Saddam's Ouster Planned In 2001?

[zimv20]

link (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml)


The Bush Administration began laying plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks as has been previously reported.

That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider. O'Neill talks to Correspondent Lesley Stahl in the interview, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," he tells Stahl. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do is a really huge leap."

(more)


the lies continue to unravel. shall we expect to see a number of "ends justifies the means" arguments?

[Maclarny]

Now I don't want to start any conspiracy theories but doesn't this raise some interesting questions for what went on between then and the invasion?

[zimv20]

Originally posted by Maclarny
Now I don't want to start any conspiracy theories but doesn't this raise some interesting questions for what went on between then and the invasion?

"what's the best way to get the american public to support our agenda?"
"cross your fingers for an arab-led terrorist attack in the US"

[IJ Reilly]

Add this zinger:

Based on his interviews with O'Neill and several other officials at the meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq's oil wealth.

He obtained one Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001, and entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts," which includes a map of potential areas for exploration.

“It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions,” says Suskind. “On oil in Iraq.”

During the campaign, candidate Bush had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."

“The thing that's most surprising, I think, is how emphatically, from the very first, the administration had said ‘X’ during the campaign, but from the first day was often doing ‘Y,’” says Suskind. “Not just saying ‘Y,’ but actively moving toward the opposite of what they had said during the electio

... to the "Barreling Bushes" story I just posted, and I think we can get a pretty complete picture of how this administration works, and who it serves.

[Maclarny]

Wow! War for oil? So it seems.:(

[wwworry]

They will claim it is normal and natural to plan invasions. So we must ask - who's next?

[Dont Hurt Me]

Bush is finding new ways to dissapoint all the time. look at the War, he snowed us, look at healthcare, he has helped the big corporations, look at our economy, every day we are learning of someone new moving overseas. still ignoring the mexican border and then wanting to let illegals become citizens. he has pushed me over the fence.:mad:

[mactastic]

Funny thing is (funny weird, not funny haha) that the battle plan for an invasion of Iraq, known as Desert Crossing, was ignored by the Bushies. I think it was Anthony Zinni who expressed great surprise when he heard that an invasion was being planned and he called CENTCOM and asked if they were looking over the plan he'd helped devise, and the response was "Desert what?" In other words, the plan was thrown out.

Ah yes, here's the article...
Link (http://middleeastinfo.org/article3788.html)
And the quote...
So early in 1999 he ordered that plans be devised for the possibility of the U.S. military having to occupy Iraq. Under the code name "Desert Crossing," the resulting document called for a nationwide civilian occupation authority, with offices in each of Iraq's 18 provinces. That plan contrasts sharply, he notes, with the reality of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. occupation power, which for months this year had almost no presence outside Baghdad -- an absence that some Army generals say has increased their burden in Iraq.

Listening to the administration officials testify that day, Zinni began to suspect that his careful plans had been disregarded. Concerned, he later called a general at Central Command's headquarters in Tampa and asked, "Are you guys looking at Desert Crossing?" The answer, he recalls, was, "What's that?"

[Maclarny]

If you have read Al Franken's book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," you will haved learned that Clinton's defense team had prepared an anti-terrorist plan to crack down on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan way before 9/11 and get stronger at home. A Clinton advisor actually briefed Condolezza Rice although she has said she does not remember such a brief. Clinton's plan was ignored by the Bush Administration and ultimately, so was Al Qaeda.

[Waluigi]

This whole situation with Iraq practically mirrors what George Orwell dipicted of the government of being like in his book 1984.....

--Waluigi

[Durandal7]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/13/oneill.bush/

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said Tuesday his account of the Bush administration's early discussions about a possible invasion of Iraq has been distorted by a "red meat frenzy."

The controversy began when excerpts were released from a book on the administration published this week in which O'Neill suggests Iraq was the focus of President Bush's first National Security Council meeting.

That started what O'Neill described to NBC's "Today" show as a "red meat frenzy that's occurred when people didn't have anything except snippets."

"People are trying to make a case that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration," O'Neill said.

"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."

