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It’s going to be an interesting campaign season. This week it’s been the O’Neill wildcard and the Carnegie report
calling for an independent investigation into the White House’s WMD-crusade to
Iraq. Both will stir up the media
sharks while the independent prosecutor tackles the Plame/Wilson affair and the
Supremes review the Cheney secret Energy Task force (expected by June). On the P/W case, I’ve read there may be
a potential key witness talking, but we’ll see if the IP really does what he’s
supposed to do or stalls. By the way, I saw the new Treas. Sec’y Snow on ABC’s ‘This Week’ given
no sympathy by both George’s - Stephanopolos and Will - on economic deficits
and jobless “recovery”. He looked and spoke like a lame duck, literally and
figuratively. A very poor
representation for a poor economic showing, despite all the lip service to growth-by-tax cuts. And for the
record, didn’t Bush1 also try to relaunch a mission to the moon? - KWC O'Neill:
Plan to Hit Iraq Began Pre-9/11 By Mike Allen,
Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, January 11, 2004; Page A13 CRAWFORD, Tex., Jan.
10 -- Former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill charged in remarks released
Saturday that President Bush began planning to oust Saddam Hussein within days
of taking office and before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Providing firsthand
testimony bolstering a longtime contention of White House critics, O'Neill told
Lesley Stahl of CBS News for a segment to be broadcast on "60
Minutes" Sunday night that preparations to oust Hussein long predated
Bush's articulation of his preemption doctrine in June 2002, when he said the
United States must strike looming enemies before the worst threats emerge. "From the very
beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that
he needed to go," O'Neill said, according to CBS. "For me, the notion
of preemption -- that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide
to do -- is a really huge leap." Democratic
presidential candidate Howard Dean said the revelation underscores the
continuing importance of examining "the true circumstances of the Bush
administration's push for war." A senior
administration official said O'Neill's "suggestion that the administration
was planning an invasion of Iraq days after taking office is laughable. Nobody
listened to him when he was in office. Why should anybody now?" However, other
administration officials did not deny that contingency plans were made for a
post-Hussein Iraq, and pointed out that "regime change" had been the
official policy of the United States since President Bill Clinton said in 1998
that containment of the Iraqi president was no longer sufficient and a change
of leadership was necessary. O'Neill gave the
interview in connection with Tuesday's publication of "The Price of
Loyalty," by Ron Suskind, who interviewed O'Neill after he was fired by
Bush in December 2002. Suskind, who won a Pulitzer Prize as a reporter for the Wall
Street Journal, talked to O'Neill nearly daily for a year beginning in 2003.
O'Neill is quoted in the book as saying that in early discussions at a National
Security Council meeting he attended, no official questioned why Iraq should be
invaded. "It was all about
finding a way to do it," O'Neill said. "That was the tone of it. The
president saying, 'Go find me a way to do this.' " According to a CBS
news release, Suskind says in the book that O'Neill and other White House
insiders gave him documents that show that in the first three months of 2001,
the administration was examining options for removing Hussein and planning for
the aftermath, including such details as peacekeeping troops and war crimes
tribunals. Suskind said one
Pentagon document discussed contractors in 30 or 40 countries that might be
interested in Iraq's oil. The Treasury
Department issued a statement saying officials there had not provided any
classified documents to O'Neill. Administration officials expect to conduct
investigations. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6632-2004Jan10.html |
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