O'Neill: "This is Ron Suskind's book. This is not my book."
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O'NEILL: Yeah, and the other thing that's good, today the book is going to be available, and this red meat frenzy that's occurred when people didn't have anything except snippets -- as an example, you know, people are trying to make a case that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration. Actually, there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be regime change in Iraq.
COURIC: So you see nothing wrong with that being at the top of the president's agenda 10 days after the inauguration?
O'NEILL: Absolutely not. One of the candidates had said this confirms his worst suspicions. I'm amazed that anyone would think that our government, on a continuing basis across political administrations, doesn't do contingency planning and look at circumstances. Saddam Hussein has been this forever. And so, I was surprised, as I've said in the book, that Iraq was given such a high priority. But I was not surprised that we were doing a continuation of planning that had been going on and looking at contingency options during the Clinton administration.
COURIC: Because of the Iraq Liberation Act that was passed in 1998 almost unanimously by the Senate and near unanimously by the House.
O'NEILL: Absolutely.
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O'NEILL: Well, I'd say several things in response to your question. One, in hundreds of hours of conversation with the author -- let me not put this off on general case. I used some vivid language that if I could take it back, I'd take that back, because it's become the controversial centerpiece. And I am afraid that it will cause people to have an impression without actually reading the book. I hope people will read the book. But having said that, I want to also say this: This is Ron Suskind's book. This is not my book. I have no economic interest in it, contrary to the inference in the Wall Street Journal this morning. I hope people will read it because I think it makes a contribution to illuminating, especially for young people, what I consider to be a bipartisan, broken political process.
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