O'Neil was an incompetent boob

[DrBB]

I considered holding my tongue on this, and yes I'm glad that yet another *admin guy--the most highly placed one so far--is opening fire on the Chimp. But, um, we do remember, don't we, that over the first year of his tenure O'Neil was proving himself to be incompetent wasn't he? I mean, do I misrecall, or wasn't he prime evidence that despite their ostensible reputation for being businessmen and good with the economy 'n' stuff, the administration was way off track on this issue? Making things worse rather than better?

Remember how he kept running off at the mouth at highly sensitive moments, exacerbating problems he should have been ameliorating? Off in Africa on a junket with Bono and completely unavailable when the markets and the dollar into were going into tailspin? Wasn't he suffering from some pretty invidious comparisons with Robert Rubin around here?

Not to rain on anyone's parade--well, only a little, maybe, I dunno. Not sure exactly where this leaves us. Maybe it has no bearing on the immediate situation. But it bugs me, from a historical perspective. Maybe I don't want to just lose track of things, like some kind of media airhead or one of the reichpundits. I mean, if we accuse the media of dropping things down the memory hole, we shouldn't let our own memories play tricks on us about things like this, yeah?

on edit: Robert Rubin, sheesh. Terrible with names. Always have been.

[1monster]

1. I sure remember the Bushies getting all uptight when O'Neil

didn't toe the Administration line and told the truth when he was supposed to be lying. Is that what you mean?

[dweller]

2. so basically we were in agreement

with the *moron's staff's assessment of O'neill's abilities?
That's pretty much the spin coming from them now to discredit this whistleblower.

dp

[cthrumatrix]

38. exactly...never mind facts of lies and deception....he clearly has data

and "if the media finds a spine" then there will be something soon

If not...we have clark and dean all year ready to tear this president apart.

[economic justice]

3. Actually....

"Off in Africa on a junket with Bono...."

Seeing interviews with him and Bono, I knew that O'Neill was a different man than the rest of these Bush critters. I had to respect him after that. He talked about priorities like a good Democrat! It was quite surprising at the time and now, I'm not so surprised....he seems like an honest guy who thinks it's time to blow the whistle.

[Cleita]

4. They are all incompetent.

O'Neill was something of an outsider and not considered a team player. But if he opens up this can of worms, I commend him for finding his conscience.

[Catfish]

7. He didn't know what type administration he was joining.

He served under two other administrations and he has stated that he thought that Bush would govern from the center. He also seemed quite shocked by the transformation in Cheney.

[Catfish]

5. The issue to me is the hypocrisy of the Bushies

They praised him upon the nomination, they fired him for not sticking to their political agenda and now they are trashing him. No matter what his job performance was, his revelations about Bush and the runup to the war seem to be backed up with evidence and I haven't seen them denied in any legitimate way.

[trumad]

10. So does his incompetent boobness trump Schrubs

I seriously doubt it....

[Catfish]

14. That's a good point

Supposedly O'Neill issued some ill-advised statements. How many has Shrub issued, how many gaffes, errors, misstatements has he issued? Many more than anyone else in his admin.

[TheMiddleRoad]

46. When Bush Mis-states

When Bush makes a flub, some administration official is expected to come forward and take credit for mis-advising Bushy.

[demgrrrll]

18. Well, an enemy of my enemy is my friend and in this instance and in

these times we can use all the friends we can get. Someone
needs to topple this regime and anyone who can help is OKE DOKE with me within an ethical framework. Your concerns are not based on anything unethical he did, just that you think he was incompetent in his position? That doesn't make his information worthless and 19,000 pages is a lot of back-up. O'Neil wasn't a fool in that regard, he took the proof with him. I think you are over thinking this one.

[mike1963]

6. It's possible the case could be made that he was incompetent, but perhaps

that was because he was at odds with the Shrubbery? And being incompetent doesn't mean he can't be honest (or repentant, if that obtains)...

What about Powell? Most people thought (still think?) he is essentially competent but could he also be hamstrung by the neocon agenda?

I guess I have more questions than answers...

[Catfish]

11. Other admin sources

The author has stated that he had other administration sources for the book, so it's not just O'Neill's word and recollection.

[mike1963]

34. Yes, that's an important point. There's corroboration.

;-)

[buycitgo]

8. Paul Rubin?

you mean Pee Wee Herman Rubens?

or Robert Rubin?

you're right about his incompetence, plus penchant for idiotic, insensitive pronouncements.....reminded me of Earl Butz

my old GF has worked for treasury for almost 20 years now, and said, except for Snow, he was the worst.

going to give her a call soon, and see what she has to say about the current brouhaha

ha ha ha

[DrBB]

17. Robert Rubin. Corrected--thanks.

Terrible with names. Always have been. I usually double check but not this time. Sheesh.

