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Dignity: Maybe it's because his father was born with a silver foot in his mouth that President Bush learned to be gracious to even his most bitter political rivals....He's been called a moron (former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien), a Beelzebub (Sean Penn, who cleverly added, "and a dumb one") and a son of a bitch (Democrat Paul Hackett, who lost his bid last year for an Ohio congressional seat)....lying bastard, evil maniac, Fuehrer (all courtesy of Cindy Sheehan), white-knuckle drunk (Martin Sheen), George bin Bush (assorted wags), terrorist (a universal invective) and fascist (both implied and claimed by a...

No sooner do I finish pulverizing the anti-Bush lunatic Geoff (tagline gives the link to that thread) then I start in with another person, someone who seems more rational, less emotionally involved in any anti-Bush causes. One of his contentions is based on Paul O'Neill's book, and the accusation that Bush was already planning an attack on Iraq before 9/11 took place. I'm already combing the FR archives, but specific information I'm looking for includes: The plans for an invasion in Iraq were merely plans already drawn up by the Clinton crew, correct? I recall reading that O'Neill wished to...

Twenty Years after TWA 847, No Lessons Learned By Debbie Schlussel Twenty years ago, this week, Hezbollah terrorists hijacked TWA Flight 847, and trampled Navy Diver Robert Stethem to death. Stethem's only crime was being American. The hijacking and murder was among the first televised Islamic terror attacks against Americans, unfolding on TV screens over 17 days. Twenty years later, disturbing kowtowing to Hezbollah terrorists shows we've learned nothing from Stethem's brutal murder at the hands of Islamic terrorists. On September 11, 2021, will it be worse? On June 15, 1985, Hezbollah hijackers seized the TWA flight in Athens. Identifying...

O'Neill criticizes UPMC as he quits its board Says health care provider failed to embrace plan to eliminate medication errors Thursday, December 09, 2004 By Pamela Gaynor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has quit the board of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, saying he did so because he was frustrated that the region's largest health care provider would not embrace a regional plan for eliminating medication errors.      Paul O'Neill ... chides UPMC for not joining plan to eliminate medication errors. Without UPMC's full participation in projects to improve the quality of medical care, O'Neill...

I see that Alexander isn't so cocky-forgive the tactless play on his sexual preference-about Kerry mopping up the floor with President Bush come November. Could he be having buyer's remorse, perhaps?

It is rare to have books exploring the legacy of a presidential administration still in its first term. It is rarer still to have the number of insider accounts that Americans have access to in 2004. “These books appear to be painting history before our eyes,” said Charlotte Abbott, news editor of Publishers Weekly. “No one in the industry of publishing can remember a time since Watergate when so many political books have come out and the public has been interested – and a lot of those Watergate titles came out after.” One of the reporters who first exposed Watergate,...

Jan. 28, 2004--Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-profit legal watchdog group, sent a letter to President Bush asking that he call upon the White House Counsel to investigate Vice President Cheney's confirmation of leaked classified information in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News on January 9, 2004. Federal law prohibits leaking classified information. Confirming information that has already been leaked is also prohibited. In his Jan. 9th interview, Mr. Cheney referred his interviewer to a story that appeared in The Weekly Standard's November 24, 2003 issue. The story, written by Stephen F. Hayes, discussed...

(CBS/AP) After two days of Sept. 11 hearings at which it was charged he did not treat the terror threat with sufficient urgency, President Bush felt compelled to respond. Excerpted-click here for full article. =============================================================== BUSH KNEW! Part II . . . or is this Part III? In yet another bombshell revelation that has Washington again reeling in shock, a new book claims that Bush, months before the Sept. 11th attacks -- indeed, within days of being sworn in -- began planning an Iraq invasion. Oh, wait -- that's another book . . . by whatchamacallit? . . . um,...