[Sayhey]

To me the more interesting part of this is whether there were advisors before 9/11 advocating the invasion of Iraq. Yes, the policy of the Clinton administration was to support regime change in Iraq, but it was not the use of US military forces to accomplish that aim. Wolfowitz, Perle, and others have been advocating the use of US military force for such purposes for almost a decade prior to 9/11. It leads to the question was there a part of the administration that was pushing for this prior to 9/11 and did they do so with acceptance of the President. If his statement of "Find out a way to make this happen" is referring to the use of US forces then it shows everything Bush told us about the war is a lie. If it is the product of a cadre of ideologues within the administration then it shows that such people need to be kept away from the levers of power and anyone who would give them such power needs to be voted out of office.

[zimv20]

yeah, the WH has spun this very intelligently, by agreeing to the letter of what o'neill's saying and avoiding the spirit.

i bet a lot of people will accept the "it was all part of normal wargaming and option exploring" argument, even as it glosses over the full-on intent o'neill talked about.

too bad such extensive thought wasn't given to the al qaeda threat.

"who could have imagined they'd fly planes into buildings," condi asked. how about those who went on about mobile WMD labs in iraq? or trans-atlantic drones? sheesh am i getting tired of being treated like i'm stupid and have no memory.

[Desertrat]

It's rather amazing to me to observe the difference in the package of Bush-as-governor and Bush-as-president. The overall "behavior" of the former had me supporting and voting for him for the latter.

I just do not at all like the pandering to us Old Farts with the "Pill Bill". Had it been set up with means testing, my objections would be less. But the majority of the elderly are quite able to pay for their own medicines, thank you, regardless of the griping as to the costs.

I think his ideas on dealings with Mexico and with illegals are wrong, insofar as "the good of the nation". (No point in "why"; we've done that.)

I've said before that I thought the emphasis on WMD was foolish; there were ample other reasons for the Iraq war. But, while I can subscribe to the "wargames theories", it seems there has been a lot of obfuscation/prevarication/BS about the whole deal. And, as I commented before, Zinni's idea of multiple offices around Iraq is very good. I guess I can forgive "wrong" more easily than I can forgive "stoopid".

I'm less concerned about the issue of oil. Forget the money; it's trivial, all in all. The physical and financial health of this country is dependent upon foreign oil. And if you think our foreign policies are aimed now at hegemony, consider the effect of another $10 to $20 a barrel in costs...(Oil is said by some in the industry to rise to $40, later this spring. I dunno. But, with the decline in the dollar, it's reasonable to expect that.)

'Rat

[IJ Reilly]

'Rat,

I don't want to take too much issue with you on this since I mainly agree with you here. But personally, I'm more inclined to excuse "wrong" and "stoopid" then I am "venal" and "dishonest."

If the case could be made to the American public for invading Iraq on the basis of Saddam being a Bad Man, then the White House would have made that case. Clearly, they did not think that dog would hunt, so they tapped our deepest fears and lathered on a bunch of phony-baloney nationalism to bring the public along. It's all incredibly cynical -- and that's another trait I can't excuse in elected officials.

[1macker1]

The war isn't about oil, never was. It's about setting up a US friendly government in the middle east.

[IJ Reilly]

WHEN PAUL O’NEILL SOUNDS LIKE TIP O’NEILL

Arianna Huffington

Struggling to reconcile the ever-widening gulf between what the Bush administration claims to be true and what is actually true is getting harder by the day. Fortunately, Paul O'Neill has a timely, if disturbing, diagnosis, backed up by some 19,000 pages of lab results: the country is being governed not by the genial figurehead now running toward the center in hopes of re-election but by a band of out and out fanatics.

On the administration's two defining issues, Iraq and taxes, the former Treasury Secretary paints a scathing portrait of a cabal of closed-minded zealots steadfastly refusing to allow anything as piddling as fact, evidence, or truth to get in the way of their unshakable beliefs and forgone conclusions.

