Bush admits he targeted Saddam from the start

[dkf]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/156352_bushsummit13.html

Bush admits he targeted Saddam from the start
Comments could boost criticism of president's case for war against Iraq

By STEWART M. POWELL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he was mapping preparations to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as soon as he took office.

Bush's comments came in response to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's contention in a new book that the chief executive was gunning for Saddam nine months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and two years before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Bush's comments appeared likely to stoke campaign claims by Democratic rivals for the White House that the president was planning to attack Iraq, possibly in retaliation for Saddam's attempted 1993 assassination of his father, former President Bush.

"The stated policy of my administration toward Saddam Hussein was very clear -- like the previous administration, we were for regime change," Bush told a joint news conference in Monterrey, Mexico, with Mexican President Vicente Fox. "And in the initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with (enforcing a no-fly zone over Iraq) and so we were fashioning policy along those lines."

[cthrumatrix]

1. so that means he planned the oil field "raid" as well - Illegal?

[Guaranteed]

2. NOTHING to do with 9/11.

Even with O'Neill's backtracking, this is excellent. We now have Bush saying that 9/11 was really irrelevant to his invading Iraq. It also leaves open the possibility of LIHOP....

[SlavesandBulldozers]

3. so

it takes outing by a former cabinet member to get him to admit this shit, eh? i wonder how many more defectors from his corrupt organization we can get.

[4dsc]

4. Time to IMPEACH BUSH!!

if the evidence is not clear now, when will it be??

[library_max]

5. Impeachment is a political process, not a legal process.

You need a majority in the House and a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Anybody think that's gonna happen?

[BigBadDaddy-O]

6. Which means he also lie during the debates

So he lied to his base support of votes, and is now admitting that.

[Gin]

7. That was my take on his statement too....he added then came 9-11

so there he admitted 9-11 gave him the oportunity he was looking for.

[RedSock]

8. and in feb.

and in feb. he had the fbi stop investigating OBL.

hmmmmmmmmmm

[Hubert Flottz]

10. Click on some of the links at the bottom of this webpage!

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

[NashVegas]

9. The Fascinating Thing About This Story

Every other news outlet, I've seen them use the same quotes as meaning he was saying O'Neill's claims were false.

[cthrumatrix]

11. that liberal media .....gotta love them