Bush Administration Launchs Investigation of Former Treasury Secretary O'Neil

Guys, lets put this into perspective and try not to be so partisan about it. We all know the phrase "Follow the money." As a matter of fact, many of the people who don't like Bush on this board use that philosophy with regards to the invasion of Iraq, Haliburton getting big contracts, etc...

Whenever someone does something and you want to figure out their motives you "follow the money".

If O'Neil and resigned and said all this stuff or if Bush had done something that O'Neil found objectionable and he came forward with this stuff it would be one thing. But O'Neil stands to make money on his accusations. If he were making these statements because he felt it was right you could probably take them at face value, but he isn't. He's making these statements to make a buck and therefore they should be viewed with some scrutiny.

Clearly, if you hate Bush and are eagerly seeking news that makes him look bad, you will accept O'Neil's claims without regard for the truth. If it makes Bush look bad, it makes you feel good. But that's partisanship and blind partasinship is bad for this country. Bush is not destroying America, partisanship is.

Also, if O'Neil broke laws regarding classified documents he should be investigated just as the Bush administration should be investigated with regard to the release of that CIA agent's identity. An investigation is a healthy thing. If the guy (or the administration) is innocent it will come out. If not, that will come out as well. Of course, the seriously partisan people on this board will believe the worse about Bush no matter what the truth.

 

Not one person has disputed the substance of his allegations, they just attacked his motives.

Regarding partisanship "destroying america",politics have always been partisan...has America been destroyed for years?

Catastrophic debt being run up due to huge spending and tax cuts, a dangerous foreign policy...those are the things that hurt america in my opinion, and those things are policy, not partisanship.

 

111chase111,

Very nice post, IMO.

(1) agree completely.
(2) agree about the health of it, but I'm more cynical as to who will or will not be punished. I don't mean that in a partisan way... and speaking of partisan...
(3) ... you must admit that, at the same time, some partisan people on this board will defend Bush and his advisors no matter what the truth.

I agree that partisanship and blind allegiance are doing more to destroy the nation than any single politician. Cheers.

 

Isn't the US Treasury Department a part of the Executive Branch, whose Secretary is appointed by Bush?

 

this is a two-way street isn't it? i think the posters willing to accept any news that paints bush in a negative light far outnumber those who'll blindly defend him.

 

Um, my exact point was that "this is a two-way street," yes. It's funny to follow mine (and 111chase111's) points about partisanship with a "yeah, but you guys are much worse!" type of comment.

Not interested in a scoreboard, and even if I agreed with your assessment of BBS demographics (I don't), I have never found the "oh look how outnumbered we are" point to be an especially moving, interesting, or relevant one. The group that feels marginalized by the current power center is always more vocal. Good Lord Almighty, just look at 90's AM radio. Egads.

 

I think you need to drop the crackpipe and slowly back away!

 

First, he's already got so much money he'll not be able to spend it all before he dies. Also, he certainly could have made more money on the GOP speaker circuit praising Bush than from a book deal attacking him.

Second, IIRC, he's not accepting profits from the book. I could be wrong, but I think this is the case.

Third, if he absconded with federal records, he should be investigated, but as I said before, the fervor with which this one is pursued and the delays in the other investigations show us something important.

Fourth, even if he took documents he should not have taken, I'm wondering if there's some kind of whistleblower provision he could apply.

Fifth, Going back to an earlier post... if you think the Treasury Dept. undertook this investigation without getting an OK (or probably an order) from the WH political staff, you are naive indeed. In my opinion, the best thing for the Administration to do would be to leave the guy alone and let it wash over... records laws are extremely tough to prosecute and usually don't pan out (Oliver North anyone?). By starting an investigation, you keep the story up and running well into the election cycle. I guess they were just feeling vindictive and I wonder if some of O'Neill's comments weren't intended to goad them into just that response.

 

Again, for the second time (actually third time, counting P. Krugman) nobody has disputed the substance of the allegations, just your standard right wing character assassination ("O'Neill is bitter, blah blah")

Do you have information as to why we should question O'Neill's veracity ? Thus far the informationn squares with reality rather nicely.

 

In an overall sense, as far as the country, what you say is statistically counter-factual.

Support for Bush, the war, etc. within normally Democratic/liberal lines has consistently wavered during the past couple of years, usually depending upon recent events, dictating that Bush critics/Democrats/liberals have been willing to be persuaded by events as they unfold, hence being fleixible. Bush/war etc. support within Republican/conservative lines has been pretty rock steady according to the polls, which speaks volumes about who is and who is not marching in lock step.

How this is reflected here is obviously a matter of opinion, but I personally feel that it plays out pretty much the same.

 

Uh... yeah Sam, since so many of us have top-secret security status at the White House and are allowed to sit in on Cabinet meetings we all can disprove Paul's recollection of Bush's words.... Yawn...

Disgruntled and ineffective employee gets fired, then comes out and "mean-mouths" his former boss. What else is new? Bush responded in a very civil fashion. Do you know how Dean responds to criticism?

YOU SIT DOWN

 

For those who did live through the Nixon years ( and were old enough to know what was going on), does the political climate seem more, less or equally charged/hard-lined as at that time? I only know of that time through historical study, so I am interested in the impressions of people who were aware at the time.


I have my own theories as to why, but it seems to me that Bush et al are a lot more openly hard-lined, reactionary, and manipulative than Nixon's administration. Nixon was doing some crazy stuff too, but it was mostly kept under wraps.

What remains consistent is that, in general, the populace really doesn't want to hear anything that makes America look bad. I didn't live through it as an adult, but I do know that studies and polls show that long after almost all of the important and incredible information to come out of the Watergate invesitgations had been made public, the majority of the population still thought that nothing had really happened. That seems very true today as well.

