Here is Krugman's take on the O'Neill
disclosures and premature regime change problem that the Bush2 administration
is having, which needs more than OTC to remedy itself. Pair this with the veteran military
journalist Ricks article re: the Army College report Krugman mentions, below.
And do note the Pentagon's top
spokesman's quote reacting to this controversial report on the Bush2 war on
terrorism, confirming what O'Neill has now made quite famous, that this
administration is full of 'deaf people'.
- KWC
People
are saying terrible things about George Bush. They say that his officials
weren't sincere about pledges to balance the budget. They say that the
planning for an invasion of Iraq began seven months before 9/11, that there
was never any good evidence that Iraq was a threat and that the war actually
undermined the fight against terrorism.
But these irrational Bush
haters are body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freaks who
should go back where they came from: the executive offices of Alcoa, and the
halls of the Army War College.
I
was one of the few commentators who didn't celebrate Paul O'Neill's
appointment as Treasury secretary. And I couldn't understand why, if Mr.
O'Neill was the principled man his friends described, he didn't resign early
from an administration that was clearly anything but honest. But now he's showing the courage I
missed back then, by giving us an invaluable, scathing insider's picture of
the Bush administration.
Ron
Suskind's new book "The Price of Loyalty" is based largely on interviews with
and materials supplied by Mr. O'Neill. It portrays an administration in which
political considerations - satisfying "the base" - trump policy analysis on
every issue, from tax cuts to international trade policy and global warming.
The money quote may be Dick
Cheney's blithe declaration that "Reagan
proved deficits don't matter." But there are many other
revelations.
One
is that Mr. O'Neill and Alan Greenspan knew that it was a mistake to lock in
huge tax cuts based on questionable projections of future surpluses. In May
2001 Mr. Greenspan gloomily told Mr. O'Neill that because the first Bush tax
cut didn't include triggers - it
went forward regardless of how the budget turned out - it was "irresponsible
fiscal policy." This was a time when critics of the tax cut were ridiculed for
saying exactly the same thing.
Another
is that Mr. Bush, who declared in the 2000 campaign that "the vast majority of
my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum," knew that this wasn't true.
He worried that eliminating taxes on dividends would benefit only "top-rate
people," asking his advisers, "Didn't we already give them a break at the
top?"
Most
startling of all, Donald Rumsfeld pushed the idea of regime change in Iraq as
a way to transform the Middle East at a National Security Council meeting in
February 2001. There's much more
in Mr. Suskind's book. All of it will dismay those who still want to believe
that our leaders are wise and good.
The question is whether this book will open the eyes of those who think
that anyone who criticizes the tax cuts is a wild-eyed leftist, and that
anyone who says the administration hyped the threat from Iraq is a conspiracy
theorist.
The
point is that the credentials of the critics just keep getting
better.
How can Howard Dean's assertion that the capture of Saddam hasn't made us
safer be dismissed as bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College
says that the war in Iraq was a "detour"
that undermined the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley
Clark and others that the administration was looking for an excuse to invade
Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light of Mr. O'Neill's revelations?
Study
Published by Army Criticizes War on Terror's Scope
By
Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, Jan. 12, 2004 @
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8435-2004Jan11.html
A
scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the
Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking
a detour into an "unnecessary" war in Iraq and pursuing an "unrealistic" quest
against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious
threat. The report, by Jeffrey
Record, a visiting professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base
in Alabama, warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is "near the
breaking point."
It
recommends, among other things, scaling back the scope of the "global war on
terrorism" and instead focusing on the narrower threat posed by the al Qaeda
terrorist network.
"[T]he
global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously
indiscriminate and ambitious, and accordingly . . . its parameters should be
readjusted," Record writes. Currently, he adds, the anti-terrorism campaign
"is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver, and threatens
to dissipate U.S. military resources in an endless and hopeless search for
absolute security."
Record,
a veteran defense specialist and author of six books on military strategy and
related issues, was an aide to then-Sen. Sam Nunn when the Georgia Democrat
was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In discussing his political background,
Record also noted that in 1999 while on the staff of the Air War College, he
published work critical of the Clinton administration.
His
essay, published by the Army War College's
Strategic Studies Institute, carries the standard disclaimer that
its views are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of
the Army, the Pentagon or the U.S. government. But retired Army Col. Douglas C.
Lovelace Jr., director of the Strategic Studies Institute, whose Web site
carries Record's 56-page monograph, hardly distanced himself from it. "I think
that the substance that Jeff brings out in the article really, really needs to
be considered," he said.
Publication
of the essay was approved by the Army War College's commandant, Maj. Gen.
David H. Huntoon Jr., Lovelace said. He said he and Huntoon expected the study to be controversial,
but added, "He considers it to be under the
umbrella of academic freedom." Larry DiRita, the top Pentagon
spokesman, said he had not read the Record study. He added: "If the conclusion is that we need to be scaling back
in the global war on terrorism, it's not likely to be on my reading list
anytime soon."
Many
of Record's arguments, such as the contention that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was
deterred and did not present a threat, have been made by critics of the
administration. Iraq, he concludes, "was a war-of-choice distraction from the
war of necessity against al Qaeda." But it is unusual to have such views
published by the War College, the Army's premier academic institution. In addition, the essay goes further
than many critics in examining the Bush administration's handling of the war
on terrorism.
Record's
core criticism is that the administration is biting off more than it can
chew.
He likens the scale of U.S. ambitions in the war on terrorism to Adolf
Hitler's overreach in World War
II. "A cardinal rule of strategy is to keep your enemies to a
manageable number," he writes. "The Germans were defeated in two world
wars...because their strategic ends outran their available means."
He
also scoffs at the administration's policy, laid out by Bush in a November
speech, of seeking to transform and democratize the Middle East. "The
potential policy payoff of a democratic and prosperous Middle East, if there
is one, almost certainly lies in the very distant future," he writes. "The
basis on which this democratic domino
theory rests has never been
explicated."
He
also casts doubt on whether the U.S. government will maintain its commitment
to the war. "The political, fiscal, and military sustainability of the GWOT
[global war on terrorism] remains to be seen," he states.
The
essay concludes with several recommendations. Some are fairly
noncontroversial, such as increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps, a
position that appears to be gathering support in Congress. But he also says
the United States should scale back its ambitions in Iraq, and be prepared to
settle for a "friendly autocracy" there rather than a genuine democracy.
To
read the full report, go to washingtonpost.com/nation
