WASHINGTON, April 20: President George W. Bush secretly approved diverting $700 million allocated for Afghanistan to fund the preparations for invading Iraq. This is one of the three major issues revealed in Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack".
Mr Woodward, who helped expose the Watergate scandal that forced president Richard Nixon's resignation, says that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney came to office preoccupied with Iraq. The other two revelations that have become part of the political debate are:
__ Five days after 9/11, Mr Bush told National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that although he had "to do Afghanistan" first, he was determined to do something about Saddam Hussein later. - Mr Bush, Vice President Cheney and CIA Director George Tenet discussed how to present intelligence about weapons of mass destructions in a way that would persuade Congress and the American people to support the invasion of Iraq.
Despite the administration's denial, the three issues continued to be debated in the media and are discussed by lawmakers, both from the ruling Republican and the opposition Democratic parties.
The accusations are also supported by two former officials of the Bush administration. Both former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke say the administration was so obsessed with Iraq that it even ignored immediate threats posed by Al Qaeda.
Giving details of President Bush's effort to divert money from the Afghan fund, the books claims that soon after 9/11, Mr Bush secretly approved diverting 700 million dollars, allocated by Congress for operations in Afghanistan, to build pipelines and runways in Kuwait in preparation for an invasion of Iraq.
Mr Woodward has also accused Mr Bush of failing to seek congressional approval for this diversion - an act that may violate a section of the US constitution that bars the executive branch from unilaterally shifting funds away from any project explicitly appropriated by Congress.
Pentagon officials on Monday took issue with the size and intent of the funding transfer described in the book, but did not deny the diversion. The book raises another controversy by claiming that while Mr Bush was secretly making war plans, he asked one of his generals to mislead the public.
It says that by Nov 2001, the president personally ordered Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to draw up secret plans to invade Iraq and told Gen Tommy Franks, former commander of the Central Command, to publicly deny making war plans.
