To the extent which I might allow that your premise is accurate
washingtonpost.com
O'Neill charges that Bush officials began planning Hussein's ouster long before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and information in the new accounts indicates Bush saw Hussein's quick ouster as important for the U.S. economy.
news.bbc.co.uk
In a separate interview for Time magazine, Mr O'Neill said he had never come across any evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) during his period in office.
"In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterise as evidence of weapons of mass destruction," the former member of the president's national security team said.
"To me there is a difference between real evidence and everything else."
sundayherald.com
“From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” O’Neill said. “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.”
cbsnews.com
And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.
“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.
“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”
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We certainly needed to be prepared to defend the US. But the reason given in the first NSC meeting that Bush held was economic...not terror.
The first meeting of the NSC, was really the first meeting of the PNAC, only this time they were in power. The only thing they needed was "another Pearl Harbor".
Orca |
