January 15, 2004

CBS’s “60 Minutes” featured former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill in an exclusive interview with CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl, which aired Sunday, January 11th. The interview confirms what those who primarily rely on the Internet for up-to-date, accurate and to-the-point news coverage have known for almost over a year: the Bush administration had planned the illegal, unconstitutional and unnecessary invasion of Iraq completely independent of any retaliatory or preventive military considerations relating to 9-11. In fact, this interview, motivated to launch a new book authored by Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, not only confirms the heavy evidence concerning the administration’s underlying intentions with regard to Iraq, but raises some scary new ones as well.

Neil Mackay penned one of the earliest sources citing the U.S. plot against Iraq and Saddam back in September 2002. Entitled “Let’s Not Forget: Bush Planned Iraq ‘Regime Change’ Before Becoming President,” still carried on Information Clearing House’s website, Mackay’s piece starts: “A SECRET blue print for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure ‘regime change’ even before he took power in January 2001.”

The article is among many that reveal a document entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, written by the neoconservative think tank calling itself Project for the New American Century [PNAC]. Although some references have been made in the mainstream media to this “neoconservative” clandestine planning, including some minor references to it ensconced in sarcasm and derision by the likes of FOXNews icons Brit Hume and Fred Barnes, the revelation now by mainstream CBS News adds a completely new dimension. PNAC is now being discovered by mainstream America.

And Information Clearing House also still carries a comprehensive analysis of PNAC written by William Rivers Pitt on February 25, 2003, entitled “The Project for the New American Century.” Pitt offers: “PNAC desires and demands one thing: The establishment of a global American empire to bend the will of all nations. They chafe at the idea that the United States, the last remaining superpower, does not do more by way of economic and military force to bring the rest of the world under the umbrella of a new socio-economic Pax Americana.” But up till now, a major debate regarding America’s real intentions at world domination has been largely suppressed, and this is due to the failure on the part of the mainstream media.

These revelations are, at this point in time, nothing new, but they have the potential of becoming extremely pivotal as regards their significance in the upcoming presidential elections. CBS News, is now fully on board as evidenced by their website’s January 10th piece entitled, “Saddam Ouster Planned Early ’01?” The article states, “The Bush Administration began making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush’s inauguration in January of 2001 – not eight months after the 9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported.” CBS quotes former Secretary O’Neill: “From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go. 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.”

The CBS report continues, “O’Neill, fired by the White House for his disagreement on tax cuts, is the main source for an upcoming book, ‘The Price of Loyalty,’ by Ron Suskind. Suskind says O’Neill and other White House insiders he interviewed gave him documents that show that in the first three months of 2001, the administration was looking at military operations for removing Saddam Hussein from power and planning for the aftermath of Saddam’s downfall – including post-war contingencies such as peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals and the future of Iraq’s oil.” [Emphasis added]

There is no longer any doubt that the Iraqi invasion was in absolutely no way justified. There have been, and still are, many horrifically violent and brutal dictators that the US government is not only allied with, but extremely protective of as well. They consistently violate human rights and perpetrate mass suffering and the mass murders of their people. The US government did absolutely nothing to mitigate the slaughter of over one million African people in Rwanda because it didn’t serve the monetary and political interests of those in power at the time.

To their credit, FOXNews.com, usually a journalistic shill and apologist for the Bush administration, also posted an article on January 10th entitled, “O’Neill: Iraq Plans Began at Start of Bush’s Term.” In an article originated by the Associated Press, it is offered that, “The administration has not found evidence that the Iraqi leader was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks but officials have said that they had to consider the possibility that Saddam could have undertaken an even larger scale strike against the United States.”

But then FOX offers that White House spokesman Scott McClellan “would not confirm or deny that the White House began Iraq war planning early in Bush’s term. But he said, Saddam ‘was a threat to peace and stability before September 11th, and even more of a threat after September 11. It appears that the world according to Mr. O’Neill is more about trying to justify his own opinions than looking at the results we are achieving on behalf of the American people,’ McClellan said in Texas, where the president is staying at his ranch.”

In a feeble effort at damage control, FOX did indeed acknowledge the administration’s early pre-emptive designs against Saddam and Iraq, and offered also that “In July 2001, after an Iraqi surface-to-air missile was fired at an American surveillance plane, Bush’s national security advisor put Saddam on notice that the United States intended a more resolute military policy toward Iraq.” FOX also emphasized O’Neill’s promotion of the new book. “CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller reported Saturday that, as the White House sees it, O’Neill’s remarks are those of a disgruntled former official, and it should not have come as a surprise to O’Neill that the U.S. advocated Saddam’s ouster,” states the CBS article.

