DAN BALZ, BOB WOODWARD AND JEFF HIMMELMAN WASHINGTON POST, January 29, 2002 - Iraq posed nearly as serious a problem for the president and his team as Afghanistan. If Hussein, a wily and unpredictable survivor, decided to launch a terrorist or even a limited military strike on U.S. facilities after Sept. 11 and the president had failed to move against him, the recriminations might never end. . . Toppling Hussein would mark a major escalation of what the administration was trying to do. Nobody at that point had even agreed that Iraq should be part of the initial phase of the war on terrorism; in truth, at that point nobody other than Tenet was even talking about dislodging the Taliban, only threatening to punish the regime if it didn't break with bin Laden. Wolfowitz's words caught others in the administration by surprise. A few days later, Powell publicly distanced himself from the deputy defense secretary, saying, "Ending terrorism is where I would like to leave it, and let Mr. Wolfowitz speak for himself." At the Pentagon, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was firmly opposed to bringing Iraq into the military equation at this early stage. In Shelton's analysis, the only justification for going after Iraq would be clear evidence linking the Iraqis to the Sept. 11 attacks. Short of that, targeting Iraq was not worth the risk of angering moderate Arab states whose support was crucial not only to any campaign in Afghanistan but to reviving the Middle East peace process. At State, Powell and others were alarmed by the Wolfowitz drumbeat. At the end of one early meeting of Bush's war cabinet, during which Rumsfeld had raised Iraq as a potential target, Powell approached Shelton and rolled his eyes. "What the hell, what are these guys thinking about?" asked Powell, who had once held Shelton's job as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Can't you get these guys back in the box?" Shelton could not have agreed more.