Time: Confessions of a White House Insider (O'Neill Interview)

[kskiska]

A book about Treasury's Paul O'Neill paints a presidency where ideology and politics rule the day

If anyone would listen to him, Paul O'Neill thought, Dick Cheney would. The two had served together during the Ford Administration, and now as the Treasury Secretary fought a losing battle against another round of tax cuts, he figured that his longtime colleague would give him a hearing.

O'Neill had been preaching that a fiscal crisis was looming and more tax cuts would exacerbate it. But others in the White House saw a chance to capitalize on the historic Republican congressional gains in the 2002 elections. Surely, Cheney would not be so smug. He would hear O'Neill out. In an economic meeting in the Vice President's office, O'Neill started pitching, describing how the numbers showed that growing budget deficits threatened the economy. Cheney cut him off. "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said. O'Neill was too dumbfounded to respond. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms. This is our due."

A month later, Paul O'Neill was fired, ending the rocky two-year tenure of Bush's first Treasury Secretary, who became known for his candid statements and the controversies that followed them. Rarely had a person who spoke so freely been embedded so high in an Administration that valued frank public remarks so little.

(snip)

But the book is blunt, and in person O'Neill can be even more so. Discussing the case for the Iraq war in an interview with TIME, O'Neill, who sat on the National Security Council, says the focus was on Saddam from the early days of the Administration. He offers the most skeptical view of the case for war ever put forward by a top Administration official. "In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction," he told TIME. "There were allegations and assertions by people.

(snip)

…Weeks after Bush had assured O'Neill that rumored staff changes in the economic team did not mean his job was in peril, Cheney called. "Paul, the President has decided to make some changes in the economic team. And you're part of the change," he told O'Neill. The bloodless way he was cut loose by his old chum shocked O'Neill, Suskind writes, but what came after was even more shocking. Cheney asked him to announce that it was O'Neill's decision to leave Washington to return to private life. O'Neill refused, saying "I'm too old to begin telling lies now."

more…
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040119-574809,00.html

[cthrumatrix]

1. shrub "exposed" -- told by his handlers war with Iraq --- now find a way

"A White House that seems to pick an outcome it wants and then marshal the facts to meet it seems very much like one that might decide to remove Saddam Hussein and then tickle the facts to meet its objective. That's the inescapable conclusion one draws from O'Neill's description of how Saddam was viewed from Day One. Though O'Neill is careful to compliment the cia for always citing the caveats in its findings, he describes a White House poised to overinterpret intelligence. "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," he tells Suskind. "And, if we did that, it would solve everything. It was 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.'"

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040119-574809,00.html

he has memo and emails...this drip will turn into a river of truth and eventually the media will be 'exposed as well'

[alfredo]

4. I noticed that CNN led off with this story. They gave it a fair read.

They also talked of the chemical weapons, pointing out that they were at least 10 years old and probably from a time when we supported Saddam. They even showed how old and degraded they were. Looks like the junta will have a hard time using those for propaganda purposes.

The tide is turning folks.

[Malva Zebrina]

16. true, and I was surprised

My husband checks out CNN in the morning and I heard it while in another room. He said to me "boy--that O'Neil is saying something not so nice about Bush" I told him I was astounded that it was being reported at all. That's different eh? He now wants to watch 60 minutes tonight.

[pinto]

2. great article. sure Admin will label as sour grapes....and limited access

to the "real" info....yet, the decision making process (or lack of it) O'Neil describes would surely explain all the mixed messages from different offices in the Admin...this Admin doesn't even trust itself.

[et in Arcadia ego...]

3. It's so obvious that Cheney is running the show.

That's what can be gleaned from the article. Bush has about as much power as Laura. He's a kept man. It's as though Cheney is the president, and Bush is an aide of sorts. Pathetic.

[Gin]

5. they picked the outcome they wanted with the intelligence too...

hope that connection is made in the conservative media.

[readmylips]

7. Actually, Boosh is the First Lady...the Prop

Don't have to know anything or even putting into an intelligent sentence. Laura is the toilet clearer.

[nostamj]

20. "Bush is an aide"

hardly.

bush* is a spokesmodel. a cheerleader. a puppet. a tool.

i don't believe he's ever advanced a policy on his own initiative.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Wow! The article is full of fodder:

Quite a bit of juicy bits, but these three stood out:

1) "As for the appetite for new ideas in the White House, he told Suskind, "that store is closed."

<An Administration that isn't open to new ideas is going to sink us in this environment where we badly need leadership and innovative ideas.>

2) "Where ideology did not win, electoral politics did...

