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New Book Says Bush Asked for Iraq War Plan in 2001
April 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:10 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush quietly ordered creation
of a war plan against Iraq in November 2001 while
overseeing a divided national security team, including a
vice president determined to link Saddam Hussein to
al-Qaida, says a new book.
Bob Woodward, in ``Plan of Attack,'' says Secretary of
State Colin Powell believed Vice President Dick Cheney
developed -- as Woodward puts it -- an ``unhealthy
fixation'' on trying to find a connection between Iraq and
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bush dismissed such
characterizations of Cheney.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book, which
will be available in bookstores next week and covers the 16
months leading to the March 2003 invasion.
Bush told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Nov. 21,
2001 -- less than two months after U.S. forces attacked
Afghanistan -- to prepare for possible war with Iraq, and
kept some members of his closest circle in the dark,
Woodward said.
In an interview with the author, Bush said he feared that
if news had gotten out about the Iraq plan as America was
fighting another conflict, that would cause ``enormous
international angst and domestic speculation.''
``I knew what would happen if people thought we were
developing a potential war plan for Iraq,'' Bush is quoted
as saying. ``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.''
Asked Friday about that Nov. 21, 2001, meeting with
Rumsfeld, the president said, ``I can't remember dates that
far back'' but emphasized ``it was Afghanistan that was on
my mind and I didn't really start focusing on Iraq 'til
later on.''
The White House later confirmed the discussion with
Rumsfeld but said it did not mean Bush was set on a course
of attacking Iraq at that point.
Bush and his aides have denied they were preoccupied with
Iraq at the cost of paying attention to the al-Qaida
terrorist threat before the Sept. 11 attacks. A commission
investigating the attacks just concluded several weeks of
extraordinary public testimony, during which former
counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke contended the Bush
administration's determination to invade Iraq undermined
the war on terror.
Woodward's account indicates some members of the
administration, particularly Cheney, were focused on Saddam
from the outset of Bush's presidency and even after the
terrorist attacks made the destruction of al-Qaida the top
priority.
Without quoting them directly on the subject, Woodward
portrays Cheney and Powell as barely on speaking terms --
the vice president being the chief advocate for a war that
the secretary of state was not sure needed to be fought.
He recounts the vice president and a defense official
making remarks to others about Powell bragging about his
popularity, and Powell saying Cheney was preoccupied with
an Iraq-al-Qaida link.
``Powell thought Cheney had the fever,'' Woodward writes.
``He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. ... Cheney now had
an unhealthy fixation.''
On the war's origins, the book describes Bush pulling
Rumsfeld into a cubbyhole office adjacent to the Situation
Room for that November 2001 meeting and asking him what
shape the Iraq war plan was in. When Rumsfeld said it was
outdated, Bush ordered a fresh one.
The book says Bush told Rumsfeld to keep quiet about their
planning and when the defense secretary asked to bring CIA
Director George Tenet into it 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.
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 the scope and
intensity of the war plan grew even as administration
officials were saying publicly that they were pursuing a
diplomatic solution.
The book describes a CIA briefing for Bush in December 2002
presenting evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Bush was not sure the public would find the information
compelling, Woodward said, but when he turned to Tenet, the
CIA chief assured him: ``It's a slam-dunk case.''
That case fell apart after U.S. forces occupied Iraq and
failed to find the stockpiles the administration said had
been there.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Woodward-Book.html?ex=1083167220&ei=1&en=c089174d6a39a3b2
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