White House strategy: It was a dramatic moment. The US President was meeting his war council in the White House on Wednesday afternoon. The conference had been going on for some three-quarters of an hour.
It was about 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (9 p.m. Irish time), four hours before the expiry of the 48-hour ultimatum George Bush had issued to Saddam Hussein and his sons, Qusay and Uday, to leave Iraq.
CIA Director George Tenet interrupted the war cabinet to tell the president that they had received information which could provide an opportunity to change the course of the war before it had begun.
US intelligence had located Saddam Hussein and members of his top leadership in an isolated residence in southern Baghdad. They could order up a strike by precision-guided missiles and bunker-buster bombs at short notice, but they had to act quickly before the opportunity passed.
The president discussed the prospect of assassinating the Iraqi leader with his most senior colleagues, including Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
US attempts in 1991 to wipe out the Iraqi leadership through bombing attacks on specific Baghdad locations had not worked. After much deliberaton, the president gave the go-ahead, according to aides who supplied details of the event to the media.
He decided to tear up plans for a "phoney war" of short duration lasting from the time the ultimatum ran out until the beginning of the planned mass offensive against Baghdad, called "Operation Iraqi Freedom".
At 6.30 p.m. Mr Bush signed an order to launch an attack at three specified targets in Baghdad. It would involve 40 Tomahawk Cruise missiles and two stealth bombers. Sending aircraft over Baghdad before its anti-aircraft defences had been pulverised by missiles had never been part of the war planning, but the risk was accepted.
An hour-and-a-half later, at 8 p.m., Mr Card told him that Saddam Hussein had not met the US-imposed deadline, US officials said.
At 9.30 p.m. the first missiles, fired from eight warships in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, were launched towards Baghdad. The co-ordinates had been supplied by CIA headquarters in Virginia and the missile computers had been reprogrammed and launched with guidance from satellites, the Washington Post reported.
Two F-117a fighter aircraft were launched towards Baghdad from Qatar, each carrying two 2,000lb bombs. Meanwhile, Mr Bush, with minimum notice, and apparently catching the British off-guard, went to the Oval Office at 10.15 p.m. to tell the nation that the "early stages" of military operations to disarm Iraq had begun. Just before he appeared live, a monitor showed him giving a little shake of his fist and saying: "Feel good!" His eyes shrunken from tiredness and his brow furrowed, Mr Bush said that the strikes were the opening stages of what would be a broad and concerted campaign.
"Every nation in this coalition has chosen to bear the duty and share the honour of serving in our common defence," he said, sitting in front of an American flag and with a photograph of his two daughters on the desk. "In this conflict, America faces an enemy that has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality. Saddam Hussein has placed Iraqi troops and equipment in civilian areas, attempting to use innocent men, women and children as shields for his own military, a final atrocity against his people. I want Americans and all the world to know that coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm."
He went on to warn that "a campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict" and said that helping Iraqis to achieve a united, stable and free country would require "sustained commitment".
The only way to limit the duration of the conflict was to apply decisive force. "And I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half-measures, and we will accept no outcome but victory."
George Bush shortly afterwards retired to bed. By 6 a.m. he had received a call from Condoleezza Rice, who briefed him in his office just before 7 a.m. on the missile strikes and bombing. Hopes that the improbable "decapitation" attempt had claimed its intended victims had not been realised. Three hours after the strikes, Saddam Hussein had appeared on Iraqi television. US officials had studied the broadcast carefully, noting hopefully that the Iraqi leader made no direct reference to the attack, signifying that it might have been a video-recording made earlier.
It might even have been a double: he looked subdued and read with the help of large spectacles. Only time would tell. But what the episode showed was that the killing of Saddam Hussein was sufficiently high on President Bush's war aims for him to scrap plans worked out over months.