Well, that Paul O’Neill certainly is a wealth<\/i> of information.<\/p>\n
Everyone had some fun on Friday<\/a> when we learned that O’Neill, Bush’s Treasury Secretary for two years, described the president as a “blind man in a roomful of deaf people,” while characterizing Bush as a disengaged man who discouraged and avoided substantive discussions. But it turns out that was just the tip of the O’Neill iceberg.<\/p>\n O’Neill, who also served on Bush’s National Security Council, has explained that the Bush administration began plotting a war against Iraq almost immediately after taking office<\/a> in 2001, debunking the president’s assertion that the war was necessary as a response to the terrorist attacks of 9\/11. O’Neill characterized the administration as looking for an excuse to justify an invasion.<\/p>\n “From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein is a bad person and that he needed to go,” O’Neill told 60 Minutes. “From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime.” O’Neill added, “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.'”<\/p>\n O’Neill also said he, as an NSC member, never saw any proof to bolster Bush’s claims about Iraqi WMD. O’Neill told Time<\/a>, “In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction…. I never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterize as real evidence.”<\/p>\n O’Neill spoke at great length with Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind to provide material for a new book, “The Price of Loyalty<\/a>.” In the book, Suskind reportedly explains that the Bush administration, long before 9\/11, was already making plans for war crime tribunals in Iraq, even discussing how best to divide up Iraq’s oil.<\/p>\n