According to O'Neill, invading Iraq was a Bush goal before he had even learned where the Oval office supply closet was. It came up just ten days after the inauguration, at the new president’s first National Security Council meeting. "It was all about finding a way to do it," he says. "That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'"

Of course, All the President's Men (and Condi, too!) did just that, gathering a collection of dubious facts, half-truths, quarter-truths, and--the House Specialty--no-truths (what "unpatriotic" people would call lies) to match the desired outcome. A slice of Nigerian yellowcake, anyone?

But hey, why let a little thing like the truth get in the way of a perfectly good war?

The picture of a White House teeming with fanatics gets even clearer with O'Neill's depiction of the Bush brain trust's dogged devotion to cutting taxes for the wealthy.

And, before I go any further, one word of advice to the White House attack dogs now unleashed on O'Neill: If you want to belittle his bona fides, you've got to come up with something better than saying "We didn't listen to him when he was here. Why should we now?" Let's get real. Is there anyone more central to developing economic policy than the Treasury Secretary? To be any more inside, O'Neill would have to have been George Bush's proctologist.

Now, of course, they're painting him out to be a cross between Jerry Garcia, Karl Marx and the disgruntled former employee who just shot up your local post office. Yeah, what an anti-establishment wackjob: Former CEO of Alcoa, and a friend of Don Rumsfeld's since the sixties.

Anyway, whether or not the cabinet choir of the church of tax cuts listened to him, O'Neill certainly listened to them, and now he's doing what this administration makes a fetish of not doing: telling the American people what their government is really up to. To hear O'Neill tell it, the true believers surrounding the president, headed by Karl Rove and O'Neill's one-time patron Dick Cheney, are all devout disciples of the first commandment of Bush Republicans: thou shalt cut taxes for the wealthy, no matter what the cost to the greater good. They have all drunk the supply-side Kool-Aid -- and simply don't care to hear any debate on this subject. Or on any other for that matter. According to O'Neill, "That store is closed". To disagree with the Bush clan is according to their vast, self-serving post 9/11 definition of patriotism, to hate America.

What's more, in classic fanatical fashion, the inner circle in the Oval Office displays an utter intolerance of dissent.

When O'Neill, who had the gall to be concerned about the looming fiscal crisis triggered by the growing budget deficit, argued against a second round of tax cuts, he was quickly put in his place by Cheney. "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter," growled the Vice President, blithely ignoring the nearly 20 years it took to undo the fiscal damage Reagan's budget-busting had wrought. Besides, added Cheney, sounding less like the most powerful #2 in history than a kid cajoling his parents into giving him ice cream because he has cleaned his plate, "We won the mid-term elections, this is our due." An over-stuffed gift bag for the president’s prosperous donor corps is our due? Is it actually possible to so badly misread what this country--or, indeed, democracy--is about?

It's a measure of how effectively the GOP radicals have framed the political debate, with taxes as the root of all evil, that Paul O’Neill, a bedrock-ribbed establishment Republican, comes across like Tip O’Neill.

Hell, it turns out even President Bush had his doubts about the virtue of following his first round of serve-the-rich tax cuts with a heaping second helping. "Haven't we already given money to rich people?" Bush asks at a 2002 meeting of his economic team. "Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?"

This momentary bout of presidential scruples was quickly cured by Karl Rove. "Stick to principle. Stick to principle. Don't waver," he urged Bush repeatedly. The principle, I suppose, being: "If we wanna win in 2004 we gotta keep our Pioneers and Rangers happy!" Boy Genius, indeed.

The most alarming thing that emerges from O'Neill's revelations is the total lack of leadership on Bush's part. Just as the president was finally outgrowing the long-standing rumors that he was a cheerful pawn in a game he was too dumb to understand, O’Neill applies the paddles to the “Bush as clown” image, turns on the juice, and yells, “Clear!”

At the very moment that Rove and the Bush re-election team are gearing up to sell us the president as the macho, heroic cowboy from Crawford who is going to keep us all safe from terrorists, despots, and Mad Cow meat, here comes his former Treasury Secretary with his devastating assessment of Bush as "a blind man in a roomful of deaf people".

Will this be the wakeup call that finally opens the American public's eyes to the deadly consequences of being governed by a disengaged dolt in the hands of a gang of brazen fanatics?