 

For the fourth time, nobody within the administration, who was at these meetings and had access to this information, has said that this information was fabricated, as basso, et al implicates.

You and your clown brigade say it is false, yet you can't say why other than ad hominem invective.

SUBSTANTIATE

 

I could swear that you took the exact opposite position just yesterday with regards to the issue of airline passenger records ( ie unless you happen to be able to know the inside reasoning, and be able to counter it, you should give those in possession of better information the benefit of the doubt.)

It alsmost...almost seems that you adopt your position, not on a consistent means of evaluating information, but instead in whatever way ends up supporting your chosen side of the argument.

 

well, since the last time i listened to AM radio was probably WLS during a late night drive from memphis to Sikeston after a Marshall Tucker Band concert, I'm not sure i get your point....

 

Sam, the administration has no reason to dignify O'Neill's remarks by acknowledging them. O'Neill's sour grapes attack consisted of his recollections of specific conversations and topics that were outside of the scope of his job. You can't dispute specific conversations with 'hard evidence'. All you can do is deny they took place, which the administration has done. As for O'Neill's baseless claims regarding Iraq, he simply has no credibility on the issue. O'Neill was in charge of the Treasury, not foreign policy. Why should we believe this angry, jilted employee? O'Neill has always been a loose cannon whose opinion is worthless. He is a charlatan, plain and simple.

YOU SIT DOWN

 

are you confusing me w. andymoon!?!

 

So you are saying that an angry charlatan who just got fired is a source of 'better information'. You sure are gullible.

 

think the use of the word "posters" should clue you in to the fact that i wasn't speaking about the country as a whole, although i believe you are right about the overall divide in the country. see David Brooks' column in today's NYTimes, opposite the obligatory Krugman rant quoted above:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/opinion/13BROO.html
--

January 13, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Bush Democrats
By DAVID BROOKS

n 2000, the American electorate was evenly divided. Now, as we enter another voting season, the Gallup Organization has released a study, based on 40,000 interviews, that shows that 45.5 percent of voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party and 45.2 percent identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.

So is that it? After Sept. 11, the Iraq war and the Madonna-Britney kiss, could it really be that we are back to where we started? Since 2000, tens of millions of people have moved, divorced and converted; can it really be that everything in America changes except politics?

Yes and no. Yes, the political divides today do look a lot like the ones that split the nation in 2000. But no. When you look beneath the headline data, you see at least one important change. The events of the past three years have brought to the foreground issues that divide Democrats, and pushed to the background issues that divide Republicans.

The first result is that the Republican Party is more unified than ever before. Ninety-one percent of Republicans approve of the job President Bush is doing. In 1992, Bush's father didn't have anything like that level of support, and even the Reagan administration was split between so-called pragmatists and ideologues.

Today's Republicans not only like Bush personally, they also overwhelmingly support his policies. According to a Pew Center study, 85 percent of Republicans support the war in Iraq, 82 percent believe that pre-emptive war is justified, and 72 percent believe the U.S. is justified in holding terror suspects without trial.

The Democrats, meanwhile, are divided on all these issues. According to the same Pew survey, 54 percent of Democrats oppose the war in Iraq, but 39 percent support it. Forty-four percent of Democrats oppose the pre-emptive war doctrine, but 52 percent support it. Forty-seven percent of Democrats oppose holding terror suspects without trial, but 46 percent are in favor.

Liberals have all the passion these days. They dominate campaign events in Iowa and New Hampshire, but they have not won over half the voters in their own party.

The Democrats are also divided on major domestic issues. The Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg surveyed Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Democrats there were split on Nafta and gay marriage and on whether to roll back all the Bush tax cuts.

The biggest divide among Democrats is metaphysical. Some portion of the party, led by Howard Dean, is so disgusted by Republicans that it does not believe it is possible to work with such people. Meanwhile, others, including Dick Gephardt, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, accept that Republicans are in power, are willing to work with them and take a starkly different approach to politics.

This situation — Republican unity and Democratic fissures — means that the Democratic vote is less cohesive than the G.O.P. vote, at least on the presidential level. In a Bush-Dean matchup, 20 percent of Democrats would vote for Bush, according to a CBS poll, while only 3 percent of Republicans would vote for Dean. Over all, Bush leads Dean by 20 points. And in Iowa and New Hampshire, swing states where voters know both candidates well, Bush is up by significant margins.

In other words, at least at the moment, Bush has crashed through the 45/45 partisan divide. He is a polarizing figure, but there are many more people who support him than oppose him. And this support is not merely personal; it is built into the issue landscape. According to an ABC/Washington Post poll, 57 percent of Americans say they are more likely to support a candidate who supported going to war in Iraq, while only 35 percent say they would be less likely. According to Pew, 59 percent believe that the war in Iraq has helped in the broader war on terror.

All of this means two things. First, as we dive into this period of intense Democratic primary competition, it's worth keeping in mind that Democratic primary voters are a misleading snapshot of the electorate as a whole. Second, while the nation remains closely divided over all, and gravitational pressures will cause the general election to tighten, it is wrong to think that the electorate is fixed. There are millions of people who may lean toward one party or another, but who can be persuaded to support either presidential candidate.

At the moment, many are supporting Bush.

 

As you did yesterday, the comparison is between him and you or I, not him and others more qualified who are voicing specific arguments with his claims.

Either superior access to information deserves benefit of the doubt from those who don't have it or it doesn't T_J, you can't pick and choose the credibility of each possessor, or all you are doing is extending your original biases and calling it reasoning.

Personally I favour the approach you are taking today, as a general rule, then that which you did yesterday. I just don't decide which approcah to take depending upon which one supports Bush.