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Woodward book says bush doubted iraq case { April 17 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/19015.htmhttp://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/19015.htm
BUSH DOUBTED WMD REPORTS
By BRIAN BLOMQUIST
April 17, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - CIA director George Tenet confidently assured a skeptical President Bush before the Iraq war that it was a "slam-dunk case" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to a bombshell new book by Bob Woodward.
Tenet provided his ironclad guarantee to the president after an aide led a Dec. 21, 2002, intelligence presentation at the White House featuring communication intercepts, satellite photos and diagrams.
Bush responded after the session: "Nice try. I don't think this quite - it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from," Woodward writes in his new book, "Plan of Attack."
The president then turned to Tenet and said, "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?"
"It's a slam-dunk case," Tenet replied, prompting Bush to press him again, "George, how confident are you?"
"Don't worry, it's a slam-dunk case," the nation's top spymaster repeated.
The United States has not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, although the search is continuing and some elements of biological- and chemical-weapons programs have been uncovered.
Among other dramatic revelations in Woodward's 468-page account:
* Bush ordered up a Pentagon war plan for Iraq just two months after invading Afghanistan.
* The march to war in Iraq divided Bush's team so deeply that pro-war Vice President Dick Cheney and anti-war Secretary of State Colin Powell are barely speaking to each other.
* When Bush ordered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to come up with a plan to go to war with Iraq - right in the middle of the ground war in Afghanistan - Army Gen. Tommy Franks was so upset, he unleashed a string of obscenities.
Woodward, a Washington Post reporter and editor who broke the Watergate story with Carl Bernstein in the 1970s, interviewed Bush for more than three hours and spoke to 75 high-level aides, most of whom refused to be named.
"Plan of Attack" will be released next week, but the Associated Press obtained a copy yesterday and published highlights, and the Washington Post also put its own account on its Web site.
The book says Bush pulled Rumsfeld aside on Nov. 21, 2001, when the United States and allies were in control of about half of Afghanistan, and asked the defense secretary what kind of war plan he had for Iraq.
When Rumsfeld told the president the Iraq plan was outdated, Bush directed him to get started on a new one.
Bush kept key aides out of the loop while Rumsfeld went to work.
The president didn't want Tenet to know what Rumsfeld was working on, and White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice knew only vaguely that Rumsfeld was doing some work on Iraq.
"I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential war plan for Iraq," Bush told 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."
The White House has repeatedly denied that Bush was focused on going to war with Iraq at the start of the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and yesterday Bush said he couldn't recall the details of his specific request to Rumsfeld.
"It was Afghanistan that was on my mind," Bush said at a White House press conference yesterday with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Woodward said Bush had even given Blair the option of withholding troops from combat just before going to war in Iraq because of concern Blair's government might collapse. But the British prime minister stuck with the president, confirming Bush's admiration of what he called Blair's "cojones."
But even as Bush was working the diplomacy end of Iraq through the United Nations in 2002, many members of his administration were busy planning for war behind the scenes - and a deep rift was opening at the White House.
Woodward writes that Cheney was a "powerful, steamrolling force" for war and that Powell, who referred to Cheney and his pro-war allies as the "Gestapo" office, was much more worried about the long-term mess that could develop.
Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, cited what they called their "Pottery Barn" rule about Iraq - "you break it, you own it."
Powell bluntly told Bush that if he sent U.S. troops to Iraq, "you're going to be owning this place," Woodward writes.
Cheney later told friends at a party that Powell was a problem, concerned mainly about his own popularity, and someone who "always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."
Powell believed Cheney and his allies were loose with intelligence and desperate to prove a Saddam link to al Qaeda. Powell nonetheless agreed to argue the case before the world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when asked personally to do so by the president.
Powell went along in a move White House communications chief Dan Bartlett later called the "Powell buy-in," suggesting that the mission helped bring Powell aboard the pro-war team.
Cheney emerged as the dominant figure and adviser again when Bush made his decision on 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 at one of their compounds, 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, Woodward reports. But Rumsfeld and Rice were for the early strike, and Powell leaned for it.
Bush cleared everyone out of the Oval Office except the vice president before making his decision.
"I think we ought to go for it," Cheney is quoted as saying, and Bush followed his advice.
Woodward reports that Tenet called the White House before dawn to report that Saddam was killed in the strike, but that report turned out to be wrong, with the missiles hitting the compound but missing the palace.
Saddam lived, although his sons were later killed and he was eventually captured hiding in a hole. Woodward generally describes Bush as quicker to prepare for war against Iraq than the White House has let on, but also more skeptical of the weapons claims than many have perceived him to be.
Bush told Woodward, after the invasion, that he stood by his decision to go to war in Iraq, regardless of what the weapons search turns up.
"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 realized that. But I felt so strongly that it was the right thing to do that I was prepared to do so."
Asked how history will judge the war, Bush said, "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."
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