I’ve mentioned this before, and Michael Scheuer has now confirmed it publicly. Other administration officials confirmed to to me privately years ago now. In July 2002, the Bush administration had a clear chance to kill Zarqawi. They punted primarily because it would have derailed diplomacy in the run-up to the war. If they had bombed part of Iraq in July 2002, they might have made even Resolution 1441 impossible to achieve. Money quote from Scheuer:
"Mr Bush had Zarqawi in his sights almost every day for a year before the invasion of Iraq and he didn’t shoot because they were wining and dining the French in an effort to get them to assist us in the invasion of Iraq. Almost every day we sent a package to the White House that had overhead imagery of the house he was staying in. It was a terrorist training camp … experimenting with ricin and anthrax … any collateral damage there would have been terrorists."
Die-hard anti-war types don’t have a huge amount of standing to criticize this in retrospect. I have no doubt some would have declared taking out Zarqawi as war-mongering back in 2002. But many of us on the pro-war side were very keen to kill Zarqawi while we could. The decision at the time was doubtless a hard call, given the legitimate balance to be struck between diplomacy and action. In retrospect, however, it may prove to be one of the three most costly moments in the war when Bush balked and terror advanced. The other moments, of course, were the decision to over-rule the military leadership and send far too few troops to secure Iraq after Saddam and the hesitation to take Fallujah the first time around.
The Dish 