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Fri 16 Apr, 2004 04:24 pm
Woodward book: Bush hid Iraq war plan
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 3:35 p.m. ET April 16, 2004
WASHINGTON - 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."
According to a report Friday by the Washington Post, Woodward also claims that:
Starting in late December 2001, Bush met repeatedly with Army Gen. Tommy Franks and his war cabinet to plan the U.S. attack on Iraq even as he insisted he was pursuing a diplomatic solution.
CIA Director George Tenet assured the president that it was a "slam dunk" case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Some of Vice President Dick Cheney's colleagues felt he had a "fever" about removing Saddam Hussein by force.
Secretary of State Colin Powell felt Cheney and his allies ?- among them the undersecretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith, and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo" office ?- had established what amounted to a separate government.
Asked about the book Friday, the president said the subject of Iraq came up four days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when he met his national security team at Camp David to discuss a response to the assault.
"I said let us focus on Afghanistan," he said, taking questions after a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Asked if he had told Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Nov. 21, 2001, to draft an Iraq war plan, the president stated: "I can't remember exact dates that far back."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, asked the same question later Friday, confirmed the Nov. 21 discussion. "But there is a difference between planning and making a decision," McClellan said.
Rumsfeld's marching orders
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 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 Cheney, were focused on Saddam 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 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 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.
'International angst' feared
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 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.
Vice president's influence
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 an protracted decision March 19, 2003, to strike Iraq before a 48-hour ultimatum for Saddam 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 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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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
He was very shifty and evasive answering a question on this today at the press conference; I heard it on the radio. He "couldn't remember".
Followed by an answer that was essentially, "oh, that meeting..."
Or the "what was your largest mistake?" question.
His answer for that was classic.
A Criminal act?
"...The end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. ...Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this." Bob Woodward
*Isn't that a crime?
Journalist Shares War Secrets
Journalist Shares War Secrets
April 16, 2004
CBS News
Legendary journalist Bob Woodward discusses his new book, which reveals secret details of the White House's plans to attack Iraq, for the first time on television in an interview with correspondent Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, Sunday, April 18, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Woodward interviewed 75 of the people who helped prepare for the war, including President Bush - the only source who speaks for attribution -- in the upcoming book, "Plan of Attack," published by Simon & Schuster. Both CBSNews.com and Simon & Schuster are units of Viacom.
In the interview, Woodward talked about how the administration was able to finance secret preparations for the Iraq war.
"President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq?' What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret," says Woodward.
"... The end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. ... Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."
In a preview of Sunday's piece, Wallace described a conversation between Mr. Bush and CIA director George Tenet in which Tenet assured Mr. Bush that finding weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk."
Woodward writes of a White House meeting on Dec. 21, 2002, attended by CIA Director George Tenet and his top deputy John McLaughlin, who briefed the president and the vice president assuring them that Saddam Hussein definitely possessed weapons of mass destruction.
"McLaughlin has access to all the satellite photos, and he goes in and he has flip charts in the Oval Office," Woodward tells Wallace. "The president listens to all of this and McLaughlin's done. And and the president kind of, as he's inclined to do, says, 'Nice try,' but that isn't going to sell Joe Public. That isn't going to convince Joe Public."
Woodward writes in his book, "The presentation was a flop. The photos were not gripping. The intercepts were less than compelling. And then George Bush turns to George Tenet and says, 'this is the best we've got?'"
Says Woodward: "George Tenet's sitting on the couch, stands up, and says, 'Don't worry, it's a slam dunk case." And the president challenges him again and Tenet says, 'the case it's a slam dunk.'"
And that reassured the president?
"I asked the president about this and he said it was very important to have the CIA director, 'slam-dunk' is as I interpreted it, a sure thing, guaranteed."
Wallace tells Woodward this is an extraordinary statement to come from Tenet.
"It's a mistake," says Woodward. "Now the significance of that mistake, that was the key rationale for war."
Woodward will answer the following questions, among others, in the interview with Wallace Sunday night:
How early did President Bush begin planning the war on Iraq?
In the war's wake, which top administration officials now barely speak to each other?
What did the CIA say to President Bush to convince him that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
Which foreign dignitary was told of the plans to attack Iraq days before even key cabinet members were briefed?
Which key advisers did President Bush ask - and not ask - about whether he should go to war with Iraq?
Why did the CIA think Saddam had been killed before the ground war even began?
Blair refused offer of get-out clause on Iraq
Blair refused offer of get-out clause on Iraq
Revelations about run-up to war blight bid to present united front
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday April 17, 2004
The Guardian UK
Tony Blair rejected George Bush's offer of keeping British troops out of Iraq, it emerged yesterday, as the two leaders mounted a united front on the year-long campaign.
