[Matchett-PI]

This commentary just arrived in my email from Laurie Myroie publisher of Iraq News newsletter.

[Valin]

I'd like to say I'm shocked...but that would be a lie.

[Republican Wildcat]

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.

I didn't realize such things were the business of the Treasury Secretary.

This guy is a joke and a fraud.

[nutmeg]

ping!

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

This is typical. With Bush riding high and the DemonRat front-runner crashing and burning, we'll be seeing more of these bogus stories about Bush starting the Iraq war to get rich and/or he started the war to win over the bloodthirsty swing voters who wanted revenge after Sept. 11th.

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.

[TatieBug]

Hope this info makes it to "Good Morning America" about the same time as Paul O'Neil.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Looks like the Demoncrats at work!

Education time ping!

[kcvl]

Judicial Watch
CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI
Sun Jul 20 18:19:06 2003
208.152.73.49

CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI
OILFIELDS
http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.b_PR.shtml

Commerce & State Department Reports to Task Force Detail Oilfield & Gas Projects, Contracts & Exploration




http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/7-21-03/discussion.cgi.45.html

[BigSkyFreeper]

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?)

Personally, I get the feeling CBS knew about the error, and in their abject bias to smear the Bush administration, they left the error in the report in tact and ran the story as is, knowing that if they didn't mention anything about the error, they would be able to pull the wool over the eyes of many viewers.

[TomB]

bump

[kabar]

Good post. Of course, we were planning on regime change in Iraq well before 9/11. Congress passed a resolution to that effect in 1998. Moreover, we were bombing Iraq almost daily enforcing the Sourthern and Northern no-fly zones. Billions of dollars were being spent every year to carry this policy out with no end in sight. We had thousands of personnel involved risking their lives. Any responsible new administration would have made Iraq a top priority. We needed to lance that boil and Bush, to his credit, had decided to do so.

[jpl]

I watched the "60 Minutes" piece last night, and I found most of what I heard to be simply not believable. The notion that Bush would talk about tax cuts and make a statement like "didn't we just give a bunch of money to the rich" is utterly preposterous. This sounds to me like something that O'Neill was thinking in his own head at the time.

Also, O'Neill's belief that the Bush trait of giving people nicknames like "The Big O" is just a form of bullying made him come off to me as just a little bit paranoid.

[Peach]

A good morning bump.

[O.C. - Old Cracker]

During an interview this morning with Katie Couric, Suskind quotes Paul O'Neill after his firing, "I'm rich, there's nothing they can do to hurt me."

Perhaps O'Neill heard one too many colleagues and CEO's chuckling behind his back. That, coupled with his enormous ego, and maybe because he couldn't stand to have the last line on his resume read, "Terminated".

Any bets on how long it will be before O'Neill is offered and accepts a visiting teaching gig at Harvard Business or Wharton?

[OldFriend]

Saw a newscast in the middle of the night and there was a photo of the heading on the document....clearly marked SECRET.

Will there be the same outcry as the media outing of Valerie Plame?

Hah!

[mhking]

I was a guest on NPR's "PowerPoint" last night, and the O'Neill statements came up. I pointed out, much to the chagrin of the caller who challenged me, that O'Neill's so-called "plans" were drawn up by the Clinton Administration, and passed (along with many other plans, suggestions and paperwork) to the Bush Administration en-total when Clinton left office.

All Administrations do that when they change. It is up to the incoming Administration to determine whether to use those plans or not.

Iraq didn't become truly a front-of-the-table issue until (most likely) the afternoon of 9/11.

The caller tried to push the issue, but was shut down by the host (the rather friendly and likeable Carmen Burns - formerly of WXIA - come to find out we know a lot of the same people; the broadcast business in Atlanta is pretty small to begin with), especially after I pointed out that the Clinton Administration had acted using that same data on multiple cases in the past (including the convenient Impeachment Day attack in December 1998).

Just damn.

If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...

[xzins]

Perhaps if during his tenure the Treasury Secretary, O'neil, had not been out looking for "evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," HE might have been able to do the job of "treasury secretary" -- a job at which he abjectly failed.

[Valin]

Ping

[finnman69]

ooopss bump

[1Old Pro]

People do strange things after they are fired.

[RetiredArmy]

He never saw any evidence of WofMD?????? Why the hell would HE be shown the evidence anyway??? What would O'Neil have to do with WMD? He was $$$, not bombs! This is the rants of an old man who basically got fired from his job. It should be taken with that grain of salt. No one fired says nice things about his boss afterwards - same here with whinebag ONeil.