Hmm, wonder if Bush had gone after Saddam from the beginning if
we could have stopped 911?
David L.
A liberal is someone who feels a
great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon
Liddy
-----Original Message----- From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On
Behalf Of Charles Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 8:25
PM To: 'The Sandbox Discussion List' Subject: [Sndbox]
sounds like sour grapes to me.
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill is the main
source for an upcoming book about the Bush White House, "The Price
of Loyalty." (Photo: CBS)
"From the very
beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad
person and that he needed to go." Paul
O'Neill
O'Neill was fired by the White House a year ago
for his disagreement on the president's policy on tax cuts.
(Photo: CBS)
(CBS) The Bush Administration began making
plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops,
within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not
eight months later after the 9/11 attacks, as has been previously
reported.
That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill
says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider.
O'Neill talks to CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl in the
interview, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 11
at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
"From the very beginning, there was a
conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to
go," he tells Stahl. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the
U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do is a really
huge leap."
O'Neill, fired by the White House for his
disagreement on tax cuts, is the main source for an upcoming book, "The
Price of Loyalty," authored by Ron Suskind.
Suskind says O'Neill
and other White House insiders he interviewed gave him documents that
show that in the first three months of 2001, the administration was
looking at military options for removing Saddam Hussein from power and
planning for the aftermath of Saddam's downfall -- including post-war
contingencies such as peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals and the
future of Iraq's oil.
"There are memos," Suskind tells Stahl,
"One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.'"
A Pentagon document, says Suskind, titled "Foreign Suitors For
Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," outlines areas of oil exploration. "It talks
about contractors around the world from...30, 40 countries, and which
ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq," Suskind says.
In the
book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a
National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded.
"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The
president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,'" says O'Neill in the
book.
CBS News Correspondent Mark Knoller reported
Saturday that, as the White House sees it, O'Neill's remarks are those
of a disgruntled former official, and it should not have come as a
surprise to O'Neill that the U.S. advocated Saddam's ouster.
In
fact, a senior administration official tells CBS News it would
have been irresponsible not to plan for Saddam's eventual
removal.
As for the charge that there were early plans to invade
Iraq, Knoller says the official calls that "laughable."
Suggesting that O'Neill doesn't know what he's talking about on this
matter, the official told CBS News O'Neill had enough problems in
his own area of expertise, so, "Why should anyone believe he has a
credible understanding of foreign policy?"
Another senior
administration official told CBS News Saturday, "No one ever
listened to the crazy things he said before, why should we start now?"
Separately, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan added
Saturday, "We appreciate his service. While we're not in the business of
book reviews, it appears the world according to Mr O'Neill is more about
justifying his own opinions than looking at the reality of the results
we're achieving on behalf on the American people.
"The president
is going to continue to be forward-looking and focus on building on the
results we've achieved on the economy and efforts to make the world
safer and a better place."
According to CBS News Reporter
Lisa Barron in Baghdad, "The Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella
group of former exiles, says it's not surprised by O'Neill's remarks.
Spokesman Entifadh Qanbar tells CBS News that the Bush
administration opened official channels to the Iraqi opposition soon
after coming to power, and discussed how to remove Saddam. The group
opened an office in Washington shortly afterwards."
Suskind also
writes about a White House meeting in which he says the president seems
to be wavering about going forward with his second round of tax cuts.
"Haven't we already given money to rich people ... Shouldn't we be
giving money to the middle," Suskind says the president uttered,
according to a nearly verbatim transcript of an Economic Team meeting he
says he obtained from someone at the meeting.
O'Neill, who was
asked to resign because of his opposition to the tax cut, says he
doesn't think his tell-all account in this book will be attacked by his
former employers as sour grapes. "I will be really disappointed if [the
White House] reacts that way," he tells Stahl. "I can't imagine that I
am going to be attacked for telling the truth."
O'Neill also is
quoted saying in the book that President Bush was so disengaged in
cabinet meetings that he "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf
people."
Also, as saying the administration's decision-making
process was so flawed that often top officials had no real sense of what
the president wanted them to do, forcing them to act on "little more
than hunches about what the president might think."
"It's
revealing," said Stahl on The Early Show Friday. "I would say it's an
unflattering portrait of the White House and of the president -- and
specifically, about how they make decisions."
A lack of
dialogue, according to O'Neill, was the norm in cabinet meetings he
attended. And it was similar in one-on-one meetings, says O'Neill. Of
his first such meeting with the president, O'Neill says, "I went in with
a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage [him]
on...I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just
listening...It was mostly a monologue."