The US president welcomed his closest ally to the White House on a day when an impressively sourced book by the Watergate journalist Bob Woodward laid bare damaging revelations of their conduct in the run-up to the war.
In the book, Plan of Attack, Mr Woodward writes that Mr Bush offered Mr Blair the option of keeping British troops out of the war because he was so concerned that the government might fall. Mr Blair rejected the offer.
The book, to be serialised in the Washington Post today, also says that Mr Bush asked the Pentagon to draw up plans for the invasion of Iraq as early as November 2001, keeping it a secret from the CIA and his national security staff.
The disclosures are provocative. Mr Blair will be asked to justify a decision to go to war when he had a chance to keep British troops out of harm's way with no political sanction.
For Mr Bush, who has suffered a steady erosion in his approval ratings, it becomes even more urgent to turn the page on Iraq before it begins to hurt him in the elections in November. An opinion poll released yesterday by the National Annenberg Election Survey found that 56% of Americans now believe the president has no clear plan for resolving the situation in Iraq.
The poll results came as the Arabic television station Al Jazeera last night broadcast a tape that appeared to show a US soldier being held by gunmen after being captured in an attack on a convoy last week. The man identified himself as Keith Matthew Maupin and is the first US soldier held hostage in recent kidnappings
Both leaders yesterday gave no sign of wavering, emphasising their commitment to the June 30 deadline for a transfer of power to Iraqis. Mr Bush also said the US would not bolt from the conflict.
The united front extended to the Middle East conflict, where Mr Blair defied domestic critics to reaffirm his support for Washington's seismic policy shift on Jewish settlements, revealed by Mr Bush during a visit by the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, on Wednesday.
There also appeared to be a new convergence between the Bush administration and the UN on the new dispensation for Iraq. Mr Bush signalled that Washington was eager for a greater UN role, saying he welcomed the proposals on a transitional authority presented by Lakhdar Brahimi, special adviser on Iraq to the secretary general, Kofi Annan.
But the main preoccupation of both men yesterday appeared to be to convince their own people, as well as to the Arab world, to look towards the potential of a better future, rather than dwell on the recent violence.
"You just imagine an Iraq, stable and prosperous and democratic," Mr Blair said. "Iraq run by the Iraqis, the wealth of that country owned by the Iraqis, and a symbol of hope and democracy in the Middle East."
But to Mr Bush's evident annoyance, the past was inescapable yesterday. The Woodward book describes how on November 21 2001, halfway through the Afghan war, the president pulled his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, aside near the White House situation room to ask about his war strategy for Iraq. When Mr Rumsfeld indicated it was outdated, Mr Bush urged him to draft a new plan, but to keep it secret, keeping the CIA director, George Tenet, out of the loop. The national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was also not fully informed.
"I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential war plan for Iraq," the book quotes Mr Bush as saying in an interview two years later. "It was such a high-stakes moment and ... it would look like that I was anxious to go to war."
Asked about the episode at the summit yesterday, Mr Bush said he could not remember exact dates, but that on September 15 2001, "I sat down with my national security team to discuss the response, and the subject of Iraq came up. And I said as plainly as I possibly could: 'We'll focus on Afghanistan; that's where we will focus'."
Mr Blair can expect to face his questioners on his return today. A report on the book in yesterday's Washington Post said that by early January 2003 Mr Bush had made up his mind to take military action against Iraq, and only delayed it until March to give Mr Blair time to seek a second UN resolution because he [Bush] was "so concerned that the government of his closest ally ... might fall.
"Bush later gave Blair the option of withholding British troops from combat, which Blair rejected," the report said.
The claim is likely to be seized on by critics of the war as evidence that Mr Blair spurned a "get-out clause" which would have avoided British casualties without offending the Americans.
In addition, Mr Blair will be asked to reconcile Britain's official posture in early 2003 - that it would allow the UN weapons inspectors to perform their mission in Iraq - with the picture that emerges from Mr Woodward's book of a US leader set on war.
For Mr Blair, the criticism marks a departure from the past few days, when he has scrambled to defend his support for Washington's policy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yesterday he insisted the Gaza agreement did not rule out future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Instead, Mr Blair claimed that Mr Sharon's plan, which would consolidate Israeli control over the West Bank, presented an opportunity for the Palestinians.
Criminal act
Doesn't the $700 Million diversion violate the Anti-Deficiency Act, which forbids the government from spending funds for purposes for which they were not appropriated?
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