WASHINGTON – A Texas Democratic fundraiser, speaking not for attribution, told me about the lunch he recently had at the home of former President Clinton in the New York suburbs. Clinton recounted his last meeting with President Bush over coffee, just before the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2001. The outgoing president counseled his successor that he would face five challenges in the international arena - the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Al Qaeda terrorist threat, a nuclear-armed North Korea, the India-Pakistan confrontation, and the Saddam Hussein dictatorship in Iraq.Clinton was surprised at Bush's response. He said he disagreed with Clinton's order -...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush directed the Pentagon to develop plans to confront Iraq if it tried to exploit the U.S. military's engagement with Afghanistan in fall 2001, a White House official said Wednesday. But spokesman Scott McClellan insisted the "contingency" plan was not a blueprint for a full-scale invasion of Iraq, as Bush's former counterterrorism chief contends in a new book. "Obviously, it was important to have contingencies in place in case Iraq tried to take advantage of the president's military action in Afghanistan," McClellan said. Moreover, Iraq had been firing for years at American pilots patroling the no-fly...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign is getting an unexpected boost from an unlikely bunch: former Bush administration officials and congressional Republicans.</p> <p>In the past week, GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) have broken ranks and defended Kerry against President Bush's assertion that the Massachusetts senator is weak on national defense.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON -- Sensitive national-security information was mistakenly released by the Treasury Department to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, but no criminal statutes were violated, records show.</p> <p>Mr. O'Neill drew on some of the material -- part of a cache of 19,000 documents -- for a memoir released in January that was critical of President Bush. When a document stamped "Secret" was displayed on a CBS "60 Minutes" episode concerning the book, the Treasury Department sought an investigation.</p>

<p>March 22 (Bloomberg) -- No laws were broken when the U.S. Treasury Department released documents to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who presented them to an author to write a critical book on President George W. Bush, the department's inspector general said in a report.</p>

WASHINGTON - Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill received 140 sensitive documents that should have been marked classified, the Treasury Department’s inspector general said Monday. The report found that while the department’s review system for classifying documents needed improvement, no federal laws had been broken in the incident. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Associated Press and other news media, the Treasury Department’s inspector general released several hundred pages covering its investigation of how O’Neill received some 19,000 documents that were used to write a book highly critical of President Bush. The new report found...

Quoting Senator Kennedy: "We now know that from the moment President Bush took office, Iraq was given high priority as unfinished business from the first Bush administration." What are the stubborn facts? The policy to remove Saddam Hussein was not left over from the first Bush administration, but, rather, unfinished business from the Clinton administration. Upon entering office in January of 2001, President Bush inherited from the Clinton administration a policy of regime change. That policy was based upon the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act (P.L. 105-338), which stated, "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts...

First Lady wannabe Teresa Heinz Kerry had a good friend inside the Bush White House - former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who, after he was fired, wrote a book that painted the president as an ignoramus who was itching to go to war with Iraq. "I have to mention how proud I am to share this podium today with my friend . . . fellow Pittsburgher, Paul O'Neill," Mrs. Kerry said while delivering the commencement address at Carnegie Mellon University last May. "Paul is a decisive, intelligent man who speaks his mind, and I have always admired that about...

Why did we invade Iraq? One scene from "The Price of Loyalty," Ron Suskind's look through the eyes of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, helps answer that. The book is, of course, from the point of view of a man who was fired. But he was a man with a reputation for telling unpleasant truths. Furthermore, the president he describes does look like the president we see on television. O'Neill describes a meeting of the National Security Council, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Condi Rice and others. It was Jan. 30, 2001. Bush had been in office 10...

Get Your Bush Docs Here! Ron Suskind posts the evidence online. By Timothy Noah Posted Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004, at 8:55 AM PT The various revelations in Ron Suskind's book The Price of Loyalty are based largely on a trove of 19,000 documents that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill gave him. Some have criticized Suskind for striking a Faustian bargain in which he accepted at face value O'Neill's often comically outsized self-regard in exchange for the information O'Neill was in a position to provide about the inner workings of the Bush White House (which might be summed up by the...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has been cleared of wrongdoing in the use of classified documents as source material for a book that portrayed President Bush in an unflattering light, Treasury Department sources told CNN on Friday.</p>

<p>Documents given to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill (search) for a book contained classified information, according to a letter his successor John Snow (search) sent to Congress on Friday.</p> <p>The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, said that a preliminary investigation conducted by the Treasury Department's inspector general found that sensitive information was released in the documents given to O'Neill when he left the department.</p>

Drudge Headline Breaking. Nothing else yet.

