BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
e-mail delivery, click
here. To send
an e-mail to Dan Kennedy, click
here.
For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
Monday, January 12, 2004
O'Neill speaks. The
principal revelations by former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill -
that the Bush administration began planning to go to war against Iraq
almost from the moment it took office, and that even George W. Bush
questioned huge tax cuts for the rich before gutlessly signing on -
are staggering.
It is an incredible indictment of
the state in which we find ourselves these days that it probably
won't make any difference.
Here
is the transcript of
O'Neill's appearance last night on CBS's 60 Minutes. The
section on Iraq is appalling beyond description:
And what happened at
President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is
one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.
"From the very beginning, there
was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he
needed to go," says O'Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was
topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before
Sept. 11.
"From the very first instance,
it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this
regime," says Suskind. "Day one, these things were laid and
sealed."
As treasury secretary, O'Neill
was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says
in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as
"Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.
"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,'" says O'Neill. "For me, the notion of
pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever
we decide to do, is a really huge leap."
O'Neill's account of Bush and the
second tax cut comes from a "nearly verbatim transcript" that an
administration official gave O'Neill following a meeting in November
2002. Ron Suskind - author of the forthcoming The Price of
Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul
O'Neill - describes it like this:
He says everyone expected
Mr. Bush to rubber stamp the plan under discussion: a big new tax
cut. But, according to Suskind, the president was perhaps having
second thoughts about cutting taxes again, and was
uncharacteristically engaged.
"He asks, 'Haven't we already
given money to rich people? This second tax cut's gonna do it
again,'" says Suskind.
"He says, 'Didn't we already,
why are we doing it again?' Now, his advisers, they say, 'Well Mr.
President, the upper class, they're the entrepreneurs. That's the
standard response.' And the president kind of goes, 'OK.' That's
their response. And then, he comes back to it again. 'Well,
shouldn't we be giving money to the middle, won't people be able
to say, 'You did it once, and then you did it twice, and what was
it good for?'"
But according to the transcript,
White House political advisor Karl Rove jumped in.
"Karl Rove is saying to the
president, a kind of mantra. 'Stick to principle. Stick to
principle.' He says it over and over again," says Suskind. "Don't
waver."
In the end, the president
didn't. And nine days after that meeting in which O'Neill made it
clear he could not publicly support another tax cut, the vice
president called and asked him to resign.
If O'Neill is telling the truth -
and there is no reason to think he isn't - then this is an absolutely
devastating portrayal.
The Time magazine
piece
is, if anything, even more frightening in its picture of Bush and,
especially, of the machinations of the Dark Lord, Dick Cheney. Check
out the account of the "gang of three beleaguered souls" - O'Neill,
former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, and Secretary of
State Colin Powell.
Who elected this guy, anyway? Oh,
yeah ... right.
His bowtie is twirling.
Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler slapped
buckraking columnist George Will yesterday for Will's
non-disclosure
of the $25,000 payment he'd received from corrupt press lord Conrad
Black.
The ex factor. Right below a
column by Boston Globe Christine Chinlund today on the number
of corrections
the paper ran last year (1223) is a piece by syndicated columnist
William Pfaff (not online at the Globe's website) that refers
to "ex-US Senator Charles Schumer."
Here
is the Pfaff column - first published last Friday - at the website of
the International Herald Tribune. As you'll see, Schumer is
properly identified as a current senator. But, of course, this could
have been corrected after it came in.
So did a Globe editor
introduce the mistake or simply fail to fix it? Media Log will be
watching the corrections column.
Clipping service. Bruce
Allen wants to know: how much leeway does that disclaimer at the
bottom of the Globe's sports-notes columns give? Is it okay
for a writer - like football columnist Ron Borges - simply to
cut-and-paste
from ESPN.com?
posted at 8:55 AM |
|
link
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
