Bush planed Iraq war pre 9/11
 

The Bush administration began planning to use U.S. troops to invade Iraq within days after the former Texas governor entered the White House three years ago, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told CBS News' 60 Minutes


http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...ush/index.html



Why am I not suprized. This is a republican that used to work for him saying this so it is pretty creditable.

this is a quote from the article you linked to

Hmmmm,

So a disgruntled former Bush employee comes with with a book that slams the president and "exposes" top-level information that he's not in a position to have access to? Pardon me while i remain skeptical about Mr. O'Neill's motives.

Kitso
KS 361 times say it with me now, "The world is a better place with Saddam out of power"

Maybe they were discussed in a cabinet meeting? All issues are discussed there.

Although, given that the guy remains nameless, his credibility isn't too great either.

At this point it's really too early to tell whether or not it's legitimate, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out, if at all.

All issues are not discussed in Cabinet meetings, particularly security issues.

Does it say they were discussed in a cabinet meeting? It just says he "saw" documents with certain titles.

I'll admit, i'm not an expert on Presidential routine, but i'd imagine that if the President is recieving a briefing on certain topics, especially extremely sensitive ones, the only people in attendence would be those who the report directly affects. I doubt you would have the Sec of Commerce in a NSA briefing concerning the N. Korean nuke threat, unless there was a part of the threat that particular applied.

If it's not discussed with the whole cabinet, it gives those members who weren't present reasonable plausible deniability.

And i agree that the source who isn't named doesn't carry much credibility either. But, don't you think that Bush also has reports on how to take out Kim Jong-Il or until recently Kahdaffi? There are probably hundreds of contigency plans in the NSA or DoD offices concerning the toppling of anti-American dictators. It wouldn't be very practical if there weren't.

ETA: Russ beat me to it. :D

Kitso
KS 361

Exactly. If we don't have contingency plans for a military conflict with all regimes that are hostile to the U.S., then the DoD isn't doing its job.

What scares me about this "news" is that it implies that the Clinton administration did not have plans to invade Iraq. That would be gross negligence and scandalous.

oh c'mon now, tke....this guy was asked to resign....therefore he got das boot......i can't think that automatically makes him so creditable.

and saddam is out of power....finally.....this is a good thing, ok? i know that b/c bush is a repub whatever he says has to be a lie and a bad thing ;).....if by some chance gore was prez and he made the decision, you all would be singing his praises for being such a prepared and worthy man to be leading this country to great things.

everyone just needs to breathe every now and then, and not jump on liberal or conservative band wagon.

but i still luv ya, tke. :)

Well Russ,

I'm sure had another female accusor stepped forward, we would have seen a hastily slapped together argument for attacking some country, perhaps even Iraq ;)

Kitso
KS 361 times it ain't no fun, if Clinton can't have none

Supposedly we didn't have a contingency plan for afghanistan actually lol . . .

However, I think its generally accepted that a few cabinet officaials have always been Hawks on the Iraq issue. Maybe that is what they mean? Didn't Rumsfield put his name to a letter in the last administration? And wasn't the undersecretary of defense (?) really pushing for war in the beginning?

There are current members of the Bush administration who were recomending that we remove the Baathist regime to the Clinton administration since January 1993. There was the moral imperitive to remove a genocidal regime, as there was in Rwanda. Bill Clinton screwed up Somalia so bad that he was afraid to risk political capital to do what was right, particularly because he was an extremely unpopular president until 1996. Then when things started getting better, he didn't want to rock the boat. Mark my words, historians will shred the Clinton legacy to pieces in the coming decades.

Re: Bush planed Iraq war pre 9/11
 

Pretty much old news up here.....

The 5th Estate on the CBC did an expose of the Bush administration. It covered the history and doctrines supported by the individual members of his cabinet. It was pretty bag on in its anylsis and predictions regarding the reasoning and politcal maneuvering behind the justification for an Iraq war. But everything covered by O'Neill was pretty much covered a year or so ago in the expose.

