Fraters Libertas

A Startling Molehill

Powerline is on the case of exposing the fraudulent nature of the 60 Minutes story on Paul O’Neill. They post the transcript of a Today Show interview this morning with O'Neill. Turns out he didn’t claim the Bush administration initiated a plot against Saddam before Sept. 11. Instead, they were engaged in the common process of updating contingency plans. Plans started by the Clinton administration, whose stated goal was regime change as well.

Hard to say how much blame O’Neill should get for allowing this story to get so far out of hand. Perhaps he was an unwitting patsy manipulated and shamelessly edited out of context by Leslie Stahl and the bomb squad at CBS News. Perhaps he was a willing accomplice in this, allowing half truths and creative misinterpretation to flourish in order to bolster his wounded ego. I think the latter. As evidence, here are his conflicting comments. First, from this morning’s Today Show:

O'NEILL: Yeah, and the other thing that's good, today the book is going to be available, and this red meat frenzy that's occurred when people didn't have anything except snippets -- as an example, you know, people are trying to make a case that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration. Actually, there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be regime change in Iraq.

COURIC: So you see nothing wrong with that being at the top of the president's agenda 10 days after the inauguration?

O'NEILL: Absolutely not. One of the candidates had said this confirms his worst suspicions. I'm amazed that anyone would think that our government, on a continuing basis across political administrations, doesn't do contingency planning and look at circumstances.

Now from 60 Minutes on Sunday:

“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.

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.”

A continuation of work that had been going on in the previous administration or a “huge leap” in preemption and unilateralism? A clear contradiction in statements by O’Neill. Although his original comments on 60 minutes weren’t even as bad as the media made them out to be. In this same report, Leslie Stahl framed it as:

And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.

In any case, O’Neill’s character has been revealed and it's not pretty. Seeing this makes me chuckle even more at a video clip shown during the 60 Minutes piece. Bush, O’Neill and about 50 others were gathered around a long table for some economic summit/promotional stunt. A woman was speaking about how honored she was to address a man of such high stature and character. Although she was clearly referring to the President, she didn’t mention him by name. After her platitudes, Bush broke in and said “she must be a real fan of O’Neill”. There was scattered laughter, then Bush broke in again and said “Hey Paul, we finally found one.” This brought huge laughs, including from the President himself (but not from O'Neill).

One final comment on the Today Show interview this morning. My favorite part is Katie Couric rushing to judgment on a set of incorrect facts provided by a suspect source, then adding superficial analysis - and then positioning it as the product of deep thinking:

COURIC: But you say nowhere did you ever see evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Well, an intelligent person would draw the conclusion that those charges were being trumped up by the administration as a rationale for the invasion.

O'NEILL: No, that's not what I've said.

Yikes. If that’s what intelligence gets you, I’d hate to see the conclusions drawn by some vapid airhead.