NYT (AP) has some tidbits from Woodward's book --

[DeepModem Mom]

Book: Bush Secretly Ordered Iraq War Plan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 16, 2004

Filed at 5:19 a.m. ET


WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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....

***

The book says Gen. Tommy Franks, who was in charge of the Afghan war as head of Central Command, uttered a string of obscenities when the Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of fighting another conflict.

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....

***

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....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,'' Cheney is quoted as saying. Bush did....


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Woodward-Book.html

[GCP]

1. It's a pity Woodwrad didn't dig harder the last time

when he wrote his puffery "Bush At War". This was all going on contemporaneously.

[bryant69]

2. Well to be fair

He was trying to preserve his access to the white house; the Bush Administrations are dopes who would take retribution.

And he did get that doozy about how President Bush doesn't feel like he owes anybody an explanation.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Sliverofhope]

3. kick

He'll be on 60 Minutes. This is the nice new bombshell, at least until Sibel Edmonds and Joseph Wilson chime in.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. It sounds like a theme of the book is Cheney's power --

as well as the determination to go to war with Iraq.