This has been touched on earlier, but let me add a word or two. The Dept of Defence operates a continuously updating program called "The Deliberate Planning Cycle" It addresses broad based operational plans (OP PLANS) for whole theaters of operation and more focused 'what if?' contingency plans (CON PLANS) for specific areas (like Iraq). There are many layers of staff officers who are charged with determining and contributing to the development of plans that try to figure in what and where we might become involved all around the world. These plans cover everything from full military intervention to reactive assistance to non combatant evacuation operations to humanitarian assistance operations. You name it, DOD has a plan for it, and it is updated regularly. Business as usual for many decades. I would be awfully surprised if every new president wasn't briefed on the program, even as early as the pre inauguration transition period, given overviews of what the current plans say, and have the planners respond to his guidance on what and where to bring emphasis or whatever. These plans generate documents and are known to exist. They are available to all who have the proper level of security clearance and who possess a need to know. Of course they would come up from time to time in high level meetings where the attendees had need to know and clearance. What exactly is the question here? Are we really saying that the DOD planners should bury their heads in the sand and keep the President in the dark? By the way, since these plans are CLASSIFIED information do we expect the president to casually announce "Hay Guys, we have this plan to invade Vatican City..."

Thanks darlin.

Yes its good to have Sadaam gone, but if he lied about the reasons going there to the country he is no better than Clinton when he lied to the country. Just because Bush's lie lead to something good doesn't justify the lie.

Paul O'Neill was on 60 Minutes last night discussing this. O'Neill said a few days after George W. Bush was inaugurated, they had a meeting in which the President looked for a way to oust Saddam Hussein. Here is a link to the story. It was a very interesting 60 Minutes. O'Neill is a credible source and served in the Nixon and Ford Administrations and as chairman of Alcoa. Check out the video clip.

Bush's days are numbered!
 

I agree!!! It makes us look no better than he is if we invaded his country for some oil.:rolleyes:

Re: Bush Looks to get 4 More Years
 

Well its pretty obvious, at this point, that we did not invade for oil. We went in for geopolitical reasons; particularly to realign and reshape the regional hegemonic structure.

Re: Re: Bush Looks to get 4 More Years
 

which is still wrong and not the reasons Bush gave for war

anymore, i really have to laugh at ppl who get all fussy about presidents lying. or moreso, basing their opinion of them as a president on their lying. i'm guilty of it, too.....even though i never liked clinton, the fact he lied about gettin on ol' lewinsky made him that much more disgusting.

and now that the dems have some "proof" that bush has been lying, they're all like, "OMG.....bad man! bad! you horrible POS for LYING to us and deceiving us...."

yet when clinton did it, he was just tryin to "get some" and it was ok......i believe he was a laughing stock of the world for a while, too, as is bush becoming with some ppl. (no worries, i will love the w forever :) )

all the same....it's all a lie.....be ok with it or not, just realize how fickle and absolutely ridiculous the public is.

Is Rumsfeld one of those oh so moral people? because he didn't seem to mind the genocidal regieme when he was working for Reagan...

http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2002/US/09/30/s...msfeld.80s.jpg

UPI reported from the United Nations: “Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded... Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz (sic) on the Gulf war before leaving for an unspecified destination.”

On March 23rd (the day before Rumsfeld's visit) the Iranian News Agency reported:

"that Iraq launched another chemical weapons assault on the southern battlefront, injuring 600 Iranian soldiers"

First of all, Bush has been the laughingstock of most of the world since he got elected. It's only been in the past year that their laughter turned into anger. I'm not arguing that the whole Clinton situation didn't make the rest of the world laugh for a while, but for some of these countries (many of the European ones), they were laughing at the fact that anybody CARED. Many of those countries had leaders who are well-known for having affairs, and they thought it was absolutely hilarious that we were going to impeach our president for doing so.

I'm sure there were some countries were most people thought we were stupid for electing a president who got bjs under the Oval Office desk, but I'm also pretty sure that they are far outnumbered by the countries where most people think GWB is an idiot.

Furthermore, as I've said before, Clinton's lie hurt a limited number of people: it hurt his marriage, his family, Monica's reputation, made some naive people (who for some reason thought that presidents don't have affairs, despite much publicized previous presidential affairs) lose faith in the president. Bush's lie lead to the death of an estimated 9000 innocent people, including many of our troops, it tore apart families, it alienated our allies, it made many people around the world hate us, it made many Americans lose faith in our own government, many are predicting it will spawn an entirely new generation of terrorists, it spread our army too thin to the point where we have to ignore legitimate threats from other countries . . . And maybe all of that is worth it since Hussein is now out of power. I'm not going to pretend to know that because I really don't know if it's worth it or not. But to me it seems like a hell of a lot of sacrifice for something that ultimately benefits the United States not very much at all.

