Bush planned Iraq invasion before 9/11.
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| Sun, 01-11-2004 - 11:31am |
>"The Bush administration began planning to use U.S. troops to invade Iraq within days after the former Texas governor entered the White House three years ago, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told CBS News' 60 Minutes."<
CBS already has the complete discussion on their 60 Minutes site..............
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml
>"O'Neill, who served nearly two years in Bush's Cabinet, was asked to resign by the White House in December 2002 over differences he had with the president's tax cuts. O'Neill was the main source for "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill," by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind."<
>"Suskind cited a Pentagon document titled "Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," which, he said, 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.""<
>"O'Neill also said in the book that President Bush "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people" during Cabinet meetings.
One-on-one meetings were no different, O'Neill told the network.
Describing his first such meeting with Bush, O'Neill said, "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage on. ... I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening. It was mostly a monologue.""<
Quotes are from article at the link below..............
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/index.html
Very interesting!


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The rest of your post is just meaningless. Do you mean powerful men in Washington aren't perfect? It does not discredit his valuable, first hand observations about how the Bush administration is run. And as an intelligent reader, I can factor into my assesment of him the fact that he was canned. I have to say that since these exact same allegations (politics above policy, re-election above sincere evaluation of issues) were made by another experienced administration official, John DiIulio, it leads me to believe there's something to them. Here, again, is the DiIulio letter:
http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2002/021202_mfe_diiulio_1.html
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Did you read Woodward's book? Did you read Suskind's? (Once again, O'Neill did not write the book. He provided interviews, notes and documents.) How do you know one is more biased than the other?
To site one example, his account of cabinet meetings is quite different than O'Neill's. He described the president as active, involved, and well prepared, as others have.
I find Linda Chavez's observation of Bush interesting because she was interviewed for a cabinet post (and passed up for it) at the same time and in the same setting that ONeill was interviewed, but the two descriptions could hardly have been more different.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/chavez011404.asp
Renee
A quote from him on NPR has Suskind correcting the record to say it's a Commerce Department document (which would make both he and Mylorie wrong) which was distributed to many government depts. Is it possible that both the Energy task force and the Pentagon had copies? I haven't had time to listen to the whole thing, but the quotes I read from the NPR piece quote O'Neill saying he doesn't think that such an in-depth report could have been put together by the Bush administration in it's short time in office (just 6 weeks) so he thinks it was probably a report put together by the Clinton administration, which someone pulled from the files and redistributed.
Either way, it's still an error in the book, which you are correct in pointing out.
There is a paper that Wolfowitz wrote in 1991/2 and tried to sell to the Clinton admin that calls for initiation of democracy in the ME. No one was buying, but then Wolfo turned up with Rumsfeld and Chenney along with other Neo-Cons in power in the Bush Administration. Frontline had the paper posted on the PBS.org website in 2001, but no one paid much attention.
Renee
"People are trying to say that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration. Actually there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be a regime change in Iraq."
http://www.instapundit.com/archives/013513.php
Former Clinton staffers are backing up Bush:
"We had the same stuff," says a former senior Clinton Administration aide who worked at the Pentagon. "It would have been irresponsible not to have such planning. We had all kinds of briefing material ready should the president have decided to move on Iraq. In fact, a lot of the material we had prepared was material that the previous Bush administration had left for us. It just isn't that big a deal. Or shouldn't be."
http://www.instapundit.com/archives/013485.php
"The 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act was passed by an unanimous Senate and a near-unanimous House," after which Mr. Clinton certified it as the law of the land with his signature.
What the Journal didn't note was how bold Clinton officials were about their plans to topple Saddam.
According to a report in Newsweek just three months ago, after Clinton signed the Iraqi Liberation Act, "the U.S. government convened a conference with the and other opposition groups in London to discuss 'regime change.'"
In Jan. 1999, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even appointed a special representative for transition in Iraq, Frank Ricciardone, who reportedly had "a mandate to coordinate opposition to Saddam." . . .
Two months later, the Clinton administration's plans for a post Saddam Iraq were already well underway, with State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin explaining to reporters: "What we're trying to do . . . is strengthen an Iraqi opposition movement that can lay out solid plans for the post-Saddam recovery in all sectors of national life."
As the Washington Times noted at the time, "President Clinton has said that getting rid of Saddam is a major U.S. objective."
http://www.instapundit.com/archives/013511.php
Renee
You can't even use O'Neill to back up your position anymore.
Renee
The only reason Tenet is still on board is because I don't think Bush wanted to make a transition during such an uncertain time, especially when he was going to be counting on the CIA so much for information.
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