Commentary ~ January 11, 2004: The Bush administration started
making detailed plans to invade Iraq within days of coming to office,
according to former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, who has gone
on the record through a new book entitled, The
Price of Loyalty. The book was written by former Wall Street
Journal reporter Ron Suskind. O'Neill reportedly gave Suskind 19,000
internal documents and took no money for his role in the book. Some
of the documents outline how Bush had divided up Iraq's oil wealth
to companies even before he came up with the lame excuse that Hussein
was hiding weapons of mass destruction. The book cites a "Top
Secret" Pentagon document entitled "Foreign Suitors For
Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," which, its says, talks about carving
Iraq's fuel reserves up between more than 30 of the world's oil
companies.
An interview with O'Neill aired Sunday night on the CBS program
"60 Minutes " in which O'Neill said the Bush administration
was eyeing an invasion of Iraq "from the very beginning."
In fact, Bush Jr. was so anxious to find a pretext to overthrow
Saddam Hussein and take its oil that he even resorted to lying to
the American people about the threat Iraq posed to the United States.
O'Neill admits that Bush is probably not the devil behind the details.
He says there was hardly any real interaction between the president
and his department heads during his time in the White House. He
describes Bush in his cabinet sessions as being "like a blind
man in a roomful of deaf people."
The Bush administration has responded to the allegations by vindictively
ordering the Treasury Department to go after O'Neill for leaking
the papers.
Links:
Back to News Index
|