I think one of the things that Russell mentioned deserves to be brought up here: that it's undeniable that Clinton probably had a plan to take Saddam out of office. I agree with this. The difference is that Bush acted on his plan, where Clinton didn't -- and chances are that he wouldn't have if he had been in Bush's place now. I think that the major problem Bush had with this war is how it was handled. Like I said in another thread, I think that a lot more self-described liberals would have been in favor of it if they thought there was a legitimate threat. But the guys at the UN said there was no threat, that the WMDs were gone. So Bush says they're incompetent and sends his guys in there. Apparently they're incompetent too. :rolleyes:

Anyway I think there were two major problems that a lot of anti-war liberals had with this war was handled: 1) the fact that they felt that there was little justification for it, and 2) the overuse of the bait-and-switch.

1) Basically what O'Neill is telling us happened: a lot of liberals thought that GWB had a plan from the beginning to take down Saddam since even before 9/11. A lot of people dismissed the war from its conception because of this viewpoint, and if it's proven true then it will be just one more "I told you so."

I know a number of liberals who supported the war on the basis that we helped put Saddam into power, so the whole Iraq situation was partially our fault and it was our responsibility to get the guy out of power. I think Bush could have used this justification to win more people over to the pro-war side, but he was on that whole America-can-do-no-wrong kick -- and also didn't really seem to care what anybody else thought about whether or not we should go to war.

I think Bush could have waited for a much better time to attack Iraq, and that his timing is why so many people opposed it. If Saddam is as crazy as is claimed, it would only be a matter of time before he did something to make people scared enough that most Americans and probably at least a sizeable portion of the rest of the world would support going to war. As it was the decision to go to war appeared to come out of nowhere and only reinforced Bush's image as a warmonger.

2) The bait-and-switch -- this is probably one of the things that annoyed me most about the whole ordeal. When the UN was searching Iraq for the WMD, it was pushed upon us that Iraq was sooo dangerous because it was stockpiles, tons and tons of chemical and biological weapons and that any minute Saddam could use them against us. Once we went to Iraq and weapons were nowhere in sight, the justification changed -- now it wasn't about making America safe from mass destruction, it was about catching Saddam and making sure he couldn't hurt either us or those poor Iraqis ever again. When we couldn't find Saddam once again the justification for war changed: this whole time, the war had REALLY been about introducing the poor Iraqis to democracy. Shame on you for being so selfish and thinking this war was all about us. And when that didn't seem to be working out, well, at least we had gotten Saddam out of power. THAT was the important thing. :rolleyes:

It ensured that no matter what, the Bush admin's incompetence would be hidden under the facade of "What do you mean we haven't found the WMD yet? That was never the point in the first place!"

You've posted US aid to Saddam several times except you don't post it in the context of reality - a reality in which other countries armed Saddam heavily and much much more as the US backed away (arms like the Osirak nuclear reactor which Israel was forced to destroy). But hey let's stop talking about what this was in context of, let's make no mention of countries like France, and let's just attack the US because that is our goal here.

And, yes, there was a reason why all those countries supported Iraq then.

-Rudey

1) Bill Clinton has stated numerous times that he would have acted to throw Saddam out of power. One of the biggest supporters of the war in Iraq was actually Hillary Clinton - her only gripe is with the aftermath which she considers bungled. Numerous Democratic leaders and presidential nominees supported the war and 52% of Democrats supported this pre-emptive war in the Pew survey.

2) It doesn't matter if Bush is the laughingstock of most of the world as you say. Why? Because most of the world is a bunch of losers. A bunch of loser countries that are against America and its people no matter what. The EU countries and other countries they bully with membership or trade benefits have sadly all lost out. China being one of the only other countries in the world left with potential, and also "the girl on the side for the US", chose not to push to stop this war.

