Posted on 01/12/2004 11:10:01 AM PST by Howlin
The O’Neill Scoop
President Bush’s former Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, is charging that Mr. Bush began planning to oust Saddam Hussein within days of taking office — well before the attacks of September 11. The Washington Post called his remarks, made to Lesley Stahl of CBS News, “first hand testimony bolstering a longtime contention of White House critics.”
We don’t mind saying that we believe Mr. O’Neill’s great scoop to be true. We have little doubt that, as Mr. O’Neill says, that planning to oust Saddam did begin well before September 11, 2001. Certainly the White House was involved beginning within days, if not hours, of President Bush acceding. Even before that, scores of Republicans were involved — and, for that matter, many Democrats.
The planning really got under way in 1998, with the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which was enacted by a unanimous Senate and an almost unanimous House. As the Democrats work themselves into a lather over the question of whether Saddam did or did not have a role in September 11 or did or did not have weapons of mass destruction, this is the document to which to refer them. It has little to say about weapons of mass destruction. But it does contain a long preamble which sets forth the “findings” that were made by the Congress in the course of its work on the law.
The findings have to do with matters going all the way back to 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran. The findings cover Saddam’s forcible relocation of Kurdish civilians in the Anfal campaign and the killing of as many as 180,000 Kurds. The findings by the Congress cover the use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians at Halabja and the invasion of Kuwait. The findings also deal with U.N. Resolution 687, the centerpiece of the world body’s oversight of postwar Iraq. Congress also found that Saddam orchestrated a “failed plot to assassinate former President Bush during his April 14-16, 1993, visit to Kuwait.”
The findings of the Congress took note of Iraqi troop movements that continued to threaten Kuwait, of Saddam’s suppression of its opponents, of its denial of access to U.N. weapons inspectors. It went on to note President Clinton’s signing, on August 14, 1998, of Public Law 105-235, which declared that Iraq was “in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations” and urged the president to take “appropriate action.” It noted that on May 1, 1998, President Clinton signed Public Law 105-174, making $5 million available to the Iraqi democratic opposition for purposes of training and related matters.
Then the Iraq Liberation Act included its famous Section 3 — Sense of the Congress Regarding United States Policy Toward Iraq. This is the formal, legislated foreign policy of America. It said: “It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.” And lest this all be seen as theoretical, it went on to authorize $97 million in military support for this. It is true that the Clinton administration resisted spending that money, even though Mr. Clinton signed the law.
And Rush is on O'Neill's case too.
Alas, something the last administration did correctly.
""And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal. . . . In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now--a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.
"If we fail to respond today, Saddam, and all those who would follow in his footsteps, will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council, and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program."
A matched set of fools, suitable for bookends. And little more...
There he (PJB) goes again....
Buchanan or Saddam?
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