Bush Administration Launchs Investigation of Former Treasury Secretary O'Neil

There were several sources verifying the Saddam had WMDs. In fact, at one time there were a bunch of dead Kurdish women and children lying around that gave the strongest evidence.

Calm down major, of course you can argue it, but I don't have to buy into the argument with further proof. You chastized me for ignoring the author's assertion that these notes came from some transcript. How does O'Neill get transcripts of meetings pertaining to national security? And where does he get off publishing excerpts of them? Is it so wrong to ask for a little stronger evidence. You don't because you have just what you are looking for: a critical view of President Bush.

Isn't there a possibility that O'Neill is already in a legal jam?

 

I wondered about that.

So....

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/13/politics/main508858.shtml

Your article sucks, TJ.

 

Congratulations! You are a proud NEW member of Trader_Jorge's traveling clown brigade.



You ought to fit in just fine.

Although it's unlikely that you'll see too many transcripts from the position that you have assumed:
, your efforts to deny reality, ought to work out well from your, uh, perspective.

Again, congratulations, and I wish you the best.

 

for the second time in this thread:

 

Okay, smarty-pants, so now show me where O'Neill would get a copy of the transcript and where he has the okay to publish those contents?

 

Liberals=Les Miserables!

 

Well, to clarify, the specific transcript in question comes from either a Cabinet meeting or some other meeting at which tax cuts and economic policy was discussed, and despite what the President may tell you, tax cuts for the rich are not a matter of national security. As a participant in those meetings, it is more logical to assume that the Secretary of the Treasury would have had access to the transcript after the fact, rather than to assume that he conjured up a transcript in conjunction with the Freemasons while making crop circles.

Similarly, it stands to reason that, as a member of the National Security Council, that O'Neill would have had access to briefings, reports, transcripts, and agendas for the meetings therof.

As to whether or not it was okay to publish the contents, if the CD-Roms taken by O'Neill were in fact vetted by Treasury department legal counsel, as is apparently SOP with regard to such matters, than I suspect it was. However, we'll find that out soon enough, and even if it was OK or not, it has no bearing on whether or not Bush, Rumsfeld, et al. made the alleged statements, who, as I've noted numerous times, have not denied making them, once.

 

more from the "Today" T-R-A-N-S-C-R-I-P-T:

O'Neill said: "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."

 

no.

 

No? Please rewrite glynch's comments into a form you find acceptable. Clearly, his tone is biased, but I thought the facts were now supported by a great wide range of sources.

 

This seems more accurate to me:

1) Though you might think the invasion and occupation of Iraq was overall worthwhile, the Administrations did extensive pre 9-11 contigency planning, extending and building upon the half-hearted policies of the Clinton Administration.

2) The two tax cuts have clearly provided a much needed stimulous to an economy that was already ailing by the end of the Clinton administration. Although pushed by then Treasury Secretary O'Neill to enact a 15 percent reduction in corporate tax rates, Bush insisted that any tax cuts help working families directly.

 

Here's the Larry Lindsey article in full

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB10740435028600100,00.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

--
January 14, 2004

COMMENTARY

The Value of Loyalty

By LAWRENCE B. LINDSEY

Politics can be a rough sport. Paul O'Neill's departure after two years as Treasury secretary was not handled well. His bitterness, some would say, is quite understandable. But bitterness is a bad basis for objectivity, and any of Mr. O'Neill's reported views regarding President Bush and the conduct of economic policy do not comport with my recollection or with the public record. In fact, the president is what he claims to be -- a compassionate conservative -- and one with a grasp of how the world really works.

I first got to know President Bush in late 1997, when a mutual friend suggested we should meet. We had a series of meetings, each lasting several hours, during 1998 in the governor's mansion in Austin. The discussions were detailed and he was constantly asking penetrating questions, and telling me to "Say it in English" when my explanations were too wonky to be clear.

We shared a concern about the bubble that was developing in the financial markets. His concerns were not just theoretical. As a businessman, he'd suffered through the 1980s energy bubble in Texas and its collapse. Mr. Bush expressed particular concern at the human cost of the downturn, remembering families in Midland who lost their homes. This view that a bursting bubble was both an economic and human calamity shaped the Bush economic program both during the campaign and after his election.

On Dec. 1, 1999, the president unveiled his tax cut, saying that the economy might need an "insurance policy," and adding that "a president should hope for the best and prepare for the worst." This led to a very orthodox approach to handling economic weakness.

