[IP] more on NYTimes.com: Op-Ed Columnist: The Awful Truth
Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 11:30:35 -0600
From: David Bolduc <dbolduc@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [IP] NYTimes.com: Op-Ed Columnist: The Awful Truth
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Setting aside for the moment Krugman's suddent reversal in his assessment
of O'Neill (see
http://www.musil.blogspot.com/2004_01_11_musil_archive.html#107397904946415695),
here's something from a biased source, but the facts alleged seem hard to
argue with.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/1/13/101255.shtml
Tuesday Jan. 13, 2004; 9:34 a.m. EST
Clinton, Congress Ratified 'Secret Bush Plan' to Depose Saddam
It turns out that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's so-called
bombshell revelation that the Bush administration had a "secret plan" to
depose Saddam Hussein before 9/11 wasn't such a secret after all.
In fact, not only did plans for "regime change" in Iraq NOT originate with
the Bush White House, the "sinister plot" was actually ratified by Congress
and signed into law by President Clinton a full three years before
President Bush came to Washington.
According to Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, "The 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act
was passed by an unanimous Senate and a near-unanimous House," after which
Mr. Clinton certified it as the law of the land with his signature.
What the Journal didn't note was how bold Clinton officials were about
their plans to topple Saddam.
According to a report in Newsweek just three months ago, after Clinton
signed the Iraqi Liberation Act, "the U.S. government convened a conference
with the [Iraqi National Congress] and other opposition groups in London to
discuss 'regime change.'"
In Jan. 1999, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even appointed a
special representative for transition in Iraq, Frank Ricciardone, who
reportedly had "a mandate to coordinate opposition to Saddam."
Said Albright at the time: "He will be assisted by a team that will include
both a military and a political adviser with extensive on-the-ground
experience in the region . . . With the aid of Frank Ricciardone and his
team, we will persist in helping the Iraqi people re-integrate themselves
into the world community by freeing themselves from a leader they do not
want, do not deserve and never chose."
Two months later, the Clinton administration's plans for a post Saddam Iraq
were already well underway, with State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin
explaining to reporters: "What we're trying to do . . . is strengthen an
Iraqi opposition movement that can lay out solid plans for the post-Saddam
recovery in all sectors of national life."
As the Washington Times noted at the time, "President Clinton has said that
getting rid of Saddam is a major U.S. objective."
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Farber [mailto:dave@xxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 11:20 AM
> To: ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [IP] NYTimes.com: Op-Ed Columnist: The Awful Truth
>
>
> [ Happy to publish opposing views djf]
<snip>
>
> Op-Ed Columnist: The Awful Truth
>
> January 13, 2004
> By PAUL KRUGMAN
>
>
> People are saying terrible things about George Bush. They
> say that his officials weren't sincere about pledges to
> balance the budget. They say that the planning for an
> invasion of Iraq began seven months before 9/11, that there
> was never any good evidence that Iraq was a threat and that
> the war actually undermined the fight against terrorism.
>
> But these irrational Bush haters are body-piercing,
> Hollywood-loving, left-wing freaks who should go back where
> they came from: the executive offices of Alcoa, and the
> halls of the Army War College.
>
> I was one of the few commentators who didn't celebrate Paul
> O'Neill's appointment as Treasury secretary. And I couldn't
> understand why, if Mr. O'Neill was the principled man his
> friends described, he didn't resign early from an
> administration that was clearly anything but honest.
>
> But now he's showing the courage I missed back then, by
> giving us an invaluable, scathing insider's picture of the
> Bush administration.
>
> Ron Suskind's new book "The Price of Loyalty" is based
> largely on interviews with and materials supplied by Mr.
> O'Neill. It portrays an administration in which political
> considerations - satisfying "the base" - trump policy
> analysis on every issue, from tax cuts to international
> trade policy and global warming. The money quote may be
> Dick Cheney's blithe declaration that "Reagan proved
> deficits don't matter." But there are many other
> revelations.
>
> One is that Mr. O'Neill and Alan Greenspan knew that it was
> a mistake to lock in huge tax cuts based on questionable
> projections of future surpluses. In May 2001 Mr. Greenspan
> gloomily told Mr. O'Neill that because the first Bush tax
> cut didn't include triggers - it went forward regardless of
> how the budget turned out - it was "irresponsible fiscal
> policy." This was a time when critics of the tax cut were
> ridiculed for saying exactly the same thing.
>
> Another is that Mr. Bush, who declared in the 2000 campaign
> that "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end
> of the spectrum," knew that this wasn't true. He worried
> that eliminating taxes on dividends would benefit only
> "top-rate people," asking his advisers, "Didn't we already
> give them a break at the top?"
>
> Most startling of all, Donald Rumsfeld pushed the idea of
> regime change in Iraq as a way to transform the Middle East
> at a National Security Council meeting in February 2001.
>
> There's much more in Mr. Suskind's book. All of it will
> dismay those who still want to believe that our leaders are
> wise and good.
>
> The question is whether this book will open the eyes of
> those who think that anyone who criticizes the tax cuts is
> a wild-eyed leftist, and that anyone who says the
> administration hyped the threat from Iraq is a conspiracy
> theorist.
>
> The point is that the credentials of the critics just keep
> getting better. How can Howard Dean's assertion that the
> capture of Saddam hasn't made us safer be dismissed as
> bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College
> says that the war in Iraq was a "detour" that undermined
> the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley Clark
> and others that the administration was looking for an
> excuse to invade Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light
> of Mr. O'Neill's revelations?
>
> So far administration officials have attacked Mr. O'Neill's
> character but haven't refuted any of his facts. They have,
> however, already opened an investigation into how a picture
> of a possibly classified document appeared during Mr.
> O'Neill's TV interview. This alacrity stands in sharp
> contrast with their evident lack of concern when a senior
> administration official, still unknown, blew the cover of a
> C.I.A. operative because her husband had revealed some
> politically inconvenient facts.
>
> Some will say that none of this matters because Saddam is
> in custody, and the economy is growing. Even in the short
> run, however, these successes may not be all they're
> cracked up to be. More Americans were killed and wounded in
> the four weeks after Saddam's capture than in the four
> weeks before. The drop in the unemployment rate since its
> peak last summer doesn't reflect a greater availability of
> jobs, but rather a decline in the share of the population
> that is even looking for work.
>
> More important, having a few months of good news doesn't
> excuse a consistent pattern of dishonest, irresponsible
> leadership. And that pattern keeps getting harder to
> deny.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/opinion/13KRUG.html?ex=10750
12061&ei=1&en=
77d348fe88aa0930
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