O'Neill's Backlash Against Bush Was Predictable by Howard Phillips Posted Feb 4, 2004 It isn't always nice to say "I told you so," but sometimes it is necessary. Paul O'Neill's blast at the Bush Administration, subsequent to his firing by Dick Cheney, was entirely predictable. He had previously opposed a President who promoted him -- Richard Nixon. As I wrote in December, 2000, Paul O'Neill was an LBJ "Great Society" Democrat, who, in 1973, as Deputy Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), strongly resisted the desire of President Richard Nixon to close down LBJ's "Great Society."...

9/11 widow Ellen Mariani(Derry, N.H.) says George W. Bush is a gangster. We talk to her and her lawyer Philip J. Berg: Ellen Mariani last saw her husband Louis Neil early on the morning of September 11, 2001, at Logan Airport, where they were taking different flights to Los Angeles for a daughter’s wedding. He hadn’t gotten his tickets until the last minute, and couldn’t get on her flight, but there were seats open on Flight 175. Neil Mariani died when that plane crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center, and after rejecting a settlement offer of...

PAUL O'NEILL WON'T GO AWAY Fired former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill is in the news again. He now says that he stands by his criticism of the inner workings of the Bush administration, but regrets his "vivid language" is detracting from serious issues. He says that he hopes "this book will cause young people to aspire to improve our political process." Interesting. Not sure that that has to do with calling the President of the United States "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," but why sweat the small stuff. And speaking of President Bush, he has...

<p>Former Gov. Christie Whitman was cut out of the decision-making process when President Bush bluntly rejected her efforts as U.S. Environmental Protection Agency director to reach a compromise that would allow the United States to be part of the Global Warming Treaty.</p>

Ex-Treasury Chief O'Neill Rejects Price Of Loyalty Comments About Bush War Hopefully Motivates Other Whistleblowers POSTED: 6:48 p.m. EST January 14, 2004 UPDATED: 6:49 p.m. EST January 14, 2004 WASHINGTON -- "I can't imagine I would be attacked for telling the truth." That statement came from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill during an interview with CBS-TV'S "60 Minutes." He has learned differently since then. O'Neill caused a big stir with his remarkably candid new book, "The Price of Loyalty," about his Cabinet tenure as President Bush's man at the Treasury Department. In the book written by journalist Ron Suskind, O'Neill...

On CNN, the Carnegie Institute for Peace had a program regarding the Iraq situation. Was the invasion necessary? The institute, with a thorough investigation, found no compelling reason to invade - no WMD, no biological weapons, no long-range missiles. Now, Paul O'Neill, former U.S. treasurer under Bush, confirmed these allegations in his newly published book. Bush and his cronies had planned to invade Iraq from the first days he stumbled into office. We all know that Saddam is a no-good SOB, but we should not have invaded. So far, the cost has been terrible. Almost 500 U.S. soldiers have died...

NEW YORK, Jan. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- As an Arkansas businessman, Wesley Clark lobbied Vice President Dick Cheney, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, aides to FBI Director Robert Mueller and his former chief deputy commander in Europe on behalf of a company eager to get post-9/11 security work, Newsweek reports in the current issue. The aim: to get a contract for Acxiom, a Little Rock firm whose "data mining" techniques are useful in tracking terrorists. The lobbying -- for which Clark was paid about $400,000 -- must have helped: Acxiom got a contract. Everything was aboveboard and disclosed, says Chris Lehane, who...

Jack Kelly: Dept. of Sour Grapes Paul O'Neill does himself no favors Sunday, January 18, 2004 Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill took a swing at President Bush ... and punched himself in the nose. "The Price of Loyalty," written by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind on the basis of interviews with and documents supplied by O'Neill, made two sensational charges:       Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1476).       First, that Bush was detached and disengaged in Cabinet meetings, "a blind man in a...

The Republican president from the Sun Belt is portrayed as an amiable dunce. His lack of curiosity annoys his brainy adviser, who wants the chief executive to join him in wrestling with Big Issues. Eventually the brainiac aide is gone, taking with him a burning desire to get revenge in print. This might sound like the story of Paul O'Neill, ex-Treasury secretary — he was fired by President Bush in December 2002 — who provided the raw, bitter meat for a new book, "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill." O'Neill...

Who's telling the truth, Paul O'Neill or President Bush? It's up to us to decide. When he named him Treasury secretary, President Bush praised O'Neill as a "straight shooter." But now the White House says O'Neill is a big liar. Click here for full article================================================================= O'Neill Bombshell: How Damaging? In a bombshell revelation that has Washington reeling in shock, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told CBS News that Bush was no great admirer of Saddam Hussein, with the President even hinting sinisterly the ousted Iraqi leader was a 'bad person.' (O'Neill memo to Bush: Saddam had enough enemies already! He...

