Bush Lied About Iraq Talk (breaking story from AP) [View All]

Bush told public that important Iraq meeting with war commander was about Afghanistan

full article at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/04/17/national1545EDT0582.DTL

PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004(04-17) 14:57 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

Following an important meeting on Iraq war planning in late 2001, President Bush told the public that the discussions were about Afghanistan. He made no mention afterward about Iraq even though that was the real focus of the session at his ranch.

"I'm right now focused on the military operations in Afghanistan," Bush told reporters after talks on Dec. 28, 2001, with top aides and generals.

A "war update" was the White House description of the news conference Bush held with Gen. Tommy Franks, who was in charge of the Afghan war as head of U.S. Central Command.

Details of the meeting's focus on Iraq have since emerged in a recent speech by Franks, who now is retired, and in a new book by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.

The book says Franks summarized Afghan operations before turning to planning for war in Iraq -- the point of the gathering.

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According to Woodward's book, Franks gave participants in that meeting the first briefing on Iraq war plans. He described options that could allow a war to start with as few as 105,000 U.S. troops, assuming full foreign cooperation with the force growing 230,000 over 60 to 90 days.

The books says Franks presented a list of assumptions that were behind the plan. They included that Iraq would be the main effort of the United States and would get priority on resources, and that the Afghan operation and the global fight against terrorism would provide a noise level under which Iraq operations could proceed. But these efforts would not diminish the Afghan or terrorism efforts.

In the Washington speech a month ago, Franks said he told the president at that Dec. 28 meeting that the existing contingency plan for Iraq had called for sending in a half-million troops, an operation so massive it would require a six-month buildup.

Franks said he told Bush that the long-standing plan needed to be redrawn and if the U.S. military did go in, "We should go all the way to Baghdad."

According to Franks' public account of the Dec. 28 meeting, Bush expressed the hope that "we don't ever have one boot on Iraqi soil except by invitation."

According to Woodward's book, Bush told Rumsfeld on Nov. 21, 2001 -- less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan -- to prepare for possible war with Iraq, and kept some members of his closest circle in the dark.

The meeting with Franks on Dec. 28 was apparently the first briefing from him that the president had received since those instructions.

The book says Franks 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.

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