"When the corporate scandals rocked Wall Street, O'Neill and Greenspan devised a plan to make CEOs accountable. Bush went with a more modest plan because "the corporate crowd," as O'Neill calls it in the book, complained loudly and Bush could not buck that constituency"

<So Bush may not be sensitive to general polls from the mainstream public, but he's obviously sensitive to polls to selective constituents. Why does the mainstream support him, when it's obvious that Bush is not concerned about their needs?>

3) "The biggest difference between then and now," O'Neill tells Suskind about his two previous tours in Washington, "is that our group was mostly about evidence and analysis, and Karl (Rove), Dick (Cheney), Karen (Hughes) and the gang seemed to be mostly about politics. It's a huge distinction."

<Yet, another insider explaining that ideology runs this administration and there aren't any studys to support their decisions. This is the Texan way. They think that might makes right, but instead we're being lead by dumb and dumber.>

[UTUSN]

10. But a Little Room for Backtracking, and CNN

".... O'Neill winces a little at that quote. He's worried it's too stark and now allows that it may just be Bush's style to keep his advisers always guessing."

And Wolfie just did two more seconds on it, running away immediately, "And now let's move on." Nothing to see here.

[The Backlash Cometh]

13. I think the verdict is out that Bush is an empty vessel.

We all knew from the beginning that he surrounded himself by "experts" to compensate for his ignorance.

[UTUSN]

18. Guess How the Media Whores Are Taking Credit

On the KURTZ circus, the topic was whether the media was painting DEAN as "angry"---painting TOO much, whether the media latches on to one talking point and runs with it. One of the guests said that, hey, maybe they DO do that, but that, after all, the media pegged CLINTON as shifty and a womanizer and it turned out to be true and they pegged Shrub as the "empty vessel" Backlash refers to and it turned out to be true. Like, yeah they really PROBED DEEPLY into whatever Shrub said or did--------NOT!

[The Backlash Cometh]

19. Clinton and Bush weren't exactly treated equally by the media.

Bush was COMMENDED for recognizing his limitations and surrounding himself by so many experts. I remember Tweety's sickening positive spin on this issue. What a jerk for not having the hardballs to say, "stupid is as stupid does."

[SharonAnn]

12. Isn't that what DiIulio basically said in his letter that called the

Bush gang the "Mayberry Machiavellis"?

He said that there was no policy discussion at any level or in any area of the White House Administration, it was all political evaluations and then a "policy" to get that political advantage.

[The Backlash Cometh]

15. Yup. And it doesn't escape me that two insiders concur. (eom)

*

[kskiska]

21. Yeah, and then someone got to him

and he backed off, claiming he misspoke or some such thing.
:crazy:

[alfredo]

8. Bush is just a puppet for the neo con team. It is time to impeach

the whole gang.

[LiberalFighter]

9. Impeachment is too good for the lot of them!!

[Grins]

11. So...

After he had been fired, which was after Bush made his case before Congress about WMD, Niger yellowcake, the imminent threat, (all of which he knew were all lies), and before Powell made his presentation to the UN - why hadn't he stepped forward, somewhere, sometime, to save the United States from going into a damn war, pissing off the world, and further throwing our economy in chaos?

Is the answer here, "Plus,...I'm an old guy, and I'm rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me"?

[BiggJawn]

14. He's supposed to be on "60 Minutes" tonight.

We've changed mealtime in order to catch him.
I hope I'm not disappointed....

[RedSock]

17. WOW

this article is devasting! amazing stuff!!! even if 40% of this gets any traction, it'll be huge!

:wow:

and yeah, cheney is clearing running the country. how anybody can read this article and think otherwise is beyond me.

[barbaraann]

22. Is Time delivered to newsstands in small planes?

I hope not.

[pacifictiger]

23. "oh what a tangled web we weave

when first we practice to deceive" - you'd think these people would have at least read the wisdom of shakespeare.
The downfall for liars is that it takes a lot to remember to whom you said what to and when you said it. The Cheney and company web seems to be developing some pretty big holes at long last.
Am I remembering correctly that it was Cheney who was chairman of the senate committee investigating the reagan/poppybush Iran/contra scandal that went nowhere beyond a couple of scapegoats? Seems that I remember "classified" documents being quashed then too and Cheney ubruptly said the investigation had concluded its findings.

[pinto]

24. Sam Ervin (remember him boomers?) used this phrase during Watergate

[bleedingheart]

25. O'Neill last statement about being too old and rich for them to touch

him is very telling....

[captain_change]

26. The "Liberal" NY Times coverage of O'Neil

I looked for something about this in the "left-wing" NY Times, no luck. But, the conservative Albany (NY) Times-Union ran an article buried in the second front section. If a Clinton Admin official said the same things, front page for days!!!

[tinrobot]

27. New Mantra....

"Blind man in a room full of deaf people."

Repeat as often as possible. We cannot let this one fade...