Posted on 01/11/2004 6:24:22 PM PST by Matchett-PI
In his appearance this evening on "60 Minutes," Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty, based to a large extent on information from former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, made an astonishing, very serious misstatement.
Suskind claimed he has documents showing that preparations for the Iraq war were well underway before 9-11. He cited--and even showed--what he said was a Pentagon document, entitled, "Foreign Suitors for Iraq Oilfield contracts." He claimed the document was about planning for post-war Iraqi oil (CBS's promotional story also contains that claim): http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/printable592330.shtml
But that is not a Pentagon document. It's from the Vice-President's Office. It was part of the Energy Project that was the focus of Dick Cheney's attention before the 9/11 strikes.
And the document has nothing to do with post-war Iraq. It was part of a study of global oil supplies. Judicial Watch obtained it in a law suit and posted it, along with related documents, on its website at: http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.c_.shtml
Indeed, when this story first broke yesterday, the Drudge Report had the Judicial Watch document linked (no one at CBS News saw that, so they could correct the error, when the show aired?)
And what are we to make of O'Neill's bigger claims, including that the Iraq war was planned from the first days of the Bush administration (cited by Wesley Clark today to buttress his assertion that there was no need for the war, it was all political)?
In late 2000 and early 2001, the Iraqi regime was trying increasingly hard to shoot down US planes enforcing the no-fly zones. That may well have opened up discussion about overthrowing Saddam in January and February 2001, as Suskind claims, but "Iraq News," which followed the issue very closely at the time, doubts very much that any decision was made to do so then. Perhaps tellingly, Suskind doesn't claim that those discussions continued beyond February.
Finally, O'Neill's statement to Time magazine, "I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction," is bizarre. From 1995 on, UNSCOM reported that Iraq retained major elements of its proscribed weapons programs. That was the consensual view within the US intelligence community on the eve of the war, as well as every other country engaged in the issue.
Because it feeds the "it-was-all-about-oil Bush's Unjust War", and "GW's Revenge" mentalities. -prairiebreeze
We see all the time how NYTABCCBSNBC are complicit in feeding just enough of that Dean anger. That said, I have just recalled that President Bush asserted there was no plan on his desk for an invasion of Iraq. This was during the buildup to the Congressional declaration.
LoL...
After the disasterous Nicholas Brady, you'd think they would have learned something. Now we have Snow, marginally better, but of the same ilk.
Already done :-). found it for next to nothing in good condition on some internet site the name of which escapes me. Might have been bookfinder.com or something like that.
The worst part of the book is the arbitrary way the war starts; the Germans just randomly attack. They would have at least tried to engineer a crisis, or fake a casus belli.
The torpedo attack in NY Harbor, and the Apaches brought into the NYC suburbs running around terrorizing German troops by killing and mutilating them, was quite cool though.
I didn't realize such things were the business of the Treasury Secretary.
This guy is a joke and a fraud.
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When visiting my parents this Christmas, I saw an issue of Newsweek sitting on the coffee table. The cover story was about how Dick Cheney bought into bad intelligence and engaged in cherry-picking intelligence because he was psycho about going to war in Iraq. This "inside story" of how the White House used selective perception to decide to go to war didn't name a single credible source. The whole story quoted anonymous sources "on the inside" and cited second- and third-hand conversations. I'd bet the proverbial house and lot that the entire article was dreamed up and typed by some correspondent looking to find yet another way to take a hit on Bush. The mainstream media has never been above straight-up lying.
The media doesn't need any solid reasoning to run these stories. They lie on a regular basis and are almost never held the slightest bit accountable. If really caught in a bad lie, somebody that they were wanting to get rid of anyway will get fired and the network will issue the standard apology/retraction that means less than nothing.
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