President George W. Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan in 2001 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 U.S. forces were fighting another conflict, people would think he was too eager for war, 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 until later on."

Woodward says Bush pulled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld aside Nov. 21, 2001 - when U.S. forces and allies were in control of about half of Afghanistan - and asked him what kind of war plan he had on Iraq. When Rumsfeld said it was outdated, Bush told him to get started on a fresh one.

Bush said Friday 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 Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

Asked about the Nov. 21 meeting with Rumsfeld in a cubbyhole 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 their planning and when the defense secretary asked to bring the CIA director, George Tenet, into it 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 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."

In the interview, Woodward talked about how the administration was able to finance secret preparations for the Iraq war.

"President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq?' What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret," says Woodward.

"...The end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. ...Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."

Woodward describes a relationship between Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell -- never close despite years of working together -- that became so strained that Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms. Cheney engaged in a bitter and eventually winning struggle over Iraq with Powell, an opponent of war who believed Cheney was obsessed with trying to establish a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and treated ambiguous intelligence as fact.

Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo" office -- had established what amounted to a separate government. The vice president, for his part, believed Powell was mainly concerned with his own popularity and told friends at a private dinner he hosted a year ago to celebrate the outcome of the war that Powell was a problem and "always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."

Before the war with Iraq, Powell bluntly told Bush that if he sent U.S. troops there "you're going to be owning this place." Powell and his deputy and closest friend, Richard L. Armitage, used to refer to what they called "the Pottery Barn rule" on Iraq -- "you break it, you own it," according to Woodward.

But, when asked personally by the president, Powell agreed to present the U.S. case against Hussein at the United Nations in February, 2003 -- a presentation described by White House communications director Dan Bartlett as "the Powell buy-in."

The president described praying as he walked outside the Oval Office after giving the order to begin combat operations against Iraq on March, 19, 2003, and the powerful role his religious belief played throughout that time.

"Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for personal strength and for forgiveness."