Woodward book: Bush secretly made Iraq war plan

Woodward book: Bush secretly made Iraq war plan

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/04/16/iraq.woodward.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up
against Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan
and was so worried the decision would cause a furor he did not tell
everyone on his national security team, says a new book on his Iraq policy.

Bush feared that if news got out about the Iraq plan as U.S. forces were
fighting another conflict, people would think he was too eager for war,
journalist Bob Woodward writes in "Plan of Attack," a behind-the-scenes
account of the 16 months leading to the Iraq invasion.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book, which will be
available in book stores next week.

"I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a
potential war plan for Iraq," Bush is quoted as telling Woodward. "It
was such a high-stakes moment and ... it would look like that I was
anxious to go to war. And I'm not anxious to go to war."

Bush and his aides have denied accusations they were preoccupied with
Iraq at the cost of paying attention to the al Qaeda terrorist threat
before the September 11, 2001, attacks. A commission investigating the
attacks just concluded several weeks of extraordinary public testimony
from high-ranking government officials. One of them, former
counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, charged the Bush administration's
determination to invade Iraq undermined the war on terror.

Woodward's account fleshes out the degree to which some members of the
administration, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, were focused on
Saddam Hussein from the onset of Bush's presidency and even after the
terrorist attacks made the destruction of al-Qaida the top priority.

Woodward says Bush pulled Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld aside
November 21, 2001 -- when U.S. forces and allies were in control of
about half of Afghanistan -- and asked him what kind of war plan he had
on Iraq. When Rumsfeld said it was outdated, Bush told him to get
started on a fresh one.

The book says Bush told Rumsfeld to keep quiet about it and when the
defense secretary asked to bring CIA Director George Tenet into the
planning at some point, the president said not to do so yet.

Even Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was apparently
not fully briefed. Woodward said Bush told her that morning he was
having Rumsfeld work on Iraq but did not give details.

In an interview two years later, Bush told Woodward that if the news had
leaked, it would have caused "enormous international angst and domestic
speculation."

The Bush administration's drive toward war with Iraq raised an
international furor anyway, alienating long-time allies who did not
believe the White House had made a sufficient case against Saddam.
Saddam was toppled a year ago and taken into custody last December. But
the central figure of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, remains at large and a
threat to the west.

The book says Gen. Tommy Franks, who was in charge of the Afghan war as
head of Central Command, uttered a string of obscenities when the
Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of
fighting another conflict.
Cheney allegedly influential

Woodward, a Washington Post journalist who wrote an earlier book on
Bush's anti-terrorism campaign and broke the Watergate scandal with Carl
Bernstein, says Cheney's well-known hawkish attitudes on Iraq were
frequently decisive in Bush's decision-making.

Cheney pressed the outgoing Clinton administration to brief Bush on the
Iraq threat before he took office, Woodward writes.

In August 2002, when Bush talked publicly of being a patient man who
would weigh Iraqi options carefully, the vice president took the
administration's Iraq policy on a harder track in a speech declaring the
weapons inspections ineffective. Cheney's speech was viewed as the
beginning of a campaign to undermine or overthrow Saddam. Woodward said
Bush let Cheney make the speech without asking what he would say.

The vice president also figured prominently in a protracted decision
March 19, 2003, to strike Iraq before a 48-hour ultimatum for Saddam
Hussein to leave the country had expired.

When the CIA and its Iraqi sources reported that Saddam's sons and other
family members were at a small palace, and Saddam was on his way to join
them, Bush's top advisers debated whether to strike ahead of plan.

Franks was against it, saying it was unfair to move before a deadline
announced to the other side, the book says. Rumsfeld and Rice favored
the early strike, and Secretary of State Colin Powell leaned that way.

But Bush did not make his decision until he had cleared everyone out of
the Oval Office except the vice president. "I think we ought to go for
it," Cheney is quoted as saying. Bush did.

U.S. forces unleashed bombs and cruise missiles, blanketing the compound
but missing the palace. Tenet called the White House before dawn to say
the Iraqi leader had been killed. But his optimism was premature. Saddam
was alive.

The 468-page book is published by Simon & Schuster. Woodward will be
interviewed on CBS' "60 Minutes" Sunday night to promote the book

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.



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