Bush Disputes Ex-Official's Claim That Iraq War Was Early Goal
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: January 13, 2004
ASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — President Bush on Monday disputed a suggestion by Paul H. O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary, that the White House was looking for a reason to go to war with Iraq from the very beginning of his administration.
Responding to an account provided by Mr. O'Neill in a book to be published on Tuesday, "The Price of Loyalty," by Ron Suskind, Mr. Bush said he was working from his first days in office on how to carry out an existing national policy of promoting a change of government in Iraq. But the president said his focus at the time was on re-evaluating the ways in which the United States and Britain were enforcing the "no flight" zones in northern and southern Iraq.
"And no, the stated policy of my administration toward Saddam Hussein was very clear," Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Monterrey, Mexico, when asked whether he had begun planning within days of his inauguration for an invasion of Iraq. "Like the previous administration, we were for regime change."
"And in the initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with desert badger or fly-overs and fly-betweens and looks, and so we were fashioning policy along those lines," Mr. Bush continued, apparently referring to confrontations with Iraq over the no-flight zones. "And then all of a sudden September the 11th hit."
Administration officials said Mr. Bush had taken office determined to adopt a more aggressive approach toward Iraq. They said he sought a broad review of issues and options, from the effectiveness of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq to the possibility of covert action to depose Mr. Hussein.
While the administration also did contingency planning for dealing with any threat that Iraq might pose, the officials said, it was not looking for pretexts to mount a military campaign, as Mr. O'Neill suggested in the book, which was written with his cooperation and tracks the two years he spent as treasury secretary before being dismissed.
"It's laughable to suggest that the administration was planning an invasion of Iraq that shortly after coming to office," a White House official said Monday when asked about Mr. O'Neill's account.
The Treasury Department said it had referred to its inspector general for a possible inquiry the question of how a Treasury document marked secret came to be shown on a segment about the book on CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday. Mr. Suskind, who was given access by Mr. O'Neill to 19,000 documents that were turned over to him by the department after his departure, said the document that was shown on "60 Minutes" was the cover sheet for a February 2001 briefing paper on planning for a post-war Iraq. But he said Mr. O'Neill was not provided with the briefing paper itself.
The book describes Mr. O'Neill's surprise at the focus put on Iraq at the very first National Security Council meeting held by Mr. Bush, on Jan. 30, 2001. Iraq was also the primary topic at the second meeting of the council, two days later. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld spoke at the second meeting about how removing Mr. Hussein would "demonstrate what U.S. policy is all about" and help transform the Middle East, the book said.
Mr. Rumsfeld talked at the meeting "in general terms about post-Saddam Iraq, dealing with the Kurds in the north, the oil fields, the reconstruction of the country's economy, and the `freeing of the Iraqi people,' " the book said.
The book portrays Mr. O'Neill, who was a member of the National Security Council, as concerned that Mr. Bush was rushing toward a confrontation without a sufficiently rigorous debate about why doing so was necessary.
"From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country," the book quotes Mr. O'Neill as saying. "And if we did that, it would solve everything. It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying, `Fine. Go find me a way to do this.' "
The question of how and when Mr. Bush made the decision to go to war with Iraq has been a simmering political issue since even before the conflict began last year.
Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said at a news conference in Iowa on Monday that Mr. O'Neill's account amounted to a "very serious allegation" against Mr. Bush.
But administration officials said that Mr. Bush was simply looking for more effective ways to carry out an established policy that had bipartisan backing and that there was no early decision to go to war.
In 1998, Congress passed, with strong bipartisan support, the Iraq Liberation Act, which said the United States policy should be "to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." President Bill Clinton signed it into law. Later that year, Mr. Clinton ordered airstrikes against Iraq on the eve of the House's vote to impeach him, citing Mr. Hussein's efforts to thwart the work of United Nations weapons inspectors.
Mr. Bush, whose father decided to allow Mr. Hussein to remain in power after the 1991 war to expel Iraq from Kuwait, had made clear even before taking office that he intended to step up efforts to oust the Iraqi leader.
Imam Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini, the leader of the Islamic Center of America in Detroit, one of the nation's largest mosques, said in a telephone interview on Monday that he had spoken to Mr. Bush six or seven times, before and after the 2000 election, about removing Mr. Hussein.
Imam Qazwini said that on Jan. 29, 2001, the day before the first National Security Council meeting of the administration, he met with Mr. Bush at the White House. The president, he said, was supportive of efforts to oust Mr. Hussein, but did not mention war as a means of doing so.
"No method was discussed at all," Imam Qazwini said. "It was a general desire for regime change."
In an interview just days before his inauguration, Mr. Bush did not sound like a man who had decided to mount an invasion of Iraq.
"We're developing our strategy," he told two correspondents from The New York Times.
The strategy he described appeared to center on strengthening economic sanctions, which he said "resemble Swiss cheese" because so many nations had ignored the United Nations mandates on what kind of trade with Iraq was prohibited.
"Let me say this to you," Mr. Bush said at the time — nine months before the Sept. 11 attacks, and before his first national security meeting. "Saddam Hussein must understand that this nation is very serious about preventing him from the development of weapons of mass destruction and any thought in his mind that he should use them against our friends and allies in the Middle East."
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