AP: Book Alleges Secret Iraq War Plan
Friday April 16, 2004 2:01 PM
By CALVIN WOODWARD and SIOBHAN McDONOUGH
Associated Press Writers
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-Qaida terrorist threat
before the Sept. 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 ***** 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
Nov. 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 When Rumsfeld said it was outdated, Bush told him to get started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-Qaida, 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.
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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