The Hindu : Iraq plan preceded 9/11 attacks, says ex-aide

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 12, 2004

International

International

Iraq plan preceded 9/11 attacks, says ex-aide

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, JAN. 11. The former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, has claimed that the President, George W Bush, began planning the ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq much before the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

"From the very beginning there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was bad person and that he needed to go," Mr. O'Neill has told CBS' Sixty Minutes which will be aired later on Sunday.

"For me the notion of pre-emption — that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do — is a really huge leap," he said.

Mr. O'Neill's claim on Iraq and his general characterisation of how the White House functioned in the first two years of this administration have already made their way into the Democratic campaign trail; and analysts believe that the comments are bound to have an impact in a Presidential election year.

According to the Democratic frontrunner, Howard Dean, the revelation underscores the importance of examining the "true circumstances of the Bush administration's push for war".

In the last several months, Democrats and other critics of the Republican administration have been questioning the rationale dished out for going to war with Iraq with many a suggestion that intelligence estimates and analysis were doctored for political reasons.

Mr. O'Neill is the chief source of the book `The Price of Loyalty' which is authored by Ron Suskind who won the Pulitzer Prize as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Suskind is said to have talked to Mr. O'Neill nearly every day in 2003 and had gone through thousands of documents while putting together his work.

Mr. O'Neill has been quoted as saying that at the National Security Council meetings, no administration official questioned the need for the invasion of Iraq. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President saying `Go find me a way to do this'", he says in the book.

According to a CBS news release, Mr. Suskind makes the point that Mr. O'Neill and other White House insiders he interviewed gave him documents that showed that in the first three months of 2001, the administration was looking at military options for ousting Mr. Hussein and planning the aftermath which would include war crimes tribunals, peacekeeping troops and Iraq's oil.

One secret Pentagon document, according to Mr. Suskind, speaks about contractors from about 30 or 40 countries who may be interested in Iraqi oil.

The response of the White House has been along expected lines.

"We appreciate his service. While we're not in the business of book reviews, it appears the world according to Mr. O'Neill is more about justifying his own opinions than looking at the reality of the results we're achieving on behalf of the American people," the spokesman, Scott McClellan, remarked.

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