The Loyalty of Paul O'Neill

Authored by Michael Pate on January 14th, 2004 at 5:53 PM

I just had a few minutes to skim through Paul O’Neill’s and Ron Susskind’s The Price of Loyalty. If anyone is looking for any big revelations, I don’t think they are going to find any.

Too bad O’Neil is backtracking on his accounts of the Bush administration. His words matched my expectation of Bush perfectly. When Bush got elected, I expected him to look for excuses to attack Iraq. And I would have been surprised if he paid attention to anything other than the Bible and the picture of Saddam Hussein after he got to the White House. Baloonfoot indeed. I think O’Neil spoke the truth and now he is acting like a chicken. The sad thing is that I am not surprised. Only thing missing is Osama bin Laden announcing that he attacked America because he learned of a secret plot by Bush to invade and occupy Iraq. Sheesh. I’ll bet Arnold the Terminator would make a much better President than Bush. - Don Park

All the stuff on Iraq depended on the conclusions the participants wanted to draw. Paul O”Neill drew one. Donald Rumsfield and Paul Wolfowitz drew another. The question comes down to when not everyone agrees on the course of action, who gets to decide?

And it’s why we have presidents. At the end of the day there’s one person who gets to decide is what he considers to be convincing proof of basis for going to war, and we elected George Bush and he decided it was good enough. - Paul O’Neill

If you want a President who would probably decide differently, be sure and vote for Howard Dean, since he would never, ever advocate that we must take unilateral action.

Links in this entry:

Howard Dean letter to President Clinton
O'Neil the Chicken
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill
You've Gotta Read It

Comments

Don Park,
What is your source for "Osama bin Laden announcing that he attacked America because he learned of a secret plot by Bush to invade and occupy Iraq"?
My guess is that it's A1 hypocrite, Rush Limbaugh or the like. Led by emotion anyone? Where is your brain Don Park? You ought to try watching 60 minutes or reading the Carnegie Report. And if you think the Carnegie report is biased you're out of your head.
Yes you might have to turn off Bill O'Reilly's "no spin zone" and do some thinking of your own. Sorry, we live in a complicated world and those guys out there trying cater to your emotions instead of brains (the fastest/easiest way to get ratings) oversimplify and misprepresent. Good luck-Pete

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