Iraq war plan began 10 weeks after 9/11, book says

US: In a televised news conference on March 6th, 2003, two weeks before going to war with Iraq, President Bush said: "I've not made up our mind about military action."

However, Mr Bush had decided to go to war more than seven weeks earlier, according to reporter Bob Woodward in a book, Plan of Attack, based on interviews with senior US officials, including the president, and due to be published tomorrow.

On January 14th, 2003, Mr Bush called Secretary of State Colin Powell into the Oval Office and told him he had made up his mind on war.

"You're sure?" Mr Powell asked, according to Mr Woodward's reconstruction of the 12-minute meeting.

"Yes," said the president.

"You understand the consequences," asked Mr Powell.

"Yeah, I do," replied Mr Bush.

"You know that you're going to be owning this place," said Mr Powell, who for months had been making the "Pottery Barn" case against war on Iraq that "if you break it you own it", a reference to the store's regulations about breakages.

Mr Bush asked the secretary of state if he was with him on the war and Mr Powell replied: "I'll do the best I can. Yes sir, I will support you. I'm with you, Mr President."

Mr Powell has been known to air his frustrations and views before through Mr Woodward, who identifies only Mr Bush and Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld as speaking to him on the record.

The US secretary of state was evidently the source of some conversations between Mr Powell and Mr Bush that are quoted verbatim.

"You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," Mr Powell told Mr Bush in mid-2002 about war plans for Iraq. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems. You will own it all." Mr Powell was one of the last top officials to know about the decision to go to war, according to Woodward, nor was he asked by Mr Bush for his opinion.

Clearly anticipating criticism for not resigning and instead putting his international prestige behind a war he didn't believe in, Mr Powell's thoughts are summed up as follows: "No way on God's earth could he walk away at that point. It would have been an unthinkable act of disloyalty to the president, to Powell's own soldier's code, to the United States military, and mostly to the several hundred thousand who would be going to war."

Mr Powell has almost stopped speaking to Vice President Dick Cheney whom he regarded as the "powerful, steamrolling force" behind the war, according to an extract from Plan of Attack published in yesterday's Washington Post and other leaked accounts.

Mr Cheney, Mr Powell felt, had a "fever" about getting rid of Saddam Hussein and an "unhealthy fixation" with finding a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

Mr Cheney and his "Gestapo office" took intelligence "and converted uncertainty and ambiguity into fact". The book reveals that CIA director George Tenet also meekly complied with the decision to use force, though Mr Bush was not impressed with his presentation of evidence of weapons of mass destruction in December 2002. "Nice try', said the president . . . 'it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from. I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD - and this is the best we've got'?"

Mr Tenet assured the president that it was a "slam dunk". Two months later Mr Powell presented the evidence to the United Nations as proof of Iraq's WMD, which were never found.

The book reveals that Mr Bush directed Mr Rumsfeld to start secret planning for war against Iraq on November 21st, 2001, ten weeks after 9/11, and received his first detailed briefing from top military officials five weeks later at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Mr Bush told reporters afterward that they had discussed Afghanistan.

In the run up to war, Mr Bush was so concerned that the British government might fall that he gave Prime Minister Tony Blair the option of withholding British troops. According to Woodward, Mr Blair responded: "I said I'm with you. I mean it."