Bush writes in "Decision Points" that he balked because US intelligence could not say with high confidence that the site -- "a suspicious, well-hidden building in the eastern desert of Syria" -- housed a covert arms program.

The former president said Israel's then-prime minister Ehud Olmert pressed him by telephone to strike the facility in early 2007, saying: "George, I'm asking you to bomb the compound."

"Thank you for raising this matter," Bush quotes himself as replying. "Give me some time to look at the intelligence and I'll give you an answer."

Bush said he and his top aides mulled their options: A US Air Force strike "could destroy the target, no sweat. But bombing a sovereign country with no warning or announced justification would create severe blowback."

They also ruled out a covert raid because it was deemed "too risky to slip a team into and out of Syria with enough explosives to blow up the facility," settling on a plan to make their suspicions public and bring diplomatic pressure to bear on Damascus, bolstered by the threat of military action.

Bush then spoke to then-director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Hayden, who warned him analysts had "low confidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons program" at the site -- prompting a tense discussion with Olmert.

"I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it's a weapons program," the former president quotes himself as saying, pressing the Israeli leader for the more diplomatic route.

"I must be honest and sincere with you. Your strategy is very disturbing to me," Bush says Olmert told him, warning that Israel regarded the Syrian program as an "existential" problem that "hits the very serious nerves of this country."

Israel destroyed the site in a September 6, 2007 raid.

Olmert "hadn't asked for a green light, and I hadn't given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel," writes Bush, who says the strike had restored his confidence in Israel in the wake of the disastrous Lebanon war of 2005.

Bush's book spans some 500 pages and covers his eight years in the White House, a narrative laced with anecdotes and behind-the-scenes descriptions in which he mounts a defiant defense of some of his most criticized decisions.

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