T-Minus 3 Days to Woodward 60 Minutes Bombshell

President Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan

In three days Bob Wodward appears on 60 Minutes to detonate nuclear powered revelations about the Bush Administrations readiness in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The CBS web site reads:

"Woodward interviewed 75 of the people who helped prepare for the war, including President Bush � the only source who speaks for attribution -- in the upcoming book, �Plan of Attack,� published by Simon & Schuster. Both CBSNews.com and Simon & Schuster are units of Viacom."

Hmm. I guess Drudge really got to them. The web site goes on to say:

"In the interview, Woodward talked about how the administration was able to finance secret preparations for the Iraq war.

"'President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq?' What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret,' says Woodward.

"'...The end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. ...Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this.'"

According to CBS:

"Woodward will answer the following questions, among others, in the interview with Wallace Sunday night:

-How early did President Bush begin planning the war on Iraq?
-In the war�s wake, which top administration officials now barely speak to each other?
-What did the CIA say to President Bush to convince him that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
-Which foreign dignitary was told of the plans to attack Iraq days before even key cabinet members were briefed?
-Which key advisers did President Bush ask � and not ask � about whether he should go to war with Iraq?
-Why did the CIA think Saddam had been killed before the ground war even began?"

According to Foxnews, "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.'

"Bush and his aides have denied accusations they were preoccupied with Iraq at the cost of paying attention to the Al Qaeda 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 Qaeda the top priority."

The story continues on Foxnews:

"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 Qaeda, Usama 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 (ed note: italics mine-- R Mwangaguhunga) when the Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of fighting another conflict.

And the story continues, on Foxnews:

"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 a 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,' (ed note: italiscs mine -R. Mwangaguhunga) 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."

60 Minutes is on Sunday at 7 pm on CBS.