:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 4.17.2004 ::

:: RE Dubya & Iraq ::

Bush Ordered Iraq Plans in November 2001, Book Says
From Bloomberg.com

April 17 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush ordered an Iraq war plan in November 2001, two months after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and while the U.S. military was still trying to oust the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan, according to excerpts of a new book.

``Let's get started on this,'' Bush recalled telling Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Nov. 21, 2001, according to ``Plan of Attack,'' by Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward. ``And get Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to.'' Army General Franks, now retired, led the U.S. Central Command from June 2000 to August 2003.

The excerpts, published in an early version of the Post's Sunday edition, support testimony by former White House counter- terrorism adviser Richard Clarke that the Bush administration was focused on Iraq instead of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was fired by Bush, accused the president this year of planning to oust Hussein within weeks of taking office in January 2001. O'Neill made the claim in ``The Price of Loyalty,'' a book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Ron Suskind.

``What it amounts to is what the intelligence people would call multiple-source confirmation that the Bush presidency arrived in office with an agenda,'' said Leon Fuerth, national security adviser to former Vice President Al Gore. ``They used Sept. 11 as a way to realize that agenda.''

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:35:00 AM [+] ::
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