Bush Shrugs Off Story of Dispute With Powell : Gulf war: Woodward book says the chairman of the Joint Chiefs favored sanctions over military action.

President Bush shrugged off allegations Thursday that Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had counseled against military action in the early days of the Persian Gulf crisis.

Bush, responding to excerpts from a new book by Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, said that Powell has the “integrity and the honor” to offer candid advice and the “discipline” to “salute and march” when the President makes a decision.

Nevertheless, Bush appeared to confirm Woodward’s assertion that Powell initially had opposed the idea of using military force against Iraq and had recommended an extended use of sanctions to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.

According to the book, “The Commanders,” Powell urged as late as October that a policy of “containment or strangulation” eventually would force Iraq to quit Kuwait, even though it might take as long as two years.

Bush said Thursday that he appreciated the “frank” advice he received from Powell and others who counseled patience, although he chose to reject it. The bottom line, Bush told reporters at a White House photo session, is that the war was “a superb military operation. . . . It went very, very well.”

Insiders in Washington, Bush added, “feed endlessly--like piranha fish--on this kind of information,” but in the end, such accounts are merely “little kind of nit-picking analyses after the fact.”

Woodward’s book is due in bookstores today, but the Post ran an extensive article about it Thursday. After the excerpts appeared, Bush said, he called Powell and told him: “ ‘If you have any angst (about the story), forget about it.’ He said, ‘I don’t.’ ”

Powell is “a generous and superb commander and a great chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and nobody’s gonna drive a wedge between him and me,” Bush added.

Woodward’s book, Bush said, “has some things in it that are true, I’m sure, but I guess the only things that I’ve seen in it called to my attention are those that aren’t. So I, in fairness, ought to read it--which I don’t plan to do right away because I’m very busy in my line of work.”

Powell has not read the book and had no comment on it, according to a spokesman.

An aide to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said that Cheney is familiar with the book and believes that some of Woodward’s reconstructed dialogue is inaccurate and that his interpretation of some events is askew. But Cheney has no serious quarrel with it, the aide said.

Bob Hall, the Pentagon’s deputy spokesman, said at a briefing Thursday: “I’m looking forward to seeing it, as I will all the other books that come out on this subject. I don’t have any particular concern about it, though. . . . There’s going to be a lot of books written about this, and I just don’t think we’re going to be able to comment on all those things.”

Powell’s early reluctance to use force was shared by many within the military and Congress, right up to the eve of the war. In fact, it appeared clear during the months of military buildup preceding the war that Bush was the Administration’s leading hawk.

Among the book’s other assertions:

- Two days before Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Pentagon’s senior intelligence analyst for the Middle East explicitly and urgently warned that Hussein intended to seize the emirate. Powell urged Defense Secretary Cheney to “sound the alarm at the White House” to get Bush to issue a public or private warning to Hussein. But the White House either did not receive the intelligence assessment or failed to act upon it, the book says.

- The day after the invasion, Cheney, frustrated with Powell’s reluctance to provide military options for the President, went directly to the Navy and Air Force for briefings on possible air strikes against Iraq.

- The initial plan of Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the theater commander, drawn up quickly and reflecting the limited force he had available, was to drive right into the heart of Iraq’s extensive fortifications along the Kuwaiti-Saudi border. The idea of a frontal assault was “shredded” in a briefing given by a member of Schwarzkopf’s staff to Cheney, Powell and the Joint Chiefs. The next day, Bush agreed that Schwarzkopf needed considerably more troops--the force in Saudi Arabia ultimately was more than doubled--and several months’ more time to prepare for the massive flanking maneuver that was ultimately adopted.