Bush Confers With Top Advisers
W A S H I N G T O N, March 20 -- President Bush, who spent most of the day behind the scenes with top advisers, praised the military efforts and ordered the Treasury Department to seize $1.4 billion in frozen Iraqi assets and set the funds aside for rebuilding efforts.
After waking early, President Bush spent a busy day conferring behind the scenes with top military, intelligence and security advisers, senior administration officials said.
He began with a 6 a.m. ET update from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who called to fill him in on overnight developments, a senior administration official said.
The president arrived in the Oval Office at approximately 6:55 a.m. Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Director George Tenet were seen arriving at the White House shortly after. Other top administration officials attended a senior staff meeting at 7:30 a.m. ET.
Bush then had his intelligence briefing, followed by an FBI briefing.
He also met with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and had lunch with the vice president around midday.
The question on everyone's mind was whether the previous night's air attack on a bunker where Saddam Hussein was believed to be sleeping had actually struck the leader.
But after the strikes, Saddam gave a defiant speech on Iraqi television. As the day went on, early hope that Saddam had perished, and that one of his doubles made the speech, faded away.
"We have reached no conclusions about that videotape about whether that was Saddam Hussein," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters. Sources told ABCNEWS that intelligence officials believe it was Saddam and he appeared slightly different simply because he was having a colossally bad night.
Feelings of Relief
One administration official told ABCNEWS that there is a huge sense of relief now that the waiting is over and at least the initial stages of the war are progressing. The president seems to be pressing forward in a determined and deliberate fashion on the military, diplomatic and financial front, the official said.
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