NEW YORK, Sept 29: A new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author, says that the White House ignored an urgent warning in Sept 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to ‘quell the insurgency’.

The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war, according to the New York Times, which published excerpts from the book on Friday.

The warning is described in ‘State of Denial’, scheduled for release on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.

As late as Nov 2003, Mr Bush is quoted as saying about the situation in Iraq: “I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”

The book describes Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq — a task that was initially supposed to be under the directive of the Pentagon — and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls.

The American commander for the Middle East, Gen John Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar last year that ‘Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore’ to make a case for an American strategy in Iraq.

The book, bought by a reporter for The New York Times at retail price in advance of its official release, is the third that Mr Woodward has written chronicling the inner debates in the White House after the Sept 11 attacks, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the subsequent decision to invade Iraq.

According to Mr Woodward, Robert Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, issued his warning about the need for more troops in Iraq through a lengthy memorandum sent to Ms Rice. The book says Mr Blackwill’s memorandum concluded that more ground troops were desperately needed.