All the excuses for invading Iraq, lies
Bush and his cronies wanted to invade Iraq and share out the oil profits long before any such plans were made public, long before 9/11 (which had nothing to do with Iraq anyway), and long before any of the rest of the lies hit the press.
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Iraq war planned 'before 9/11'
By Roy Eccleston
January 12, 2004
GEORGE W. Bush made plans to invade Iraq soon after he entered office, not in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, former Bush cabinet member Paul O'Neill says.
In an unflattering portrait of the Bush White House, Mr O'Neill has told US 60 Minutes that the US President had questioned the direction of his own massive tax cuts, was disengaged at cabinet meetings and plotted Saddam Hussein's fall from the start.
Mr O'Neill was sacked as Treasury secretary by Mr Bush in December 2002. In the 60 Minutes interview to be broadcast today, he becomes the first Bush heavyweight to lift the veil on the inner sanctum, giving valuable ammunition to Democrats in an election year.
"From the very beginning there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," Mr O'Neill says, according to partial transcripts released by the CBS network, which airs 60 Minutes.
"For me the notion of pre-emption, that the US has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do is a huge leap."
US officials have said the war plan for Iraq was drawn up in 2002, after the al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.
The prime reasons cited by the Bush team for the invasion were weapons of mass destruction, which have not yet been found, and links to al-Qaeda. US Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted last week there was as yet no proof of that link.
The O'Neill interview precedes next week's release of The Price of Loyalty, a book about Mr O'Neill's time as the man in charge of US economic policy, by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind.
Mr Suskind tells 60 Minutes that Mr O'Neill and others gave him documents showing the early planning for war, and the plans for a post-Hussein Iraq involving peacekeepers, war crimes tribunals and oil.
One of the documents is said to be marked "secret" and titled "Plans for post-Saddam Iraq".
The book quotes Mr O'Neill saying no one on the National Security Council raised questions about the Iraq policy: "It was all about finding a way to do it."
Mr O'Neill, a former chief executive of alumina giant Alcoa, was critical of Mr Bush's involvement in policy debates, saying that at cabinet meetings he was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people".
He recalled his own first meeting with Mr Bush. "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage him on."
But, he said, "I was surprised it turned out me talking and the President just listening. It was mostly a monologue".
In comments the Democrats will surely seize on, the book quotes an official White House transcript saying Mr Bush had, in a meeting with his economic advisers, questioned why he should give more tax cuts to wealthy Americans. "Haven't we already given enough money to rich people? Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?"
The White House was dismissive about Mr O'Neill comments. "While we're not in the business of book reviews. It appears the world according to Mr O'Neill is more about justifying his own opinions than looking at the reality of the results we're achieving on behalf on the American people," spokesman Scott McClellan said.
The Australian
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8370501%255E401,00.html
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Bush was 'intent on ousting Saddam'
Monday 12 January 2004, 8:50 Makka Time, 5:50 GMT
President Bush sacked Paul O'Neill (L) in December 2002
President George Bush was intent on ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein long before the 11 September attacks in the United States, the former Treasury secretary said.
"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," Paul O'Neill told the CBS television programme "60 Minutes," in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
"For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the US has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap," he added.
Bush sacked O'Neill - a former chief executive of aluminum giant Alcoa known for his blunt talk - in December 2002 for publicly doubting the need for the president's sweeping tax cut plans.
The interview came after O'Neill served as the main source for an upcoming book, The Price of Loyalty, which paints an insider's view of the Bush administration.
Speaking to Time magazine, O'Neill said: "In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterise as evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
"To me there is a difference between real evidence and everything else. And I never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterise as real evidence."
Early brainstorming
Bush took office in January 2001 - and in his first three months in power, officials were already looking at military options to remove Saddam from power, according to documents that O'Neill and other White House insiders gave author Ron Suskind.
"It was all about finding a way to do it," O'Neill is quoted in the book as saying. "That was the tone of it, the president saying, 'Go find me a way to do this.'" Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary.
Officials were looking into including post-war contingencies such as peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals and the future of Iraq's oil, according to the documents.
One of the memos, marked "secret," says "Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq," Suskind told "60 Minutes."
A Pentagon document, titled Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts, talks about "contractors around the world from... 30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq," according to Suskind.
O'Neill told Suskind he was surprised no one on Bush's national security council - which includes national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - questioned why Iraq should be invaded.
'Find a way to do it'
"It was all about finding a way to do it," O'Neill is quoted in the book as saying. "That was the tone of it, the president saying, 'Go find me a way to do this'."
In one White House meeting, Bush seemed to waver about going forward with his second round of controversial tax cuts.
"Haven't we already given money to rich people?" Bush uttered, according to Suskind, who uses a nearly verbatim transcript of an economic team meeting as a source.
"Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?"
White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Friday deflected repeated questions about O'Neill's assertions. "I don't do book reviews," he said.
Aides have often said Bush sets the tone and the broad principles of his administration's policies, but delegates the details to his top advisers.
In a CNN interview on Sunday, Commerce Secretary Don Evans defended Bush, describing him as a decisive president - "focused on the issue, where he is driving the discussion, where he is driving the debate, he is asking the tough questions and then making the tough decisions, and doing it in a very decisive kind of way."
'No comment'
"I'm not going to respond to a book that's not out yet. I haven't seen him explain those comments. I didn't sit in on those meetings, so I wouldn't be privy to any of that," said Evans of meetings O'Neill refers to.
O'Neill was the first cabinet member to leave since Bush took office in January 2001. Environmental Protection Agency head, Christine Whitman, left in June 2003. Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Mel Martinez, quit in December 2003.
In the interview, O'Neill said he was surprised at the lack of dialogue between Bush and his top aides, either as a group or in face-to-face meetings and that he asked no questions during their first one-on-one meeting with him.
"I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage (him) on... I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening... It was mostly a monologue," O'Neill said.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FD1C093D-0780-400F-A363-B0651A985A98.htm
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