Well now. If this is true, a whole lot of people (I devoutly hope) are going to reconsider their opinions about George W. Bush and the War on Iraq. Paul O'Neill, the former Secretary of the Treasury, has given an interview to 60 Minutes. On the program he says:
"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.'"
If this can be corroborated, it's some pretty definitive proof that ousting Saddam Hussein and occupying Iraq were on the Administration's to-do list long before September 11, 2001, despite all claims to the contrary. It could also be suggested that the President of the United States violated at least the spirit of the War Powers Act by lying to Congress about the threat Hussein posed to the United States in order to fulfill a goal planned long before the terrorist attacks of September 11. In any Congress but one controlled by the President's own party, that might be considered an impeachable offense. It would mean that nearly 500 US military personnel have died and many thousands more have been wounded during a war which needn't have been waged. It would also mean that many Iraqis have been killed and injured, relationships with our allies have been severely damaged, and at least $167 billion has been needlessly spent on the war.
Perhaps this will open a few eyes among those who have been supporting Mr. Bush and his policies for three years; if he lied about this, what other lies may have been told?
Update: O'Neill has also given an interview to Time. In that article he implies that V.P. Cheney really is running the show, as far as he can tell; that President Bush is unengaged, and that politics matters far more than good policy. None of that is particularly new to many observers, but confirmation is never unwelcome.
Posted by Linkmeister at January 11, 2004 12:01 AMAs I've said many times, my support for the war had nothing to do with 9/11, terrorism, or WMD's. My support was based on the ethics of encouraging an entire nation to rebel against a tyrant with an implicit promise of support, only to abandon them at the last moment - and then to stand by and watch those very people be slaughtered in gigantic killing fields.
Colin Powell and Bush Sr. were wrong, Schwarzkopf was right, and we had to pay for our mistakes with accumulated interest. We're in the process of doing that now. But then the retrospectroscope is always 20/20.
Posted by: Alwin Hawkins at January 11, 2004 03:58 AMI can agree with that ethical point all the while disagreeing profoundly with the way the American public and its Congress was lied to by this man and his advisers.
Posted by: Linkmeister at January 11, 2004 07:46 AMwhen that guy first got elected, i said that he would go in and clean up daddy's mess. i am not surprised in the least. but, i think the whole "discussion" will go away (just as the AWOL and drug use "discussions" did).
sigh
Posted by: shelley at January 11, 2004 08:56 AMI surely won't hold my breath that widespread attitude change will take place. From what I've seen so far, those devoted to the Pres and/or the war are not phased by this at all. Lying to the public doesn't have the same meaning or immediacy as it did during the Watergate era. Apparently it's just doing business as usual, ho-hum. Unless we're talking about a Democrat.
Posted by: Raye at January 11, 2004 10:16 AMAlwin: There's nothing wrong with wanting to make the world a better place for people who are suffering. I can think of 1,000 moral reasons why Iraq was the right thing to do. Just not one legal one.
Linky... at this point, I'm almost convinced that taking over Iraq and settling old scores was this administration's sole agenda. (Of course you were the guy that pointed out the PNAC to me. Hell, Iraq was on the board since 1997!).
Now with the Carnegie report concluding that the country and congress was misled by the Administration, what do you think will come first... IraqGate or PlameGate?
Posted by: -=e=- at January 11, 2004 06:45 PMI'd bet on the Plame investigation causing more trouble than Iraq, because it's so blindingly obvious that outing Wilson's wife was politically motivated.
Posted by: Linkmeister at January 11, 2004 07:11 PMThe problem, Alwin, is that the war in Iraq was not sold as an ethical war; it was sold under the category of fear, using terrorism.
This should be impeachable, no matter who is running the show. It only shows how bankrupt the GOP really is, in my mind.
Posted by: Scott at January 12, 2004 05:48 AMIndeed, the confirmation is never unwelcome but how scary is this? I mean, many (myself included) assumed Bush was completely out of the loop but I hate that he's living up to our fears.
Posted by: Chris at January 13, 2004 02:45 AMNot only the Carnegie report--the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) has now released a report calling the war a 'strategic error,' and unecquivocally stating that:
1. Saddam posed no threat to the US, and
2. The war was a distraction from the real terror threat facing the nation.
It's here, if you want to see for yourself. The SSI is basically the Army's think tank for issues of national security, foreign policy and of course, military strategy. Their analyses go right to the top Army and DoD brass, and the author of this particular report is one Dr. Jeffrey Record, a prof at the Air War College and a defense expert currently serving as a visiting research prof at SSI.
An excerpt:
"Of particular concern has been the conflation of al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a single, undifferentiated terrorist threat. This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level, and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action. The result has been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al-Qaeda. The war against Iraq was not integral to the [Global War on Terror], but rather a detour from it."
Posted by: Fox at January 13, 2004 08:52 PMOh, and under pressure from the administration that fired him, O'Neill is now publically regretting many of his most controversial statements, and backing down.
(Funny that one of the syndicated episodes of The Simpsons tonight was the one where Bart has a future vision in an Indian casino... Lisa is President, and a Secret Service officer reminds her that she could just have her embarrassing brother killed--'each President gets three free secret kills!' Maybe Mr. O'Neill should watch his back? ;)
Posted by: Fox at January 13, 2004 08:55 PMOh, I'm sure he should. But these assertions are not just verbal, after all; they're in print in a book which was at #1 at Amazon yesterday. Retraction might be a little difficult.
Posted by: Linkmeister at January 13, 2004 09:09 PMYour website is good but you need to get to the point at the begging and then go to the extra stuff. Thanks
Marta
Posted by: Marta at January 21, 2004 07:15 AMi think that no one could decide when he started thinking about going to war with iraq because he could have been thinking about it before he even took office.
Posted by: sky at January 21, 2004 07:26 AM