WASHINGTON — President Bush asked for a plan to invade Iraq in November 2001, less than three months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and at a time when U.S. forces were in the midst of ousting the Taliban regime from Afghanistan.
The timing of Bush's war planning, revealed in a book to be released Monday and confirmed Friday by the White House, is likely to fuel criticism that the Bush administration was preoccupied with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein at the expense of pursuing Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
"You're talking about the late period of November, when things were winding down in Afghanistan," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters, confirming that Bush spoke to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at that time "about planning related to Iraq."
"But there is a difference between planning and making a decision" to go to war, McClellan said.
The timing of Bush's planning to oust Hussein is one of several insights in the new book, "Plan of Attack," by journalist Bob Woodward.
In two other recent books, former administration insiders said they were surprised by the president's early focus on Iraq.
Bush's intense interest in Iraq became clear within days of his inauguration, said the president's former treasury secretary, Paul H. O'Neill. Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism official for Bush and previous presidents, wrote that the day after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush aggressively instructed him and other aides to "see if Saddam did this," despite evidence pointing to the Al Qaeda network.
In his book, Woodward describes Vice President Dick Cheney as a "powerful, steamrolling force" in the administration who some in the government believed had a "fever" for taking down Hussein.
The Iraqi leader had invaded Kuwait during the administration of Bush's father and was accused by the U.S. of later plotting to kill the former president, for whom Cheney served as defense secretary.
The book also says the current president was not satisfied with the early intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, according to Associated Press, which obtained an advance copy of the book. Bush and other administration officials later pointed to suspected illegal weapons caches as a justification for war.
The book states that after a CIA briefing on the intelligence, Bush said the data would leave the public unconvinced, according to Associated Press. But CIA Director George J. Tenet described the case against Iraq as a "slam dunk."