3) Your attempt to talk about numbers is a losing one. Let's talk about what proportion of troops have died first. Then lets talk about what proportion of Iraqis would have died had Saddam been in power. War is war and talking about grieving families as a reason to not go into this is ridiculous - those families with dead ones would grieve in any war and not just this one.

4) The guys in the UN are incompetent. They seem to have no intelligence on Iran. When Iran clearly violated their treaty, they didn't follow up - hence one of many reasons they are incompetent.

5) The majority of the people in Iraq are happy that Saddam is not in power. They might not be happy with the US still being there, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

6) Some recent middle east changes: Afghani warlords came together to create a constitution, Libya drops weapons development after seeing prior goals as losing ones and is even pursuing peace with Israel, Iran allows in UN weapons inspectors after shyting their pants, Assad at Syria is so scared of what happened that he's trying to follow US demands to drop terror support and also wants peace with Israel as well (since there wouldn't be any reason not to have peace one that support is gone), etc. Now at least give it a couple years and you will see the improvements slightly at least. Rome wasn't built in a day.

7) Nobody protested Saddam as being a murderer in mass rallies but everyone protested that Bush was. Why?

8) Oneill is an idiot. It would be one thing if someone else made the criticism but it was O'Neill who is pretty much washed up now.

-Rudey

This is a news article posted online today about O'Neill. In it, O'Neill explains that many people took his words about Bush's Iraq plans out of context... (Sorry, y'all. I couldn't get the link to work, so I'm pasting the article below.)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, under fire for criticizing President Bush (news - web sites)'s leadership, denied on Tuesday he had taken secret documents from the Treasury.On Monday, hours after O'Neill criticized the president on CBS television, the Treasury Department (news - web sites) said its Inspector General was investigating how a document marked "secret" was shown during the interview.

Speaking on NBC's "Today" show, the ex-Treasury Secretary said the documents were given to him by the Treasury's chief legal officer after he requested them to help former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind write a book on O'Neill's time in the Cabinet.

"I said to him (the general counsel) I would like to have the documents that are OK for me to have. About three weeks later, the general counsel, the chief legal officer, sent me a couple of CDs, which I frankly never opened," said O'Neill, who resigned under pressure a year ago in a shake-up of Bush's economy team.

O'Neill, the first major Bush insider to criticize the president, said he had given the compact disc with the documents to Suskind.

"I don't honestly think there is anything that is classified in those 19,000 sheets," said O'Neill, adding only the cover sheet shown on television bore the words "secret."

But O'Neill said he was not surprised the Treasury was looking into how he got the documents. "If I were secretary of the Treasury I would have done the same," he said.

He described the reaction to Suskind's book as a "red meat frenzy" and said people should read his comments in context, particularly about the Iraq (news - web sites) war.

"People are trying to say 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 a regime change in Iraq."

What surprised him, said O'Neill, was how much priority was given to Iraq by the president.

Asked about comments he did not believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the main reason cited for going to war, O'Neill said he never saw "concrete evidence" of such weapons.

"I think the fact that we have not found them makes the point. But that doesn't make the point that we should not have got rid of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)."

Asked about his comment that during Cabinet meetings Bush was like "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," O'Neill said he regretted some of the language he used to describe his former boss.

"If I could take it back, I would take it back. It has become the controversial centerpiece."

Pressed whether he would vote for Bush in the November presidential election, O'Neill said he probably would, but he said the American people needed to demand more of their leaders.

I didn't mention anyting about "aid" the that US gave to Iraq in this article. What i mentioned was that Donald Rumsfeld was in Iraq meeting with with high ranking government officials, while at the same time chemical weapons were being used in a genocidal fashion, but then he had no moral issue with it. Only after Kuwait was invaded, and oil supply was in question was there any moral opposistion to Saddam (to the point where the US suported Saddam up to 2 weeks prior to the invasion, which was 1990, 2 years after chemical weapons had been used to exterminate the Kurds.

I understand that there are Geopolitical reasons for the war, and don't get me wrong i am gald that there is one less madman in a posistion to hurt people. But using Morality to justify the invasion is wrong. Morality had nothing to do with it. Morality has never had anything to do with it.

