Quotes of the Day

George Bush has a problem. The President of the U.S. is utterly convinced that Saddam Hussein is an evil so dangerous and immediate that only war can expunge the threat—barring some miraculous 11th- hour departure or resolution. For months Bush has done his darnedest to make this case and convince the world that the application of American might is the best way to eradicate the menace. But he hasn't persuaded everyone just yet.

That's why lights burned into the night at cia headquarters last week as a special team of planners shuttled from the State Department and the White House to join agency analysts in poring over piles of satellite photos and phone intercepts, sifting through tapes from defectors and interrogations of detainees. Bush had just pledged in his State of the Union speech that Secretary of State Colin Powell would take fresh, compelling evidence to the U.N. in seven days' time to bolster the case for war. These officials were struggling to choose exactly what to include. The selection had to make for a punchy yet credible show-and-tell for Powell—and all without compromising sources or revealing intelligence that G.I.s might need when the shooting starts. Powell wanted not a speech but a replica of the sharp military-style briefings that helped earn him his Gulf War fame. "He taught at infantry school with slides and presentations," says a senior State official. "He knows how to do this."

He had better. As officials wrestled over what particulars to use, Powell's appearance before the U.N. seemed to be setting up a diplomatic high noon. At stake was not so much whether war would ensue but whether the U.S. would fight it with all the legal, moral, political and popular support U.N. benediction would confer. Bush has said all along that the U.S. would go it alone if need be. It's no secret that some in his Administration were eager to do just that way back last summer. But Powell convinced Bush then of the benefits of operating with U.N. approval.

Now the day is fast approaching when Bush expects the nations that make up the U.N. Security Council to put up or shut up. To win them over, Powell needs to deliver an argument for attacking Iraq that is solid enough to override the reluctance gripping key capitals. And if he gets their backing, Bush is also likely to win something he needs almost as much: greater support at home. Polls show Americans would go to war, but they would feel a lot better about it with the U.N. behind them.

So what's the magic up Powell's sleeve? Sources tell Time he'll attack on three fronts, presenting evidence of elusive weapons of mass destruction, persistent obstructions of inspections and links to terrorism. The drama is likely to come as much in the delivery—high-tech photos, raw audiotapes—as in the substance. The danger is that even the best intelligence is almost always subject to widely differing interpretations. Maybe they were cleverly lowering expectations, but in the days before Powell's performance, Administration officials were fairly uniform in admitting the presentation would contain only a few clearly incriminating charges. Most of the material would be circumstantial and deductive, the kind of evidence that doesn't quite yield the "Aha!" moment that greeted Adlai Stevenson's display of the famous Cuban-missile photos at the U.N. in 1962.

Saddam and Inspections
There's plenty of old evidence laying out Saddam's suspected arsenal of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons that has for years formed the bedrock of the case against Iraq. Inspectors who searched for eight years after the Gulf War left a well-documented file of banned items they were pretty sure existed but they couldn't find or couldn't prove were destroyed. Those are still missing and remain a central concern (see chart). But the trouble from the public relations perspective is precisely that that evidence is familiar and that it has already been judged by many to be insufficient grounds for military confrontation.

But even without something graver, the Bush Administration believes the old evidence is good enough to justify action. Administration officials argue that the issue of proof has gone topsy-turvy. They say Saddam has to prove he doesn't have banned weapons, but skeptics insist the U.S. needs to prove he is, in fact, hiding them. Hans Blix, the chief inspector hunting biological and chemical weapons, provided the White House with an unanticipated boost when his Jan. 27 report to the Security Council gave Saddam's cooperation low marks and complained that Iraq had shown no "genuine acceptance" of full disarmament. That played beautifully into the Administration's fundamental argument that even if inspectors had all the time in the world, they would never prove a match for Iraq's cunning efforts to conceal its illicit arsenal.

Powell says he hopes to nail home that point by filling in "some of the gaps." One way to do that is to demonstrate tangibly how or where Iraq is systematically hiding weapons of mass destruction. Iraqi defectors have told U.S. intelligence they helped build mobile biological-weapons labs; Powell could parade satellite images the cia has of large semitrailers crowned with oversize air vents that indicate the vehicles could house such labs. Also available are photos said to show dump trucks converted into missile launchers. And cia analysts have drawn up a voluminous list of Saddam's shopping spree for hardware and raw ingredients that they assert are intended for weapons making.

The trouble is, very little of this kind of thing is incontrovertible proof of anything. Bush's mobile lab may look like a high-topped recreational vehicle. The dump- truck launchers probably won't be loaded with suspect missiles that fly beyond the permissible 93-mile range. And some of the suspect imports do have legitimate dual uses to make fertilizer or vaccines.