<p>O'Neill Says Book Bashing Bush 'Isn't My Book'</p> <p>"The Price of Loyalty" -- which everyone thinks Paul O'Neill wrote but didn't write -- is about how no one in the sealed-off cloisters of the Bush White House would listen to him or take his ideas seriously. In the past week, however, the whole world has been able to discover what was on Mr. O'Neill's mind. The BBC's Portuguese-language edition conveyed Mr. O'Neill's opinion of the President to the people of Brazil: "o presidente era como 'um cego em uma sala cheia de surdos.'" That's the part in which the former Treasury secretary/Alcoa CEO calls Mr. Bush "a blind person in a roomful of deaf people."</p>

<p>Politics can be a rough sport. Paul O'Neill's departure after two years as Treasury secretary was not handled well. His bitterness, some would say, is quite understandable. But bitterness is a bad basis for objectivity, and any of Mr. O'Neill's reported views regarding President Bush and the conduct of economic policy do not comport with my recollection or with the public record. In fact, the president is what he claims to be--a compassionate conservative--and one with a grasp of how the world really works.</p>

DEKALB, Ill. -- Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill recently put forth the accusation that President George W. Bush was out for blood just days after taking office in January 2001. The disgraced O'Neill explained that Bush was set on invading Iraq from the beginning and simply was looking for an opportune time to execute his plans. O'Neill told CBS's "60 Minutes" that "from the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person that needed to go." I don't know why this was suddenly news to O'Neill, seeing that the world's most sought-after dictator had been...

Those listening to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill might think there's no rational hand on the national economic tiller. But fear not. O'Neill's recent attacks on President Bush and the formulation of U.S. economic policy amount to nothing more than a big plate of sour grapes. For two years in the Bush administration, O'Neill never agreed with supply-side tax cuts, the centerpiece of the president's economic policy. He was a static-deficit bean counter, not a growth advocate. Capitol Hill sources say he was ineffectual in negotiations, leading to a weak tax bill in 2001. Instead of immediate tax-rate cuts for...

Omega Letter Christian Intelligence Digest ''The Price of Loyalty'' Commentary on the NewsTuesday, January 13, 2004 - Omega Letter Editor Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill published his own 'tell-all' book in which he accuses the Bush administration of 'plotting the invasion of Iraq' (as the Boston Globe described it) just days after taking office, instead of after the 9/11 attacks. You know, I am truly not an apologist for George Bush. I don't know him personally, and I don't know what he does behind closed doors. I have no particular love for the Bush family, although I admit to...

One of the tacit operating assumptions of the Bush administration is that the checks and balances have been checked. But that implacable wall has been cracked by an insider's surprising confessions. The former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, fired and forgotten, mild-mannered and grey, appears an unlikely dissident. He was, after all, the CEO of Alcoa, a pillar of the Republican establishment. More is involved with him than pride and pique. While O'Neill records slights and is dismissed by some as a dotty reject, he does more than tell a few tales in the book The Price of Loyalty. The attack...

WASHINGTON -- Paul O'Neill says he wanted to participate in a book that reveals the inner workings of the Bush administration because he believes the current political system badly stifles meaningful debate on public issues and needs to be fixed. "I hope people will read it because I think it makes a contribution to illuminating, especially for young people, what I consider to be a bipartisan, broken political process," O'Neill said Tuesday, the day the book, "The Price of Loyalty," began appearing in bookstores nationwide. However, the Bush administration and its supporters, unhappy with the unflattering portrait of the president...

Tuesday morning on NBC’s Today, Paul O’Neill backtracked from some of his more incendiary comments as recited by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind in a new book. But while the NBC Nightly News, as well as CNN and FNC picked up on O’Neill’s backpedaling, neither ABC or CBS did so on Tuesday night. CNN’s King highlighted how “others in those early national security meetings took issue with suggestions Mr. Bush was predisposed to war,” but ABC’s Peter Jennings ignored what O’Neill said on Today and cited how an “official in the meetings,” whom Jennings did not identify, “confirmed...