[flipperfeet]

Originally posted by 1macker1
The war isn't about oil, never was. It's about setting up a US friendly government in the middle east.

Respectfully, this comment runs counter to what even some of the right wing press acknowledges. Despite the shifting reasoning provided by the current administration: "Destruction of the 9/11 perpetrators-> Removal of terrorists->Removal of WMD ->Removal of an evil dictator->Freeing an oppressed people->nation building." Our current administration is in Iraq for oil and one family's revenge. We already have a US friendly government in the Middle East, Israel. Unfortunately, for this and previous administrations, they are not oil rich and they are becoming politically uncontrollable.

[Desertrat]

IJ, we might be coming from different directions, but your comment, "...so they tapped our deepest fears and lathered on a bunch of phony-baloney nationalism to bring the public along." is pretty close. Certainly, the fear-tapping about WMD was wrong.

flipperfeet, I tend to think of international affairs in terms of various goals to be achieved over different lengths of time. Multiple games of chess, if I may so view the actions.

Were we to help set up a government in Iraq which is friendly to our views and perceived needs, we could possibly use some areas in the western portion of the country as forward basing. That's quite desirable, strategically. It would let us move our forces out of Saudi Arabia and from the Persian Gulf ports, I think. I see such a situation as reducing the anti-US attitudes extant in the Gulf states--particularly in Saudi Arabia.

So long as the developed and the developing countries are dependent upon oil, we will have a national interest in the oil-producing countries. I see that as inescapable--whether I like it or not doesn't matter.

And so it goes...

'Rat

[IJ Reilly]

Originally posted by Desertrat
IJ, we might be coming from different directions, but your comment, "...so they tapped our deepest fears and lathered on a bunch of phony-baloney nationalism to bring the public along." is pretty close. Certainly, the fear-tapping about WMD was wrong.

You and I (and probably a few other posters on this board) are old enough to remember the Vietnam War first-hand. This entire war was based on a tissue of lies, and our continued involvement was built upon such a comprehensive and methodical series of deceits issued forth by two presidents that it almost defies belief. The people who made these claims before the Pentagon Papers were released were considered "wild-eyed" and quite possibly dangerous. Remember how Nixon tried to "get" Dan Ellsworth? I sure do. Eventually, everybody knew how cynical and self-serving people in power can be.

Maybe I'm wrong to have this history color my perceptions of current events, but I see evidence of the very same attitude plastered all over the Iraq debacle. Like Nixon in '72, the Bush people are mainly if not exclusively interested in getting through the next election. So the Bush administration sandbags the 9-11 investigation panel, they try to mow down anyone who might pull back the veil of secrecy. I hate this deja vu, but I've seen it all before. Haven't you?

[flipperfeet]

Originally posted by Desertrat
IJ, we might be coming from different directions, but your comment, "...so they tapped our deepest fears and lathered on a bunch of phony-baloney nationalism to bring the public along." is pretty close. Certainly, the fear-tapping about WMD was wrong.

flipperfeet, I tend to think of international affairs in terms of various goals to be achieved over different lengths of time. Multiple games of chess, if I may so view the actions.

Were we to help set up a government in Iraq which is friendly to our views and perceived needs, we could possibly use some areas in the western portion of the country as forward basing. That's quite desirable, strategically. It would let us move our forces out of Saudi Arabia and from the Persian Gulf ports, I think. I see such a situation as reducing the anti-US attitudes extant in the Gulf states--particularly in Saudi Arabia.

So long as the developed and the developing countries are dependent upon oil, we will have a national interest in the oil-producing countries. I see that as inescapable--whether I like it or not doesn't matter.

And so it goes...

'Rat

Agreed, oil is the driving force behind middle east, and much of the former USSR, policies.

Not to sound too green here (impossible not to given current environmental policies), but it is incredibly disheartening to watch the war driven deficit climb faster than a Carrera 4 towards 100 mph and know that if we were playing the energy chess game with our heads instead of knee jerk emotions we'd be better served by spending at this rate on non-oil/coal energy systems that would provide self sufficiency and free American from its current self destructive foreign policy.