Woodward book: Bush secretly made Iraq war plan

[MIKE BURN]

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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 When Rumsfeld said it was outdated, Bush told him to get started on a fresh one.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.

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[DreamTone7]

Mike, instead of "Generally Crazy Guy", it should read "The instigator".

[HKRockChick]

@#%$-stirrer...



oooh, sorry, thats me.....



Actually I'm very fond of everyone on this board despite our differences.

[Seismic Anamoly]

I, like most of the guys here I think, am very fond of you, Debbie, BECAUSE of our differences...



Anatomical, that is!!

[HKRockChick]

[HKRockChick]

"To me the big news is America has changed how you fight and win war, and therefore makes it easier to keep the peace in the long run. And that's the historical significance of this book, as far as I'm concerned."



keep the peace. what a crock.



news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=..._book_dc_3



Cheney, Powell Split Over Iraq, Book Says

Sat Apr 17, 1:54 AM ET Add Politics to My Yahoo!



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) and Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) are so upset with one another over the Iraq (news - web sites) war that they are barely on speaking terms, according to excerpts from a new book published in the Washington Post on Saturday.



The book, entitled "Plan of Attack," is not due to be released until next week but the Post's assistant managing editor, Robert Woodward, wrote it and the newspaper is reporting from it.



Woodward, perhaps best known for his role in the Watergate scandal that forced the resignation of president Richard Nixon in 1974, interviewed administration officials for the book, including Bush.



He writes that the relationship between Cheney and Powell became so strained over the plans to invade Iraq that Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms.



Powell, Woodward said, opposed the war and believed Cheney was obsessively trying to establish a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network. He said Powell believed Cheney took ambiguous intelligence and treated it as fact.



"Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's 'Gestapo' office -- had established what amounted to a separate government," the Post writes.



"The vice president, for his part, believed Powell was mainly concerned with his own popularity and told friends at a dinner he hosted a year ago celebrating the outcome of the war that Powell was a problem and 'always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."'



But Powell agreed to publicly support the war after Bush personally asked him to, according to Woodward's book.



Bush also said he prayed for divine guidance in launching the war.



"I am prepared to risk my presidency to do what I think is right," the Post quotes Bush as saying.



Bush told Woodward he was cooperating on the book because he wanted the story of how the United States had gone to war in Iraq to be told.



Bush hoped to leave a record that "will enable other leaders, if they feel like they have to go to war, to spare innocent citizens and their lives."



"But the news of this, in my judgment, the big news out of this isn't how George W. makes decisions," Bush is quoted as saying.



"To me the big news is America has changed how you fight and win war, and therefore makes it easier to keep the peace in the long run. And that's the historical significance of this book, as far as I'm concerned."

[NRKofOver]

Anyone who watched closely to the events leading up to the war could very easily see a complete shift in Powell. Prior to his address to the UN making the case for war, he was very much a voice of reason in a pretty scary administration. The UN speech was that shift, Powell went from inspections, time, patience, etc. to time for war. It was disheartening for me personally.

My music for the disenchanted masses

[HKRockChick]

he compromised his principles. You could tell his arm was being twisted. I feel he has aged in these few months. I wonder how he sleeps.

[Seismic Anamoly]

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He writes that the relationship between Cheney and Powell became so strained over the plans to invade Iraq that Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms.



Powell, Woodward said, opposed the war and believed Cheney was obsessively trying to establish a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network. He said Powell believed Cheney took ambiguous intelligence and treated it as fact.



"Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's 'Gestapo' office -- had established what amounted to a separate government," the Post writes.



"The vice president, for his part, believed Powell was mainly concerned with his own popularity and told friends at a dinner he hosted a year ago celebrating the outcome of the war that Powell was a problem and 'always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."'

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I suspected as much.



The General would be the best choice in the 2004 election; Bar None.



Sadly, there are still far too many racists out there that would kill him during the campaign. I live around many of them that would love to see it if he ran and it occured. His wife knows it, and that's why he won't run...for her.

[NRKofOver]

Isn't it fitting that the one person with the greatest reluctance to engage in war was a soldier?

My music for the disenchanted masses

[Seismic Anamoly]

When you have actually seen a buddy "vaporize" right in front of you, or the body parts after the fact, it drastically changes your perspective on things.

[MIKE BURN]

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DreamTone7



Mike, instead of "Generally Crazy Guy", it should read "The instigator".

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HAHA I think my English is too bad to make arguments here



So I do it the way I feel safer



The musical way that is:



"Forward to Victory!" by PANZER DIVISION



Hi-Fi



Lo-Fi

[droolymutt]

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Bush secretly made Iraq war plan

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Nah.





I don't think Bush has the intelligence to do that.







I think he's simply a narrow-minded, self-centered, arrogant little red-necked Cowboy in Texas who thinks he has the right to tell the rest of the World what to do........





It's a shame that such an insane, babbling, idiot war-mongerer is President of such a powerful Nation.......







Hopefully, that will change soon.....

[Rev9Volts]

just because bob woodward wrote it does not mean it is true. why would bush tell woodward all this stuf that makes himself look bad. the last book or big book woodward wrote was by interviewing a dead man just before he died late head of cia about iran contra stuff- reagan and ollie north.

[HKRockChick]

just cause bush said there were wmds in iraq does not mean its true, but everyone fell for it...







Hi Rev!