The most controversial items are still those infamous aluminum tubes Iraq tried to procure. Bush asserted again in his State of the Union address that they were for constructing centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. But the chief nuclear inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, has reported his expert conclusion that they were for legal artillery rockets. The Administration intends to show that ElBaradei is wrong—that these are specially calibrated, high-tensile-strength tubes able to take more stress than regular missile tubes and that the Iraqis paid 50 times the $1 market price for conventional pipes.

Powell may make more of an impact on the Security Council by emphasizing another kind of evidence that may sound dryly technical but that cuts to the heart of the U.N.'s authority: he'll detail the ways Washington believes Iraq is cheating on inspections. For the Administration's case, the great value of Resolution 1441, authorizing the inspections, is the clarity with which it states that obstructing its terms constitutes a material breach that would provoke "serious consequences." The Administration feels that if the U.S. can showcase invidious, systematic defiance of inspections, the Council—including skeptical nations like France and Russia—will be obliged to take action if only to preserve its authority.

So the Administration intends to pile up as many instances of obstruction as possible. Iraq has thumbed its nose at high-altitude U-2 surveillance flights, refusing to guarantee their safety unless the U.S. and Britain stop patrolling the no-fly zones. The discovery a few weeks ago of Iraq's illicit acquisition of missile engines and purchases of barred chemical explosives indicates concrete violations of resolution terms. British officials have also compiled a list indicting Iraq for deliberately hampering inspectors during the past two months. They say Iraq has 20,000 intelligence officers engaged in disrupting inspections and concealing weapons. They hide the documents, equipment and materials a step ahead of the inspectors, stuffing prohibited material in farmyards, beneath hospitals, inside mosques.

Iraqi security, says the British file, has completely blocked all attempts to interview scientists. Iraqi agents choose the venues for such talks, then listen in and even videotape the proceedings. Secret police hang around the scene to observe any covert behavior, like whispered conversations or note passing. Inspectors have been reluctant to ask any scientist to be interviewed outside the country because the security forces brandish lists of relatives whom they are ready to punish if the scientists give anything away. Thus far none have agreed to leave Iraq.

How does Britain know all this? Classified intelligence. But now Bush officials say they're ready to show satellite photos of Iraqis sneaking suspicious materials out the back door of facilities right before inspectors come in the front. They have overhead shots of Iraqis "sanitizing" suspect sites a few days before inspectors turn up: bulldozers cleaning up traces of activity, trucks hauling away material. They would love to play intercepts of communications from Iraqi officials ordering the clearances—or the tapes they have recorded of Iraqi security men conspiring to plant their agents as phony scientists. They say U.S. intelligence reports show that several dozen scientists have been spirited out of Iraq to Syria and Jordan.

It sounds persuasive, but Washington doesn't have a flawless track record on making such intelligence allegations stick. For example, last fall the cia pointed to satellite snaps of construction under way at the al Tuwaitha complex near Baghdad as proof that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear-bomb plant. After 12 visits there sampling the soil, testing equipment and checking for radiation, the inspectors could detect no nuclear developments. At three other sites that the U.S. said were resuming production of chemical and biological agents, repeated inspections showed the plants were either inoperative or producing something other than microbes. The Administration says that just proves why inspections will never root out the weapons programs that Washington knows lie hidden.

Even with pictures and lists, Administration officials admit that most of their evidence is circumstantial. It's "suggestive, not damning," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. Much will depend on whether Powell's interpretations are compelling. Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, who has seen much of this material in intelligence-committee briefings he would not discuss, says what is made public will point the audience to logical conclusions, "such as why are they procuring these particular items if that's not what they're doing with them? Because that's what these particular items are designed for."

Saddam and al-Qaeda
This is the high-voltage line of argument that could blow away skeptics' doubts—or blow holes in Bush's entire case. Strong evidence of a link between Iraq and terrorists would make it easy for allies—and nervous American citizens—to support a war, but it's the hardest allegation to prove. Bush, who plainly believes it, gave the charge its sharpest articulation yet in his State of the Union address: "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda." Bush's men have floated such a connection in the past without producing credible hard evidence, and some officials are worried that sketchy details on the terrorist connection could undermine the power of Powell's overall presentation. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage surprised Senators last week when he candidly acknowledged that in the past the Administration had relied on ambiguous intelligence to make its case. But, he added, this time it would be just the facts.

So what does the U.S. now know—or what is it willing to release? To convince skeptics that Saddam not only could but has formed an alliance with the same kind of terrorists who caused the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. officials are planning to disclose recent links between Baghdad and the murky band of Kurdish fundamentalists called Ansar al-Islam. They say the group, based in a corner of northern Iraq outside Baghdad's control, is an al-Qaeda operation, trained by al-Qaeda men in Afghanistan and harboring al-Qaeda refugees who fled the fighting there.