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill had barely cleared his throat for this "60 Minutes" interview Sunday night before the "gotcha" e-mail started filling my mailbox. Anti-ware constituents apparently felt vindicated by O'Neill's assertion that President Bush was mapping out strategies for ousting Saddam Hussein soon after taking office and months before the September 11 attacks. "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill said. I gathered from the electronic deluge that I was supposed to be shocked by this revelation and writhe like a salted slug...

<p>Politics can be a rough sport. Paul O'Neill's departure after two years as Treasury secretary was not handled well. His bitterness, some would say, is quite understandable. But bitterness is a bad basis for objectivity, and any of Mr. O'Neill's reported views regarding President Bush and the conduct of economic policy do not comport with my recollection or with the public record. In fact, the president is what he claims to be -- a compassionate conservative -- and one with a grasp of how the world really works.</p>

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill had barely cleared his throat for his "60 Minutes" interview Sunday night before the "gotcha" e-mail started filling my mailbox.Anti-war constituents apparently felt vindicated by O'Neill's assertion that President Bush was mapping out strategies for ousting Saddam Hussein soon after taking office and months before the Sept. 11 attacks."From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," said O'Neill.I gathered from the electronic deluge that I was supposed to be shocked by this revelation and writhe like a salted slug in self-contempt...

Journalist Ron Suskind is one-stop shopping for Bush administration castaways. But what if John DiIulio -- Suskind gave him a platform in Esquire magazine in 2002 to call the administration "the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis" -- and Paul O'Neill had been shopping a conservative critique of Bush? Would Suskind have cracked open his notebook? Not likely. Few events excite liberal journalists more than the inevitable defection of an "insider" from a Republican administration, provided that the defector is a liberal who is telling the media what it wants to hear. What interests the Suskinds are not conservative defectors but...

Having been fired by President Bush as Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill is now trying to even the score, but he may hurt himself more than the president. O'Neill's collaboration with former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind on the book "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill" may soon land O'Neill in a heap of trouble. The Treasury Department is already investigating whether the former secretary improperly took government documents with him when he left, some of which may have been classified. (O'Neill claims they were all cleared with...

JAN. 12, 2004: LATE ENTRY Reviewing Reviewers I promised last week responses to the Washington Post and Economist reviews of An End to Evil - but I have to respond to the weekend’s Paul O’Neill story. The big whoop-whoop in the O’Neill interview is his claim that the Bush administration was secretly plotting from the very start to remove Saddam Hussein. But it’s worse than that! Well before President Bush was ever elected, Congress passed a law declaring the removal of Saddam a goal of US policy: the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. The plot was so secret that Congress...

<p>Politics can be a rough sport. Paul O'Neill's departure after two years as Treasury secretary was not handled well. His bitterness, some would say, is quite understandable. But bitterness is a bad basis for objectivity, and any of Mr. O'Neill's reported views regarding President Bush and the conduct of economic policy do not comport with my recollection or with the public record. In fact, the president is what he claims to be--a compassionate conservative--and one with a grasp of how the world really works.</p>

It is a Washington ritual as tried and true as the filibuster and the leaked memo: a highly placed official, current or former, tells all in a book-length indictment of administration policy and operations. The latest has just hit the bookstores, a kiss-and-tell volume called "The Price of Loyalty," by reporter Ron Suskind, featuring the incendiary observations of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was fired in December 2002. Even the rollout has followed the usual pattern: advance word of Mr. O'Neill's choicest allegations, a national television interview probing same, and the book's actual release Tuesday, along with simultaneous rebuttals...

<p>It will be interesting to see whether the liberal media, having slobbered all over former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's "red meat" attacks on President Bush, will pay as much attention to the fired Cabinet official's follow-up remarks.</p> <p>Interviewed yesterday on NBC's "Today" show, O'Neill said that despite the harsh criticism of his former boss, he will "probably" vote for Bush in November. "I don't see anyone who is better prepared or more capable," he said.</p>

<p>One of the candidates had said this confirms his worst suspicions. I'm amazed that anyone would think that our government, on a continuing basis across political administrations, doesn't do contingency planning and look at circumstances. Saddam Hussein has been this forever. And so, I was surprised, as I've said in the book, that Iraq was given such a high priority. But I was not surprised that we were doing a continuation of planning that had been going on and looking at contingency options during the Clinton administration.</p>