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Tenet rushed to the Pentagon and briefed Rumsfeld on the report; the two called the White House to request a meeting with the President. An hour later Bush met with Tenet, Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Air Force General Richard Myers and the other members of the war council — including Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Cheney and White House chief of staff Andrew Card. From his headquarters in Qatar, Franks dialed in over a secure line. The rest of the group spent the next three hours shuttling in and out of the Oval Office, discussing what to do with the intelligence on Saddam, running through scenarios and calling for more information. Fresh reports detailing the dimensions and coordinates of Saddam's bunker streamed in from the CIA.
Typically, meetings of a group like this are exercises in official decorum, with Cabinet members presenting the President with lists of options and no one speaking out of turn; White House officials say that on Wednesday the Oval Office was a swirl of activity. Chairs were dragged in from the hallway; the President's advisers leaned over one another and volunteered their assessments as more raw intelligence reports flowed in. Bush asked whether the weather might impede an attack on Saddam, how quickly U.S. forces could carry out the mission and how an early strike could affect the rest of the battle plan. Racing against the clock and unable to confirm much of what it was hearing, the U.S. ran the risk of making a costly opening-night bombing mistake that could embolden Saddam and his forces. Franks said he needed a decision by 7:15 p.m. E.T. At 7:12 Bush asked the members of his team for their recommendations; all of them argued for a strike to decapitate the Baghdad regime. Bush didn't need much convincing. "Let's go," he said.
The order reached the warships stationed in the waters off Iraq at 2:30 a.m. local time Thursday. Onboard the U.S.S. Constellation, Navy Prowlers, charged with jamming the enemy's air-defense and communications systems, were told to take off for Baghdad within the hour. Two F-117s based in Qatar followed behind them, reaching the skies above Iraq's capital before dawn broke. "It was fairly quiet," says the pilot of a Prowler aircraft, who asked to be identified by his handle, Dutch. "There wasn't a lot going on."
That would soon change. The Tomahawks reached their targets shortly after 5 a.m., exploding with a force that shook the city. They were followed by four bunker-buster smart bombs from the F117s. After U.S. commanders debriefed their pilots and assessed the bomb damage Thursday morning, Pentagon officials knew the mission had shocked the Iraqi leadership, but Saddam's fate remained unknown. "Everybody expected it to begin with 'shock and awe' and figured Saddam would see it coming," says a senior Defense official. "But by doing it this way, we were able to preserve some tactical surprise."