On the human side, the tax cut was disproportionately focused on middle-class families with children. The president overrode the recommendations of many of his advisers by explicitly eliminating the taxes paid by single parents supporting children on modest incomes. Being a single mom with kids, he explained, was the toughest job in America.
DOW JONES REPRINTSThis copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit: www.djreprints.com. • See a sample reprint in PDF format • Order a reprint of this article now.

On Jan. 3, 2001, two and a half weeks before taking office, the president held an economic summit in Austin. Businesspeople and others active in the economy came to give their candid and private views on the state of the economy. Although the official data at the time suggested all was well, these people said that the economy was sliding rapidly. This galvanized the president into pushing for rapid enactment of the "insurance policy" he had campaigned on. Interestingly, the Federal Reserve had reached the same conclusion, making the first of what turned out to be 13 cuts in the federal-funds rate, on the very same day.

Mr. O'Neill joined the administration in late January, without the benefit of this background. Convinced by his own judgment and by the official data that had been released during 2000 suggesting that the economy was doing fine, he sought to minimize the potential size of the tax cut. We now know, but did not know then, that the economy had started its decline in the quarter before the election.

One of Mr. O'Neill's suggestions was to have the tax cut trigger off if the government ran a deficit. The view had two problems -- one process, one policy. Upon taking office, the role of the so-called policy shop in the White House is to implement the program on which the president campaigned and was elected. In all three administrations in which I served, a record was kept of these commitments that may seem inflexible to some. But it is the best method I know of to ensure democratic accountability for those who staff a new administration. While flexibility develops over time as circumstances change, Mr. O'Neill was advancing an idea that had been rejected in the campaign at a time when the governing process is most focused on carrying out the will of the electorate.

Of even more concern to me was the policy implication of the O'Neill proposal. The tax cut was there to cushion the economic downturn resulting from the bubble's collapse. Mr. O'Neill's plan meant that if the downturn was so severe as to cause revenues to collapse, the tax cut would have to be cancelled just at the time the economy needed it the most!

More generally, the policy-making process can be a frustrating one, and Mr. O'Neill certainly experienced that. Many issues arise that do not fit neatly into a single cabinet department's jurisdiction. For example, a trade issue such as steel tariffs affects the Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative most directly. But the Labor Department can be involved if firms might fail and their pension plans might be taken over by the government. The Office of Management and Budget can be involved because of budget effects, and the Treasury and the Council of Economic Advisers because of the economic impact.

The White House policy staff organizes these disparate agencies on an issue-by-issue basis, trying to discover and stop unintended consequences from a policy action that a single agency may have overlooked. From time to time, this interagency process looks like a "power grab" to a cabinet officer who sees an issue as being part of his "turf." When disagreements can't be resolved by the policy officials, the buck stops with the president, who makes the final call. Though it can be messy and time-consuming, the country is better served if all angles on a given decision are thoroughly vetted before it is implemented. In two decades of being involved in this process, I've never known anyone who thought they "won" on all the issues they should have.

Two of Mr. O'Neill's most troubling assertions about the decision-making process -- that the president is not engaged, and that he (Mr. O'Neill) was shut out of the process -- are simply false. Every night, the president goes home with a two-inch binder known as the Briefing Book. It contains the background material for each of the president's numerous meetings the next day. Having been grilled on the details in those briefing memos, I can personally attest that Mr. Bush does his homework. Woe is any official who is not prepared, because the president will be. I imagine the case method Mr. Bush learned at Harvard Business School was good preparation.

Each page of that Briefing Book must be cleared through a complex process run by the staff secretary. The White House policy councils must assure the staff secretary that the views of the relevant agencies are accurately portrayed. And since Treasury officials are regularly included in the meetings with the president, they have their own check. If Mr. O'Neill felt that material got to the president that blindsided him, he should have inquired within his own department.

It is in the area of tax policy that Mr. O'Neill seems most aggrieved, both about policy and process. Although he had been ebullient about the economy during much of 2001, 9/11 convinced Mr. O'Neill that business confidence needed a boost. He suggested a 15-point rate cut in the corporation income tax rate for two years. We took the idea directly to the president. But it was a nonstarter -- it just did not comport with the president's view of helping the economy by helping working families directly. This was a policy decision, not a process failure.

During 2002, it became clear that although the first round of tax cuts had ended the recession, the lingering effects of 9/11 and the bubble's burst were still weighing down the economy. Mr. O'Neill favored focusing resources on two big long-term reforms: a complete privatization of Social Security and the abolition of the corporation income tax. Both ideas were examined in detail. Instead, the president opted to propose an acceleration of the tax cuts, which were being phased in over several years. Passed in April, these tax cuts were instrumental in jump-starting the economy in the third quarter of 2003. The economy will continue growing in 2004 on the back of sound policy.

