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Saudis learned of Iraq war plan before Powell

* Bush authorised Cheney and Rumsfeld to show Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan secret war plan map

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Colin Powell learned about President George W Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq after Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States had already been informed, journalist Bob Woodward said on Sunday.

Woodward, author of a new book entitled, “Plan of Attack,” said in a CBS’ “60 Minutes” interview that Bush told national security leader Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were the first to know about his decision to go to war in January 2003. “He told Condi Rice. He told Rumsfeld. He knew Cheney wanted to do this. And they realised they haven’t told Colin Powell,” said Woodward, who described Powell as being opposed to the war.

But before Bush called Powell to the Oval Office, he gave Cheney and Rumsfeld permission to inform Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan about his decision for war. They even showed him a top-secret map of the war plan, Woodward said.

“They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar,” he told “60 Minutes” reporter Mike Wallace.

Bandar “says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, ‘So Saddam this time is going to be out, period?’ And Cheney, who has said nothing, says the following: ‘Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast’.” Bush later confirmed to Bandar what Rumsfeld and Cheney had said, telling the Saudi royal: “Their message is my message.”

Rice denied Powell learned about Bush’s decision for war after the Saudi ambassador, telling CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday the secretary of state was called to the White House to learn Bush’s feeling that diplomacy was not working.

“I just can’t let this impression stand. The secretary of state was privy to all of the conversations with the president, all of the briefings for the president,” she said.

But Woodward, who first earned fame in the early 1970s by helping to break open the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation, presented details of the meeting between the president and his secretary of state.

“Powell says to him somewhat in a chilly way, ‘Are you aware of the consequences?’ because he’d been pounding for months on the president, on everyone — and Powell directly says, ‘You know you’re going to be owning this place.’

And the president says, ‘I understand that’.” In the end, Powell agreed to support the president’s decision for war. “And then the president says, ‘time to put your war uniform on’,” Woodward related.

His book, which follows embarrassing insider accounts of the Bush White House by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, was based on interviews with 75 people, including Bush. Like O’Neill and Clarke, Woodward says in his book that Bush showed an early interest in taking the United States to war with Iraq — in this case, telling Rumsfeld in November 2001 to draw up a fresh war plan for Saddam Husseinn’s ouster. —Reuters

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