13Jan04-Margaret Neighbour-Bush admits he wanted regime change before 11 September
MARGARET NEIGHBOUR
THE United States president, George Bush, yesterday appeared to support claims made by one of his former advisers that he was intent on invading Iraq long before the 11 September attacks triggered a more aggressive focus to US foreign policy, saying his administration was "for regime change".
Speaking during a visit to Mexico, Mr Bush said that, while US policy altered after the terror attacks on New York and Washington, his government had inherited plans to remove Saddam Hussein as leader of Iraq from the previous Clinton administration.
His comments came as White House officials sought to play down statements made by the former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill about Mr Bush’s policy on Iraq.
Mr O’Neill said ousting Saddam was a top priority from the first National Security Council meeting he attended soon after Mr Bush took office in January 2001.
"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," Mr O’Neill said on Sunday.
"For me, the notion of preemption, that the US has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap."
Yesterday, Mr Bush’s spokesman, Scott McClellan, rejected Mr O’Neill’s criticism. "The president exhausted all possible means to resolve the situation in Iraq peacefully," he said. "Saddam Hussein has been a dangerous man for a long time."
But speaking after a meeting with the Mexican president, Vicente Fox, Mr Bush said: "Like the previous administration we were for regime change... We were fleshing out policy along those lines and then September 11 happened and, as president of the United States, my most solemn obligation was to protect the security of the American people.
"I took that duty very seriously and not only did we deal with the Taleban, we got working through the United Nations and the international community and made it clear that Saddam should disarm."
Mr Bush said the US had acted to remove Saddam after he had ignored the warnings to disarm. "Now he is not in power and the world is better for it," he added.
Mr O’Neill, who was sacked in December 2002 as part of a shake-up of Mr Bush’s economic team, has become the first major Bush administration insider to attack the president.
He likened Mr Bush at cabinet meetings to "a blind man in a room full of deaf people".
Mr O’Neill’s comments caused surprise in Washington, given the strong bonds of loyalty that Mr Bush fosters among members of his team.
Mr O’Neill was fired due to differences with Mr Bush over economic policy.
Mr O’Neill’s remarks emerged during an interview to promote a book about his term as the treasury chief, by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty.
Mr McClellan said the criticism from Mr O’Neill "appears to be more about trying to justify personal views and opinions than it does about looking at the results that we are achieving". "People have a right to express their views," he said. "And the president is going to continue to be forward-looking."
He also defended the president against Mr O’Neill’s assertion that, during cabinet meetings and one-on-one sessions, Mr Bush appeared disengaged and uninterested.
"The president is a strong leader who acts decisively on our big priorities, someone who asks tough questions and makes tough decisions," Mr McClellan said.
He said he did not know if members of the administration had tried to talk Mr O’Neill out of his kiss-and-tell story. Both the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, were close to Mr O’Neill and Mr Suskind told CBS that Mr Rumsfeld phoned Mr O’Neill and urged him not to contribute to the book.
"It’s just not something this administration gets caught up in," Mr McClellan said.
The book is likely to provide fodder for attacks on Mr Bush from Democratic presidential candidates who have accused him of using faulty intelligence on the extent of Iraq’s weapons programme as a pretext for war.
Meanwhile, the US Treasury yesterday requested a probe into how a possibly secret document appeared in the televised interview with Mr O’Neill.
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