[Terwilliger]

9. I dont think it ever hurts to hear a Repuke attack Bush

but, he's served in 5 administrations, so the Pukes must think highly of him

[slor]

12. Smart enough to document...

19,000 pages worth of good ol' incriminating pieces of evidence. WooHoo!

[Malva Zebrina]

45. my thought too

he had gotten wind of something and knew what to do. This is not a disgruntled employee--he knew for his own good, he had better keep a record of what was being thrown at him so he did, even before the fallout , I would say, and that was smart. It seems to me he may have had some suspicion that he could be screwed badly by Bush and Cheney, because now he has got it all down in a book and also, it is practically irrefutable because of his attention to this detail--there is no "speculation"--the guy has it all down in black and white and besides that there is another person who is reputable that has seen it all and helped to write the book--I think it is Don Suskind--or Ron Suskind-missed the first name. He is quite familiar with it all also. That makes two and who knows where the information has gone and where it will gol It is not like that doctor who suddently disappeared over a bridge and ended up in the Mississippi river three days later. There are people who now know all of it and it is not only one person.

[dweller]

20. but but

didn't the statement from the WH say, 'we didn't listen to him then, why should we now?'
(CBS nitely news just now)

5 admins, huh....only the last one 'didn't listen to him'?

:eyes:
dp

[madrchsod]

13. he realized probably from the first few

meetings that bush was an idiot. he knew he`d be gone as soon as he started to question the rape of the treasury. he waited till they fired him cause he realized he was complete irrelevant

[Catfish]

19. I think I remember

from the Time article that Cheney asked him to resign and he refused because he wasn't going to lie.

[moondust]

15. It's not about him or his character.

I think it's more about the documentation he bears and has chosen to make public.

[economic justice]

16. You got it! That's the bottom line really.....<eom>

[DoYouEverWonder]

21. Out of the mouths of babs and idiots

comes the truth?

Incompetent doesn't necessarily mean dishonest? As a matter of fact, Bu$hler probably saw his honesty has a major flaw?

[PretzelWarrior]

22. some informants are lowest life forms

who will look for a payoff or grow a bit of a conscience. Who cares about the CV of the person airing the dirty laundry? Who's the Fuckup that hired him? Answer me that?

I'm sure you'll find our fine man, O'Neill, had his hands tied by the real powers of the white house. Even the book seems to make that case. He didn't make a lot of money in banking by being an incompetent boob.

Duh. think about it. You are helping the repubs with a false straw man argument.

[DrBB]

23. Try reading my post

I'm not arguing that the Replicants are right to dismiss what he's saying on the basis of his record as Treasury Secretary. As my post said, this doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the validity of his witness. I'm simply reminding us of where WE were with this guy back at the time--and it bore no small resemblence, in fact, to what the reichpundits are saying about him. We have a tendency to veer from excoriation to idol worship with very little in between.

"False straw man argument" is redundant by the way.

[TacticalPeek]

24. So?

Maybe I wouldn't vote for him, or wouldn't appoint him.

The same goes for David Stockman from Raygun's reign.

Nevertheless, I have to admire anyone who gets up on their hind legs and tells the truth. Especially when I take into account the disgusting nature of those he is speaking against. And he knew full well the onslaught he would incite from this brutal gang of thugs. I'd definitely say he's got a pair.

[AlinPA]

28. O'Neil worked with Stockman on budget at OMB.

[arewethereyet]

25. Exactly correct which is why this will go away and so will ONeill

a sad and bitter man

[JanMichael]

26. Dude, they all suck, they're ALL incompetant.

All I'm interested in is his Iraq comments.

Other than that O'Neill can take a flying fucking leap. I don't dig Plutocrats, period.

[aquart]

27. I don't know what he WAS, but......

If he's agreeing that there's real growth in the economy and things are now improving because of the tax cuts, then he's definitely an incompetent ninny.

[economic justice]

30. Missed his point

His point was that without the SECOND ROUND of tax cuts, the economy would have had 6% 'real" growth and money to do other things with - but not now.

[elfin]

29. when everyone was bashing him I felt bad that I

never really minded him as much as everyone else. Altho I knew he wasn't a "real" Treas. Sec. having come from such a narrow base of experience via Alcoa and the corporate world - he didn't really raise my hackles. His trip to Africa was his undoing and more fodder for my approval in that he was open to factors that affect global economic issues.

He wasn't listened to before - and now I fear he won't be listened to now.

He was creamed by the media - now it is just a mopping up operation. I wish him well.

[candy331]

35. I hope that his coming out will perhaps cause

some other real patriotic brave courageous soul/souls to come forth
also. Sometimes all is needed is for one to know that they are not in it all alone. Maybe Greenspan will come forth too.

