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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (123010)	1/11/2004 10:21:19 AM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

O'Neill: Plan to Hit Iraq Began Pre-9/11 washingtonpost.com [ It's a little premature to be discussing this one before the book hits the street. But: The point doesn't seem to be that invading Iraq was one of many contingency plans, like defending Taiwan or the other invasions you mention. Rather, Iraq seemed to be at the center of W's foreign policy from the very beginning. This isn't exactly a surprise, given the Cheney / Rumsfeld / PNAC connection and the central role of Cheney in staffing W's administration. In fact, in my jaundiced view, it reflects positively on W that he was in on the game from the start. My main issue is the use of 9/11 to sell the war the guys knew they wanted from the very start, well before that event. It's not like bin Laden wasn't known to be a problem in the pre-9/11 timeframe. And despite repeated efforts and leakage, there's no evidence beyond the eternal dubious "dot-connecting" variety that Iraq had any connection at all with bin Laden and 9/11. A peripheral issue is that the war and post-war planning apparently started on 1/20 , not 9/11 , but it didn't make much difference, the extra 8 months or so didn't help the guys in finding a post-war clue. They probably spent way too much of their time talking to Chalabi about it. ] By Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 11, 2004; Page A13 CRAWFORD, Tex., Jan. 10 -- Former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill charged in remarks released Saturday that President Bush began planning to oust Saddam Hussein within days of taking office and before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Providing firsthand testimony bolstering a longtime contention of White House critics, O'Neill told Lesley Stahl of CBS News for a segment to be broadcast on "60 Minutes" Sunday night that preparations to oust Hussein long predated Bush's articulation of his preemption doctrine in June 2002, when he said the United States must strike looming enemies before the worst threats emerge. "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill said, according to CBS. "For me, the notion of preemption -- that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do -- is a really huge leap." Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said the revelation underscores the continuing importance of examining "the true circumstances of the Bush administration's push for war." A senior administration official said O'Neill's "suggestion that the administration was planning an invasion of Iraq days after taking office is laughable. Nobody listened to him when he was in office. Why should anybody now?" However, other administration officials did not deny that contingency plans were made for a post-Hussein Iraq, and pointed out that "regime change" had been the official policy of the United States since President Bill Clinton said in 1998 that containment of the Iraqi president was no longer sufficient and a change of leadership was necessary. O'Neill gave the interview in connection with Tuesday's publication of "The Price of Loyalty," by Ron Suskind, who interviewed O'Neill after he was fired by Bush in December 2002. Suskind, who won a Pulitzer Prize as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, talked to O'Neill nearly daily for a year beginning in 2003. O'Neill is quoted in the book as saying that in early discussions at a National Security Council meeting he attended, no official questioned why Iraq should be invaded. "It was all about finding a way to do it," O'Neill said. "That was the tone of it. The president saying, 'Go find me a way to do this.' " According to a CBS news release, Suskind says in the book that O'Neill and other White House insiders gave him documents that show that in the first three months of 2001, the administration was examining options for removing Hussein and planning for the aftermath, including such details as peacekeeping troops and war crimes tribunals. Suskind said one Pentagon document discussed contractors in 30 or 40 countries that might be interested in Iraq's oil. The Treasury Department issued a statement saying officials there had not provided any classified documents to O'Neill. Administration officials expect to conduct investigations.