Bush ‘kept Iraq war plan a secret’

PRESIDENT George Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two months after US forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furore he did not tell everyone on his national security team, says a new book.

Mr Bush feared that if news got out about the Iraq plan as US 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.

"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." Mr 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 September 11 attacks.

Mr 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.

Mr Woodward says Mr Bush pulled Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld aside on November 21, 2001 when US 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 When Rumsfeld said it was outdated, Mr Bush told him to get started on a fresh one.

Mr Bush told Woodward that if the news had leaked, it would have caused "enormous international angst and domestic speculation".