The moral issue was one evil against another actually. Khomeini was considered much more of a "mad man" with much more potential than Saddam. That is why so many countries in the world went against him - including much of the middle east and Arab countries.

Rumsfeld met with Saddam to give US "aid". Most (key word) of that aid came in detailed strategic analysis of Iranian defenses and positions, pretty much giving the Iraqi army a superior advantage. How much after that did Rumsfeld and the US keep supporting, meeting with, or giving aid to Saddam do you know?

-Rudey
--And do you know how much longer than the US the French were still arming this madman with WMD's? I do.

US aid and support continued to Iraq right up till 1989, increasing every year till the invasion of Kuwait. That aid also consisted of 200 military helicopters that were believed to be used in the dropping of mustard gas which killed thousands of Kurds. It also came in the supply of Anthrax and Botulism. (as was discovered in US Senate hearings in 1994) As for trhe french what do you expect from a bunch of Surrender Monkeys?

That's all you had to say to win me over. I like this guy.

-Rudey

Poor Oneil the secret documnets he used for proof against Bush is getting him investigated. The people that gave it to him probably will get fried to.

Sweetie...the difference is that the Republicans WENT AFTER Clinton to the point of having his conversations taped and having loose lips Lewinsky's taped also. THey wanted something, anything to discredit Clinton futher because he was really becomming popular.:eek: Personally, I could care less that he was getting some brains from some big loosebooty! WHO CARES. It is not my place to judge but his getting brains is a hell of a lot cheaper than the dead presidents that Bush is spending on this "WAR". :rolleyes:

Hillary Clinton supported military action and the removal of Saddam. What were her reasons for supporting military action? Was Hillary lying?

It is kind of ironic that The1calledTKE complains about a Bush policy while at the same time he supports the Clintons even though the Clintons also support that specific policy.

Let's be honest. The reason this thread was posted isn't because Bush did anything wrong. It was posted because Bush isn't a welfare supporting bleeding heart liberal Democrat.

Agreed. It wasn't posted to go after anyone who said there were WMDs or that we should have this war, it was started to bash Bush.

-Rudey

my point in my post was just to acknowledge that presidents lie and that the public is often stupid (meaning that repubs will always go after dems, and dems will always go after repubs....and in the end, it seem ridiculous to me sometimes).

that is all.

my name is not "sweetie"

Which we seem to have a lot of lately - the threads started just to bash Bush (or just to bash Liberals) are pretty weak in my opinion. Luckily some intelligent discussion has occurred amongst all of this.

Well most these threads start from news articles and deal with politics. Yes they may not deal with nice thing said about Bush. But its news just like any news article threads dealing with something a democrat did bad. And for the record Clinton was wrong for that attack he did on Iraq to take the pressure off the Lewinsky case. Just because I like Clinton doesn't mean I have to agree with everything he did. I am sure Bush is a good man, I just disagree with more of his policies than I agree with.

It might be a better commentary on the population of the USA . . . That we are so uneducated that we can't understand the real issue . . we need comforting lies and inflated drama to justify actions.

I think the majority of them are started to incite some intelligent debate but quickly degenerate into "Bush sucks!" / "No he doesn't, you suck!" and the points that might actually be interesting to debate or simply to discuss are lost. There are far too many people who can't seem to move past the Bush/anti-Bush mindset. It turns into that whole situation where people care more about "being right" (many times on situations that probably don't have just one right answer) than they do about learning or discussing or having interesting conversation.

Not every article or thread posted that says something negative about Bush is necessarily trying to bait conservatives (and I'm sure the same goes for the opposite side of the political spectrum).

For example, in regards to this issue I would be curious to know how many conservatives would it actually make a difference to if the scenario posed in the first article (that Bush was itching to go to war since the beginning of his term) proved true. I imagine not many, but I don't really know. And why would it make a difference/why wouldn't it make a difference?

9 times out of 10 I'm always right.

ETA: If they're about intelligent debate you would start posting things against Democrats and liberals...but hey let's just post stuff about those we dislike and see what people say...we'll call that an intelligent debate.

-Rudey
--Always.

Too bad George the First didn't order Stormin' Norman to just drive into Baghdad and finish the job correctly the first time. Then we could think of something else to argue about.