussein still had time to come into compliance with U.N. disarmament demands.
“Saddam Hussein was given a final chance. He is throwing that chance away,” Bush said. “The dictator of Iraq is making his choice. Now the nations of the Security Council must make their own.”
Powell, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was confident that Washington was beginning to sway skeptical allies.
After speaking with a dozen Security Council foreign ministers following his U.N. presentation, Powell said, he sensed a “shift in attitude” that Iraq can no longer be permitted to defy the world body.
“I think there might be perhaps more support for a second resolution than some might think,” Powell said.
Publicly, however, the leading Security Council critics of the use of force –France, Russia and Germany — did not back down from their opposition Thursday.
“We refuse to think that war is inevitable,” French President Jacques Chirac said.
But Washington’s closest ally, Britain, indicated that it was preparing to introduce a Security Council resolution authorizing force shortly after chief U.N. weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei make their next report to the council Feb. 14.