In his appearance this evening on "60
Minutes," Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty, based to a large
extent on information from former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, made
an astonishing, very serious misstatement.
Suskind claimed he has documents
showing that preparations for the Iraq war were well underway before 9-11.
He cited--and even showed--what he said was a Pentagon document, entitled,
"Foreign Suitors for Iraq Oilfield contracts." He claimed
the document was about planning for post-war Iraqi oil (CBS's
promotional story also contains that claim):
But that is not a Pentagon
document. It's from the Vice-President's Office. It was part of the
Energy Project that was the focus of Dick Cheney's attention before
the 9/11 strikes.
And the document has nothing to do with
post-war Iraq. It was part of a study of global oil supplies. Judicial
Watch obtained it in a law suit and posted it, along with related documents, on
its website at:
Indeed, when this story first broke
yesterday, the Drudge Report had the Judicial Watch document linked (no one
at CBS News saw that, so they could correct the error, when the
show aired?)
And what are we to make of O'Neill's
bigger claims, including that the Iraq war was planned from the first days
of the Bush administration (cited by Wesley Clark today to buttress his
assertion that there was no need for the war, it was all political)?
In late 2000 and early 2001, the Iraqi
regime was trying increasingly hard to shoot down US planes enforcing the
no-fly zones. That may well have opened up discussion about overthrowing
Saddam in January and February 2001, as Suskind claims, but "Iraq News," which
followed the issue very closely at the time, doubts very much that any decision
was made to do so then. Perhaps tellingly, Suskind doesn't claim that
those discussions continued beyond February.
Finally, O'Neill's statement to
Time magazine, "I never saw anything that I would characterize as
evidence of weapons of mass destruction," is bizarre. From 1995 on, UNSCOM
reported that Iraq retained major elements of its proscribed weapons
programs. That was the consensual view within the US intelligence
community on the eve of the war, as well as every other country engaged in the
issue.