[jab105]

31. Dont kick a fucking gift horse in the mouth...

this is the biggest break we have gotten in a while...lets take advantage of the claims instead of complaining...

[Mika]

32. Didn't he cry at a congressional hearing?

He was accused of being out of touch with the hard working people of this nation. He shed tears defending the _Bush admin.

[Catfish]

37. It was Robert Byrd

and O'Neill sort of having a contest about who had the more deprived childhood. I do remember that O'Neill had tears in his eyes.

[BiggJawn]

They were pressing him hard.

And I think what we were seeing were tears of pent-up rage, as in "How DARE you adress me in such a manner! I'm the fuckin' former CEO of ALCOA! YOU are just a lowly Senator!"

I wa not impressed by the guy. my girlfriend looked at me and said "is this guy THAT damn naive, that he doesn't think the Bushies will come after him?"

[Marymarg]

33. Read the book.

O'Neil is a very bright man. I am two/thirds way through the
book and could hardly be more impressed with him. He seems
like a decent person who could not stomach the insanity of
this administration. 

Read the book before being so hard on O'Neil.

[TheMiddleRoad]

48. Assuming

Assuming of course that he wrote it. Republicans are notorious for using ghost writers.

[kentuck]

36. Can one be "incompetent" and still be telling the truth?

Or doesw that disqualify everything he might say...?

[grasswire]

39. consistency is everything

One of the greatest ironies of the time is the way the Republicans have dismissed such pillars of conservatism as states' rights, the immutable Rule of Law, fiscal integrity, and the Bill of Rights and privacy issues in order to prop up George W. Bush. They aren't even ashamed to have repudiated nearly every one of their own principles.

I appreciate your espousal of consistency, Dr. BB. Let us be who we are all the time. Let our Democratic values remain constant.

O'Neill may be useful. But we should beware of hypocrisy while we hope he will serve our purposes.

[kentuck]

40. But is it just "our" purpose, grasswire??

isn't it beneficial for the nation that the truth come out? Not just DU, but I'll take the truth from David Brock or Paul O'Neil if it helps expose this corrupt and dangerous regime.

[DrBB]

41. Thanks. It was a post about US, not about O'Neil

That's what I was trying to get at, Grasswire, thanks for picking up on it. In all the hoopla I suddenly remembered my OWN opinion on O'Neil back then. It's not that I want us to go around discrediting what he's saying now--like I say (and Kentuck reiterates), I'm not sure his competence as SecTreas has any bearing on the truth of his witness to ShrubCorp skullduggery. It's just that I don't want us to go dropping things down the memory hole as if we were Republicans or mediawhores ourselves.

Maybe too subtle a point to be really an appropriate thread topic, that's why I vacillated on posting it, knowing it would probably be misunderstood. But I didn't quite want to let it go unspoken either. I'm glad one person picked up on where I was coming from anyway.

Okay with me if this dies now.

[mrdmk]

43. I know you do not think much of O'Neill

This was part of Al Gore's speech on August 7, 2003

<snip>
Since this curious mismatch between myth and reality has suddenly become commonplace and is causing such extreme difficulty for the nation's ability to make good choices about our future, maybe it is time to focus on how in the world we could have gotten so many false impressions in such a short period of time.

At first, I thought maybe the President's advisers were a big part of the problem. Last fall, in a speech on economic policy at the Brookings Institution, I called on the President to get rid of his whole economic team and pick a new group. And a few weeks later, damned if he didn't do just that - and at least one of the new advisers had written eloquently about the very problems in the Bush economic policy that I was calling upon the President to fix.

But now, a year later, we still have the same bad economic policies and the problems have, if anything, gotten worse. So obviously I was wrong: changing all the president's advisers didn't work as a way of changing the policy.

I remembered all that last month when everybody was looking for who ought to be held responsible for the false statements in the President's State of the Union Address. And I've just about concluded that the real problem may be the President himself and that next year we ought to fire him and get a new one.
<snip>

O'Neill does have some real world experience in both in politics and in corporations. This experience has led O’Neill to do what he is doing presently. I do not doubt that the reason for the documentation was a forecast of future events. Most people who do lead a corporation are not destructive by nature. The successful C.E.O. may not understand his company one hundred percent, but this is not his job. The job of a C.E.O. is to put the correct people in positions for them follow a coherent plan and the C.E.O. to understand the past and the present to lead into the future for success. We can say O’Neill was not the best of picks, on the other hand we can also say he was not in an environment to where he could shine and excel.

[DrBB]

44. Thanks--once again Mr Gore shows his quality

Very illuminating and on-topic. I'm less interested in O'Neil himself in this thread than in US--what we on the left have said about him and where that leaves us in the current situation. Very nice, nuanced view of him by Gore.

