Bush's Secret War Plans

[b1jercat 0]

Looks like Iraq was the target right from the get go.


Bush Secretly Ordered Iraq War Plan, Book Says
War Plan on Iraq Drawn Up Soon After U.S. Forces Entered Afghanistan
By CALVIN WOODWARD and SIOBHAN McDONOUGH, AP



AP
President Bush announces attacks on Taliban regime in Afghanistan in October, 2001. A month later he reportedly asked Donald Rumsfeld for a plan for Iraq.

WASHINGTON (April 16) - 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."


"I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential war plan for Iraq."
-President Bush, as quoted in "Plan of Attack"

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 Dick 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 When Rumsfeld said it was outdated, Bush told him to get started on a fresh one.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 an 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


More proof that there ain't no oil in Aafghanistan.
And people want four more years of this bozo, give me a break!

blues

jerry

[freeflydrew 0]

old news, dude...

[storm1977 0]

Hahahahaha .....

Did you notice it said "say new book"

That is a disclaimer.... This is called spin!!! Its intent is to sell books not nessisarily tell the truth.

I could write a book that isn't true too and the quote "anonomous" sources and call it fact. Doesn't mean it is fact. Just ask Clarke.

Chris

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[Gravitymaster 0]

We also have "secret plans" to invade Mexico, Germany, France, Sweden, Pakistan, Tahiti, Australia etc...It's called being prepared. Considering the Clinton Admin. policy of appeasement and political correctness, and Saddams refusal to comply with the U.N. Resolutions, is it any surprise he wanted the plans updated?

Is it any surprise Woodward is trying to hype up his new book?

[PhillyKev 0]

Rice said in her testimony at the 9/11 commission that Bush, Cheyney and Rumsfeld immediately started talking about going into Iraq but every single one of his advisors was against it.

I think she was trying to prove that they didn't concentrate on Iraq because everyone else was against it. But considering the Wolfowitz Cabal has had a long standing plan for the invasion of Iraq, and that's the course of action those three wanted to pursue from the get go, it's pretty obvious that they had every intention of going into Iraq, no matter what.

[billvon 3,120]

>I could write a book that isn't true too and the quote "anonomous"
>sources and call it fact. Doesn't mean it is fact. Just ask Clarke.

Or you could write a book and list real sources, and write about your experiences planning for the invasion of Iraq, as Ken Pollack did. His book, "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq," details the plans to topple Hussein going back as far as the first Bush administration. Recommended reading.

[PhillyKev 0]

Excerpt from letter sent to Clinton in 1998.

Quote

The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts.

Signed by:

Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett

Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky

Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad

William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman

Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber

Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick


No...the administration wasn't concentrating on Iraq, right? The administation was concentrating on Iraq BEFORE it became the administration.

[Gawain 0]

Old news and if Bush asked for plans for Mexico, Rumsfeld would literally "pull a file" blow the dust off it and hand it to military advisors to "tweak" it. The same could be said for France. The US has likely had extremely well up-to-date plans for Iraq since the late 80s.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[newsstand 0]

But since Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11 why dust them off so quickly? It was months later before we turned it into a WMD thing.

"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

[Gawain 0]

Quote

But since Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11 why dust them off so quickly? It was months later before we turned it into a WMD thing.

No offense, but Iraq had been (and still is) a festering boil since the '91 war ended - both in the region, and in the UN. The issue didn't go away and suddenly re-appear. There was no dust on those plans.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[pajarito 0]

Drug traficking through Columbia has nothing to do with terrorist attacks in general, terrorist organizational funding, or 9-11 indirectly either, does it? I say that very sarcastically. You think ol'e Saddam was too much of an upstanding individual to have been involved in some of that kind of stuff. Saying "nothing to do with" is a weak stance.

[billvon 3,120]

>You think ol'e Saddam was too much of an upstanding individual to
> have been involved in some of that kind of stuff. Saying "nothing to
> do with" is a weak stance.

