Kill that messenger
Thursday, January 15th, 2004It should surprise no one to learn that George W. Bush was determined to invade Iraq as soon as he took office.
It’s a bit surprising that a Bush administration insider, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, should be the one to tell us. There was a fine interview with O’Neill on Fresh Air Wednesday, in which O’Neill makes completely clear what Bush and Rumsfeld are hoping to obscure: that Bush had already decided to wage a war of aggression against Iraq, and that his administration’s top foreign policy priority was the search for an excuse to do so.
The White House, true to form, is attacking O’Neill, claiming that he stole classified documents. Bush hopes to keep us thinking about how the secrets got revealed, so we don’t think too carefully about why the secrets existed in the first place.