Ultimately it is the Chimp who is responsible. That's the nature of being the top guy, and always the part of it that he has liked the least. Lording it over people, not having to listen to opinions he doesn't like, taking vengeance on enemies and rewarding friends--that's all the fun part. Actually taking the responsibility when the policies or appointments that have your name on 'em don't work out so hot, that's just no fun at all.

[Postman]

42. A stopped clock is right twice a day. What's your point?

This is an insider giving us outsiders a view of what went on or, as it turns out, what didn't go on (free flow of ideas) in the meetings. What does his job performance have to do with that?

You may not like him but he is no dummy. You don't get to those types of positions without having SOME smarts.

[philosophie_en_rose]

47. Incompetence is a job skill in the Bush administration.

The restrictive environment, lack of intellectual discussion, and bullying atmosphere don't promote excellence either.

Of course he's bitter and probably corrupt, but at least there was a threshold of irresponsibility that he wouldn't cross.

[shance]

49. Individuals often react to insanity surrounding them by acting out.

Sounds like O Neill was experiencing a very powerless situation, where what he was seeing enacted by the White House conflicted with his conscience to such a degree that being in such an unstable, unpredictable, and probably dangerous (so to speak)environment, he reacted inappropriately (atleast in distant observers eyes) at times by saying things at the wrong times and heading to Africa with Bono.

Just take a look at dysfunctional families and usually the one acting out the most, is the one the least tolerant of the dysfunction going on around them, and usually the one most affected by the dishonesty and suppression of the truth within the family.

[DrBB]

50. A kick, in honor of O'Neill's RETRACTION

Yup, had his John DiIulio* moment this a.m. on the Today show. Took it all back, tugging his forelock, looking like a cringing shlump.

Guess we were right back then all along.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Coiner of the term "Mayberry Machiavellis" and author--well, SIGNER anyway, of the following:

"John DiIulio agrees that his criticisms were groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples. He sincerely apologizes and is deeply remorseful."

[Hubert Flottz]

51. What the man said about Bush, sounds right to me, Look..........

Enter Saddam Hussein

<SNIP>

A little background is necessary: In June of 1997 a group of former republican administration officials launched The Project for the New American Century, a think tank offering research and analysis on a “revolution” in modern military methods and military objectives. Like the energy task force, the passionate neo-conservative authors endowed their Principles with hard-hitting force, calling for the necessity of “preserving and extending an international order friendly” to America’s “security, prosperity and principles.” The founders wrote: “The history of the 20th Century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge and to meet threats before they become dire.” In fact, on pages 51 and 67 of the institution’s intellectual centerpiece, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, the authors lament that the process of transforming the military would most likely be a long one, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” (How unfortunate for Americans, they got their needed event on September 11, 2001.)

The signers to the “principles” read like a who’s who of the Bush administration plus a chorus line of supporters: Dick Cheney, I. Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Elliott Abrams, plus world famous: William Bennett, Jeb Bush, and Dan Quayle, among others.

The signers endorsed two other dynamic enabling policies: increased military spending, and the necessity of challenging “regimes hostile to America’s interests and values.”

The seventy-six-page Rebuilding America’s Defenses was published in 2000. With a lot of expositional swagger, the authors created not only the ideal military preparedness level for their goal of global domination, but they identified a new kind of warfare that requires far less “force” than the military was accustomed to accept. What’s more, they identified the “hostile regimes” mentioned in the “Principles” to be none other than Iraq, North Korea, Iran and Syria.



http://www.yuricareport.com/PoliticalAnalysis/FraudinWhiteHouse.htm

[DrBB]

52. Of course it was. But now he's RETRACTING

It's not about the substance, it's about the IMPACT, and it's about our earlier judgment of O'Neill's competence and CHARACTER.

Vid. the threads about O'Neill's Today show appearance.

I think we were right all along. He was a lousy Secretary of the Treasury, and he's even worse as a whistleblower.

[Hubert Flottz]

53. What do you expect out of a Repub that talks like Daffy duck or

Sylvester the cat? Sylvester must be getting some scary phone calls! The Bush Gangstas probably have a hit man on the way to the boob's house! The day O'Neill cried real tears under intense questioning by democrats in that senate hearing, showed me that he thought the things Bush was making him do were wrong! Paul O' was not as good a cold blooded liar as Mr. Snow(job)is!

[dansolo]

54. Incompetent, or following orders

I wonder if part of O'Neill's ill-advised statements were actually a result of him being forced to parrot policies that he personally disagreed with (similar to Colin Powell's presentation at the UN).

[Dhalgren]

55. It's like when Joe Vallacci(sp) ratted out the Mob.

Was he a choir boy? No, he was a heartless killer. Was he a concerned citizen? Hell no, he was trying to save his own ass. But these things did not negate the truth or impact of his testimony - in fact they lent it credence.