Book: Bush hatched Iraq plan during Afghan war

US President George W. 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 furor he did not tell everyone on his national security team, according to a new book on his Iraq policy.

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.

Bush did not address those preparations when asked about them Friday, saying, "I do know that it was Afghanistan that was on my mind and I didn't really start focusing on Iraq till later on."

White House Spokesman Scott McClellan confirmed that Bush talked to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about Iraq war preparations during the Afghan campaign but said that did not mean the president was set on a course for invading Iraq at that time.

"There's a difference between planning and making a decision," he said.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book, which will be released in the US this 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 said.

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 that 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 former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from the onset of Bush's presidency and even after the terrorist attacks made the destruction of al-Qaeda the top priority.

Woodward says Bush pulled Rumsfeld aside Nov. 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 for Iraq. When Rumsfeld said the military's plan was outdated, Bush told him to get started on a fresh one.

Bush said Friday that the subject of Iraq came up four days after the terrorist attacks when he met his national security team at Camp David to discuss a response to the assault.

"I said let us focus on Afghanistan," he said, taking questions after a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Asked about the Nov. 21 meeting with Rumsfeld in an office adjacent to the Situation Room, Bush said only, "I can't remember exact dates that far back."

The book says Bush told Rumsfeld to keep quiet about planning for war in Iraq 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 that 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 longtime 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, Osama bin Laden, remains at large.