U.S. officials tell Time they have also obtained electronic messages passed between Baghdad and the group. "There's all sorts of signal intercepts that indicate communications," says a State Department official. "There's clearly a dialogue going on." Those threads, the official tells Time, suggest Ansar had approached Baghdad to obtain help making biological and chemical weapons. But after that, the intelligence peters out. Did Baghdad help them? "That we don't know," the official says. But some U.S. officials say they do know Ansar eventually figured out how to make toxins.

Officials are also talking up the presence of al-Qaeda bigwigs in Baghdad. The only one identified so far is a chemical-weapons operative named Abu Musab Zarqawi, who stopped in the Iraqi capital last summer to have his leg amputated after he was wounded in Afghanistan. Iraq let him escape when Jordan sought his extradition. Since then, he has been fingered for involvement in the assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan and in the London ricin plot. A senior Administration source claims that Zarqawi met with Saddam's lieutenants in an effort to acquire chemical weapons.

Officials say their information on this is very touchy, since some of it comes from countries not openly allied with the U.S. "Several Middle East partners have either helped obtain information," says a senior Administration official, "or they are giving refuge to people they are getting this from." One especially shy source would be the Syrian government. Sources tell Time that Syria has given the U.S. information about contacts between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime gleaned from a suspected al-Qaeda operative in its custody.

But Powell will need to brandish some terrific intelligence to prove there are solid lines—and not just dots—between Saddam and terrorists. A knowledgeable intelligence official says whether Powell can provide sure-shot evidence lies "in the remains-to-be-seen category." Some officials say what they've glimpsed of the Ansar info tends to look convincing only to those predisposed to believe it. Says an intelligence official: "If they're trying to compel people, that's not the place I'd rest my argument." Some in Congress say it will take more than the one-time visit to Baghdad by a one-legged al-Qaeda operative to convince them. Democrats who have heard the pitch tend to agree with Illinois Senator Richard Durbin: "What I have seen is so minimal that it seems like a stretch."

Saddam and His Intentions
for bush, this is both the beginning and the end of his case. So let's start where he does, even if it has become a cliche: 9/11 changed everything. Even the intellectual godfathers of the get-Saddam campaign admit that the terror assault showed America's enemies a new and more lethal way to fight and spotlighted how a rogue state—namely Iraq—with the resources to develop weapons of mass destruction might employ them. The abiding conviction that tyrants and terrorists would surely combine forces to attack America carried the Administration across a threshold.

Once you buy into that fear, the rest follows a plausible logic. Few dispute Bush's characterization of Saddam as a brutal dictator who has attacked his neighbors, produced weapons of mass destruction and employed chemical ones. He has broken international law, mocked treaty commitments and flouted the U.N. The global community defeated him in war and ordered him to disarm, only to be defied for more than a decade. He has never, in his 24-year dictatorship, shown the least willingness to reform, even when his people nearly starved under the brunt of international sanctions. "In my judgment," said Bush last week, "you don't hope that therapy will somehow change his evil mind."

And Saddam is explicitly hostile to the U.S. and its interests. If he acquires a nuclear weapon on top of his hoarded biological and chemical ones, he will, according to Bush, wreak catastrophic harm on his enemies, which means the U.S. The ultimate method, said Bush, would be for Saddam to hand off to a terrorist network "one vial, one canister, one crate" of his deadly weapons "secretly and without fingerprints" to "bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."

To the President, that means Saddam poses an unacceptable risk for the future of the U.S. and all its global allies. Better war now than after such an infamous day. The Bush Administration promulgated an entirely new national security strategy last September to enshrine the principle of using force pre-emptively to stop hostile states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction or sharing them with terrorists. As a practical matter, the U.S. has the military superiority to change Iraq's regime and is convinced that the perils of undertaking it are outweighed by the risks of inaction. The Administration believes that in the face of such moral clarity, who needs more evidence? No wonder Bush is so impatient with reluctant warriors who don't share his unblinking certitude, whether they're fellow Americans or allies.

But as Bush acknowledged late last week, he would prefer that U.S. citizens and the Security Council back him in this fight. That's why Powell spent the weekend at home in northern Virginia, honing his performance. Bush made clear that this "final push" for U.N. benediction would last "weeks, not months." To the true believers, Powell's message may feel like time wasted, but his success is crucial for the Security Council leaders who need credible cover if they are to join Bush on a crusade their own citizens overwhelmingly oppose. And it is crucial also in reassuring millions of Americans that taking on Saddam now is preferable to waiting for him to take on the U.S. first.

—Reported by J.F.O. McAllister/ London and Timothy J. Burger, Massimo Calabresi, John F. Dickerson, Mark Thompson and Michael Weisskopf/Washington

• Johanna McGeary