The article continues, “As for the charge that there were early plans to invade Iraq, Knoller says the official calls that ‘laughable.’ Suggesting that O’Neill doesn’t know what he’s talking about on this matter, the official told CBS News O’Neill had enough problems in his own area of expertise, so, ‘Why should anyone believe he has a credible understanding of foreign policy?’”

One cannot help noticing via these cites how the Bush administration and its “officials” are spinning these revelations to blur the public’s focus on this vital matter. The Bush lies of WMD, their readily available deployment, their nuclear, biological and chemical capability, robotic airplanes and drones, and all the other accusations made by Bush have been refuted. Is this being discussed? Notice how this unjustified and unconstitutional war has never been justified? Notice how Robert Mueller, III and George Tenet were never fired for their incompetence and 9-11 intelligence mismanagement? Notice how the only Bush administration official that was jettisoned has come back at him with a “get-even” plan?

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan tries to spin this issue as merely retribution on the part of one, single solitary “disgruntled employee,” and another unidentified “official” offers that O’Neill’s charges are “laughable.” Aside form the fact that we should always dismiss quotes from an “unidentified” official as being “official,” what precisely is so “laughable” about 500 of our military dead? What is so “laughable” about the thousands wounded and maimed?

What precisely is it that is so humorous concerning over one million Iraqis that have died because of the ten-year US embargo targeting one “enemy of the state” of the United States of America, such that all the Iraqi people have been made to suffer at the hands of “our” government? McClellan and the White House’s spin that O’Neill represents a loony, lone voice in the wilderness just doesn’t rub.

What of the protests of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter who did everything in his limited power to stop this carnage well before Bush started it? Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children have died because of Bush’s secret PNAC cabal. And our lust for oil and our lust for world dominance has indeed expanded PNAC’s objectives to include advancing the state of Israel as the only nuclear power in the region, the latter exempted from many more UN resolutions than Saddam had ever violated. And the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has itself identified PNAC’s collaborating members as American traitors.

What we have here is not an issue concerning one individual. Many Internet writers have written at length about the PNAC cabal. They, PNAC, are indeed a secret group, and a plotting cabal. And their numbers are a mere fraction of the large and growing number of Internet writers and readers who are fully informed of the deliberate lies, fraud and warmongering propaganda of the Bush administration. Their planning is NOT in the best interests of the United States and its people.

And where before the people of the world forgave America and its people for the unjust and threatening incursions of our military, they now no longer excuse our stupidity in allowing our out-of-control government to attack any and all sovereign states targeted by a tiny band of political plotters that represent a growing danger to all people on Earth.

If McClellan and the Bush White House desire to point to O’Neill as a small source of discontent within the administration, perhaps they ought to compare the number that comprises PNAC and the Bushies to one billion angry Muslims and the rest of the world. As writer William Rivers Pitt offered, “Americans enjoy their comforts, but don't cotton to the idea of being some sort of Neo-Rome.”

It has become painfully clear that this horrendous, unnecessary loss of life, wealth and national security was sacrificed by an action undertaken to justify the monetary and political advantage of a small entity on a basis comparatively much smaller than that represented by former Secretary O’Neill’s “disgruntlement.”

All law-abiding, decent people the world over have always readily identified this type of immoral, self-serving behavior characterized by such reckless abandon for the rights of others. On a smaller scale of public recognition, O’Neill’s revelations compare to the level of public awareness equating to the recognition of street crime: robberies, rapes, muggings, burglaries and the like. On a level typified by the crime generated by street gangs, perhaps the definition becomes “rampant crime.” And on a national basis, it could be described as a combination of organized petty street criminals, street gangs, all consolidated within a national crime syndicate; in other words, it takes on what is commonly referred to as “organized crime” or “racketeering.”

Can there be any doubt that as more and more Bush lies surface, as more and more reports and their confirmation unfold, that the Bush administration is beginning to resemble the demeanor of an organized criminal element? Where is the outrage? Where’s the media? And when will we be outraged sufficiently to do something meaningful about it?

Theodore E. Lang

© 2003 THEODORE E. LANG All rights reserved

Ted Lang is a political analyst and a freelance writer.

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