To some, including Mr. O'Neill, those tax cuts were a mistake because they did not make fundamental structural changes. The president instead opted to make modest positive structural improvements while putting money in people's pockets and sustaining economic growth in the near term. But more important, these could be enacted in a timely manner.

A look around the world shows that the president was right. The experience of Japan, which has struggled for a decade trying to make structural changes, is instructive. Its economy has stagnated because the political process has neglected achievable reforms that would also help sustain growth while bigger changes occurred. The obsession of Europe with deficits is also instructive. Needed tax reductions and structural reforms were neglected because of short-term revenue effects. European deficits are high and rising due to economic stagnation, while unemployment is in double digits. America is widely hailed as the world's growth engine because we followed the right policies.

That is why the claim that the president's tax cut was supply-side ideology is so misplaced. The tax cuts met a demand-side need while advancing sensible improvements on the supply side. Radical supply-side ideas like abolishing the corporate income tax were vetted by the policy process and rejected. The process worked as it should, considering a full range of options and then selecting the most feasible.

In spite of our policy differences, Mr. O'Neill and I always got along on a personal basis. He is a smart, well-intentioned man with a long and distinguished career. He thinks big thoughts, and his efforts to combat AIDS and bring potable water to the people of Africa speak to a big heart. The month before he left office, he took considerable personal risk by flying to Afghanistan to advance America's war on terrorism. He, like others who leave private life at the peak of their careers, make a real sacrifice.

So, the circumstances of his departure were regrettable. But so too was his decision to make this book, "The Price of Loyalty," the capstone of his career. The book does a grave injustice to the president, to the truth, and to Mr. O'Neill himself.

Mr. Lindsey is a former director of the National Economic Council.

 

Well, okay, we just don't have much overlap here in terms of how we view reality. I guess that's been abundantly established already.

You didn't really address the idea of "imminent danger," which was glynch's point #1 and was addressed savagely by that Army faculty member just recently, among hundreds of other sources. But seriously, never mind -- we can each find our own favorite sources, I suppose. We don't need to walk over these abused cobblestones any more. Even with all the images, it's just pretty boring.

 

More news from the "White House" regarding this issue:

http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2004/011204.asp

Check out the other top secret docs he could have made public!

 

Me? I'm just jousting. I still mis-trust excerpts from transcripts that are provided by critics; they are little more than written sound-bites which can be taken out of context and mis-construed...

What does "vetted" mean?

 

But giddy...in that you asked for the transcripts, that it is impractical to assume that entire transcripts are going to be provided, and that these 'sound bites' are pretty conclusive in and of themseves...( unless you can offer interpretations given another realstic context, keeping in mind the seriousness of the setting, thereby probably ruling out the possibility that thee words were, in fact, preceded by statements like " You know what someone trying to sound as if the war was pre-determined would say right now?..."...given all of that, it would seem that your objection boils down to the fact that it comes from a critic.

Now, I have a question for you...

...assume for a moment that even some of these mounting allegations are true...how, exactly, could they be verified in a manner you would find compelling? Rule out transcripts, info provided by critics, anyone ever assosciated with the Democratic party, another country, etc...rule out War College rports as academic, etc...

...what would it take? For someone who still supports Bush to mistakenly let slip that they lied, manipulated us, etc.? Seriously...please offer some reasonable, remotely realistic ways in which we could be informed about this malpractice behind closed doors that you would accept.

 

<b>MacBeth</b>:

Like I said, I'm just jousting. I get so tired of the full-bore criticism every day of every thing that this administration does.... I just oppose the critics largely in a desperate attempt to provide some balance (this board is politically balanced? yeah sure) and for the pure satisfaction of doing so.


I'm not a blind Bush loyalist (I understand why you think I am) but nor am I a critic the likes of which I see here. These guys take turns purveying the news outlets for some critical story about the Administration and since the Media is relatively biased they have ample ammunition to illlustrate their skewed viewpoint.

I just joust and counter-punch to try and deflate the argument against and prop up the status quo-- which oftentimes deserves it.

Remember, my thread "I'm Tired of Being a Republican?" Same song different verse. The piling on here is so bad that I have painted myself into a corner with all this but I am more concerned about a fair overview than how I am perceived.

I'm here for the overall education and for my own amusement.

 

By the way, it looks like Suskind is in the process of putting up on the Web all 19,000 documents that support the book.