Odd you should say that. You do realize that Afghanistan is now the world's #1 supplier of heroin, right? Heck, half their GNP last year was in opium. And we're still in charge in Afghanistan. So we seem to have far more to do with drug trafficking than Saddam did.

[pajarito 0]

That was a way of life for those poor peasant farmers long before we ever got there.

[PhillyKev 0]

Quote

That was a way of life for those poor peasant farmers long before we ever got there.

Right, and then we destroyed their poppy fields and promised to help them become propsperous farming something else. And then like a kid with AAD, we saw something shiny in Iraq and ran off and forgot all about our promise.

[billvon 3,120]

>That was a way of life for those poor peasant farmers long before we ever got there.

And now it is again. An area we administer generates most of the heroin in the world, much of which goes to supporting terrorism. Perhaps Bin Laden will start encouraging US takeovers of nearby countries; would help his money problems.

[pajarito 0]

Quote

And now it is again.

What the f#$k are you talking about? It never stopped. We can't control everything in the country although we’ve interdicted some of the drug trafficking. We're trying to establish a functional central government that can "administer" things for the long term. You know, so they can build their economy in a democracy and pull their people out of the 15th century and educate them so they can live a better life and not be a threat to us…

[newsstand 0]

I reacall reading that the Taliban were in fact squashing the opium trade. Not that I support their return to power but I think Afghanistan was dropping lower and lower on the producer list.

"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

[newsstand 0]

The Bush adminstration did everything it could to foster the belief that Saddam was directly involved with 9/11 to the point that something like 70% of the American public believed it until W was finally asked point blank and had to say no they were not directly involved. But they used this belief to rally support for invasion of a "festering boil" that was of no direct threat to us.

The WMD logic says we should be invading North Korea and the direct support of terrorism logic says we should be invading Saudi Arabia.

"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

[bodypilot90 0]

Quote

What the f#$k are you talking about? It never stopped. We can't control everything in the country although we’ve interdicted some of the drug trafficking. We're trying to establish a functional central government that can "administer" things for the long term.

if we did the left would complain that we are taking away their only form of income

[billvon 3,120]

>What the f#$k are you talking about? It never stopped.

It slowed down drastically under Taliban rule.

>You know, so they can build their economy in a democracy and pull
> their people out of the 15th century and educate them so they can
> live a better life . . .

That's great. And heck, heroin is certainly a cash crop. I'm sure it will pay for a lot of schools. Just remember that next time you hear someone criticize the drug trade. They're not funding terror or helping organized crime, they're bettering themselves!

>and not be a threat to us…

The more money they have the less of a threat they are? Didn't work so well with the Mujahideen, even though we funded them enough to overthrow their "oppressors" (the USSR) and set up a government of their choosing (the Taliban.)

[Jimbo 0]

Quote

And then like a kid with AAD, we saw something shiny in Iraq and ran off and forgot all about our promise.

Our Cypress, Astras, and FXCs led us to Iraq?

Someone needs to get out to the DZ.

-
Jim

"Like" - The modern day comma
Good bye, my friends. You are missed.

[kelpdiver 2]

Quote

I reacall reading that the Taliban were in fact squashing the opium trade. Not that I support their return to power but I think Afghanistan was dropping lower and lower on the producer list.

yes, I believe they stopped it for moral reasons, and as we know, they didn't punish lightly. Either after, or just before our hostilities, they reversed that stance in order to generate cash. (How long does it take from planting to drug production?)

As for the initial posting about the secret plans to return to Iraq- I don't think they were very secret. I recall reading around the beginning of 2002 that serious planning was underway to be carried out within the year. Woodward seems to be selling his newest book again.

[newsstand 0]

Quote

You know, so they can build their economy in a democracy and pull their people out of the 15th century and educate them so they can live a better life and not be a threat to us…

Tongue in cheek right? Not much of a threat if they are living in the 15th century. And if they have been happy living that way why do we need to impose democracy and everything else about modern civilization?

"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes