President Bush began secret planning for Iraq War in December 2001, Bob Woodward Reveals by James Stimson, Washington Post 2:17am 18th Apr, 2004   Prepared to risk all    April 18, 2004    The US Administration's momentum towards war in Iraq was a steamroller out of control, according to a new book by Bob Woodward. James Stimson, in Washington, reports.    Beginning in late December 2001, US President George Bush met repeatedly with Army General Tommy Franks and his war cabinet to plan the US attack on Iraq even as he and Administration spokesmen insisted they were pursuing a diplomatic solution, according to a new book on the origins of the war.    The intensive war planning throughout 2002 created its own momentum, according to Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward, fuelled in part by the CIA's conclusion that Saddam Hussein could not be removed from power except through a war and CIA director George Tenet's assurance to the President that it was a "slam dunk" case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.    In 3 hours of interviews with Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, Bush said the secret planning was necessary to avoid "enormous international angst and domestic speculation" and that "war is my absolute last option".    Adding to the momentum, Woodward writes, was the pressure from advocates of war inside the Administration.    Vice-President Dick Cheney - whom Woodward describes as a "powerful, steamrolling force" - led that group and had developed what some of his colleagues felt was a "fever" about removing Saddam by force.    By early January 2003, Bush had made up his mind to take military action against Iraq, according to the book. But Bush was so concerned that the government of his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, might fall because of his support for Bush that he delayed the war's start until March 20 (in Iraq).    Bush later gave Blair the option of withholding British troops from combat, which Blair rejected. "I said I'm with you. I mean it," Blair replied.    Woodward describes a relationship between Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell that became so strained that Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms. Cheney engaged in a bitter struggle over Iraq with Powell, an opponent of war who believed Cheney was obsessively trying to establish a connection between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network and treated ambiguous intelligence as fact.    Powell felt Cheney and his allies - his chief aide, Lewis Libby, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo" office - had established what amounted to a separate government. 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".    According to Woodward's book, on November 21, 2001, 72 days after the attacks on New York and Washington, Bush directed Rumsfeld to begin planning for war with Iraq. "Let's get started on this," Bush recalled saying. "And get Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to." He also asked: Could this be done on a basis that would not be terribly noticeable?    Bush received his first detailed briefing on Iraq war plans five weeks later on December 28, when Franks, the head of the US Central Command, visited Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.    While it has been previously reported that Bush directed the Pentagon to begin considering options for an invasion of Iraq immediately after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Centre, Bush's order to Rumsfeld began an intensive process in which Franks worked in secret with a small staff, talked almost daily with the Defence Secretary and met about once a month with Bush.    In two interviews with Woodward in December, Bush minimised the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction, expressed no doubts about his decision to invade Iraq, and enunciated an activist role for the US based on its being "the beacon for freedom in the world".    "I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told Woodward. "I would hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we have a duty."    The President described praying as he walked outside the Oval Office after giving the order to begin combat operations against Iraq, and the powerful role his religious belief played throughout that time. "Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will . . . I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for personal strength and for forgiveness." The President told Woodward that "I am prepared to risk my presidency to do what I think is right. I was going to act. And if it could cost the presidency, I fully realised that. But I felt so strongly that it was the right thing to do that I was prepared to do so."    The President told Woodward he was co-operating on his book because he wanted the story of how the United States had gone to war in Iraq to be told. He said it would be a blueprint of historical significance 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 judgement," Bush added, "the big news out of this isn't how George W. makes decisions. 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."    Bush's critics have questioned whether he and his Administration were focused on Iraq rather than terrorism when they took office early in 2001.    According to Plan of Attack, it was Cheney who was particularly focused on Iraq before the terrorist attacks. Before Bush's inauguration, Cheney sent word to departing defence secretary William Cohen that he wanted the traditional briefing given an incoming president to be a serious "discussion about Iraq and different options". Bush specifically assigned Cheney to focus on intelligence scenarios, particularly the possibility that terrorists would obtain nuclear or biological weapons. Early discussions among the Administration's national security "principals" - Cheney, Powell, Tenet and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice - and their deputies focused on how to weaken Saddam diplomatically. But Deputy Defence Secretary Wolfowitz proposed sending in the military to seize Iraq's southern oil fields and establish the area as a foothold from which opposition groups could overthrow Saddam.    Powell dismissed the plan as "lunacy", according to Woodward, and told Bush what he thought. "You don't have to be bullied into this," Powell said.    Bush told Woodward he never saw a formal plan for a quick strike. "The idea may have floated around as an interesting nugget to chew on," he said.    White House chief of staff Andrew Card, according to Woodward, compared Bush to a circus rider with one foot on a "diplomacy" steed and the other on a "war" steed, both heading towards the same destination - regime change in Iraq. When it was clear that diplomacy would not get him to his goal, Card said, Bush let go of that horse and rode the one called war.    As the planning proceeded, the Administration began taking steps that Woodward describes as helping to make war inevitable. On February 16, 2002, Bush signed an intelligence finding that directed the CIA to help the military overthrow Saddam and conduct operations within Iraq. At the time, according to Plan of Attack, the CIA had only four informants in Iraq and told Bush that it would be impossible to overthrow Saddam through a coup.    In July, a CIA team entered northern Iraq and began to lay the groundwork for covert action, eventually recruiting an extensive network of 87 Iraqi informants codenamed Rockstars.    According to Plan of Attack, Bush asked Rice and his long-time communications adviser, Karen Hughes, whether he should attack Iraq, but he did not specifically ask Powell or Rumsfeld. "I could tell what they thought," the President said. "I didn't need to ask their opinion about Saddam Hussein or how to deal with Saddam Hussein. If you were sitting where I sit, you could be pretty clear."    Bush told Powell of his decision in a brief meeting in the White House.    Evidently concerned about Powell's reaction, he said, "Are you with me on this? I think I have to do this. I want you with me."    "I'll do the best I can," Powell answered. "Yes, sir, I will support you. I'm with you, Mr President."    Bush said he did not remember asking the question of his father, former president George H. W. Bush, who fought Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War.    But, he added that the two had discussed developments in Iraq."You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. "There is a higher father that I appeal to," Bush said.    Describing what the 41st president said to him about Iraq, the 43rd president told Woodward:    "It was less, 'Here's how you have to take care of the guy (Saddam)', and more, 'I've been through what you've been through and I know what's happening and therefore I love you' would be a more accurate way to describe it."    - Washington Post
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