Bush Administration Launchs Investigation of Former Treasury Secretary O'Neil

Adding to the hypothesis that the head Bushie is delusional:

"No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/153998p-135485c.html

 

This statement is completely true - it's the 'human lefts' he has screwed over...

 

you slay..


Anyway, who wants to bet that this investigation is prosecuted far more vigorously than the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame thing?

Hell, who the hell knew that the Treasury dep't even has classified documents?

 

You mess with the bull -- you get the horns.

Paul, your anger and bitterness are only rivalled by one human: Mengele Dean.

 

Is anyone here old enough to remember Nixon's " Enemy List"?

 

G. Gordon Liddy...is that you? I know of few others who feel that the White House used for personal vendettas is all systems go...

 

Sure.
I wish I could say I'm surprised by the Administration's sudden eagerness to investigate something or someone, after dragging it's feet whenever possible to investigate so many other things, but I assumed O'Neill would have this happen to him when this first broke.

O'Neill's thoughts when asked about it?
"I'm old and I'm rich. They can't hurt me." (CNN)

 

They highlighted it on the Daily Show tonight,

interviewer: Are you afraid of saying this kind of a thing that they'll come after you?

O'Neill: Why would they come after me for telling the truth?
[cue uproarious laughter from the audience.]

 

70+ days before a Plame investigation.

1 day before an O'Neill investigation.

I can't believe they're this stupid. Let it go and the story fades.

 

Preach it Brother Paul!
____________
The Awful Truth
By PAUL KRUGMAN

People are saying terrible things about George Bush. They say that his officials weren't sincere about pledges to balance the budget. They say that the planning for an invasion of Iraq began seven months before 9/11, that there was never any good evidence that Iraq was a threat and that the war actually undermined the fight against terrorism.

But these irrational Bush haters are body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freaks who should go back where they came from: the executive offices of Alcoa, and the halls of the Army War College.

I was one of the few commentators who didn't celebrate Paul O'Neill's appointment as Treasury secretary. And I couldn't understand why, if Mr. O'Neill was the principled man his friends described, he didn't resign early from an administration that was clearly anything but honest.

But now he's showing the courage I missed back then, by giving us an invaluable, scathing insider's picture of the Bush administration.

Ron Suskind's new book "The Price of Loyalty" is based largely on interviews with and materials supplied by Mr. O'Neill. It portrays an administration in which political considerations — satisfying "the base" — trump policy analysis on every issue, from tax cuts to international trade policy and global warming. The money quote may be Dick Cheney's blithe declaration that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." But there are many other revelations.

One is that Mr. O'Neill and Alan Greenspan knew that it was a mistake to lock in huge tax cuts based on questionable projections of future surpluses. In May 2001 Mr. Greenspan gloomily told Mr. O'Neill that because the first Bush tax cut didn't include triggers — it went forward regardless of how the budget turned out — it was "irresponsible fiscal policy." This was a time when critics of the tax cut were ridiculed for saying exactly the same thing.

Another is that Mr. Bush, who declared in the 2000 campaign that "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum," knew that this wasn't true. He worried that eliminating taxes on dividends would benefit only "top-rate people," asking his advisers, "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?"

Most startling of all, Donald Rumsfeld pushed the idea of regime change in Iraq as a way to transform the Middle East at a National Security Council meeting in February 2001.

There's much more in Mr. Suskind's book. All of it will dismay those who still want to believe that our leaders are wise and good.

The question is whether this book will open the eyes of those who think that anyone who criticizes the tax cuts is a wild-eyed leftist, and that anyone who says the administration hyped the threat from Iraq is a conspiracy theorist.

The point is that the credentials of the critics just keep getting better. How can Howard Dean's assertion that the capture of Saddam hasn't made us safer be dismissed as bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College says that the war in Iraq was a "detour" that undermined the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley Clark and others that the administration was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light of Mr. O'Neill's revelations?

So far administration officials have attacked Mr. O'Neill's character but haven't refuted any of his facts. They have, however, already opened an investigation into how a picture of a possibly classified document appeared during Mr. O'Neill's TV interview. This alacrity stands in sharp contrast with their evident lack of concern when a senior administration official, still unknown, blew the cover of a C.I.A. operative because her husband had revealed some politically inconvenient facts.

Some will say that none of this matters because Saddam is in custody, and the economy is growing. Even in the short run, however, these successes may not be all they're cracked up to be. More Americans were killed and wounded in the four weeks after Saddam's capture than in the four weeks before. The drop in the unemployment rate since its peak last summer doesn't reflect a greater availability of jobs, but rather a decline in the share of the population that is even looking for work.

More important, having a few months of good news doesn't excuse a consistent pattern of dishonest, irresponsible leadership. And that pattern keeps getting harder to deny.

 

It reminds me of the Al Franken/Fox/O'Reilly fiasco. Fox and what's-his-name going after Franken for such patently absurd and vicious reasons just gave the story legs.


(can you be absurd and vicious at the same time?? apparently so... small minded as well)

 

Trivializing the Holocaust again, eh Mr. Lapdance?

 

With all due respect to MacBeth, Liddy is too kind a reference for the sort of compassionate conservatism (sic) displayed by Trader_Jorge.

That comment, a true reflection of his of deepest political philosophies, could more accurately be credited to the likes of Il_Duce.

Ladies and gentlemen of the BBS, I submit to you that the bull and horns comment is a completely honest assessment of this presidential administration and the current leadership of their political party. (I thank Trader_Jorge sincerely for presenting it in such a bare form).

These are the politics of the mafia, where the only people who fear the bosses more than their enemies are the subjects who dare to think for themselves.

 

With all due respect to Liddy, Jorge, Macbeth et al, that quote is appropriately attributable to the one...the only....

Chance McClain.

Carry on.

 

If O'Neill did something illegal, he needs to be punished.

I'd like to see the same vigor from this administration when pursuing the Plame uncoverer (is that a word?), but somehow I doubt we'll ever know the true identity of the White House felon.

Maybe if he leaves office and helps write a tell-all book...

 

It's the US Treasury that launched the investigation, not Bush. Calm down people.

 

from an interview o'neill gave yesterday:

Asked if he plans to vote for Bush in November's presidential election, O'Neill said he "probably" would. "I don't see anyone who is better prepared or more capable," he told NBC.

 

Fascinating -- nice find, basso. I suppose he's learned his lesson from the horns of the bull, ... or he doesn't think very highly of the competition.