Clark Says O'Neill Book Vindicates Him

[jbfam4]

Clark Says O'Neill Book Vindicates Him
http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-clark-oneill,0,5131763.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines
By KATE McCANN
Associated Press Writer

January 11, 2004, 8:16 PM EST


MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Democratic presidential hopeful Wesley Clark says a book by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill vindicates what he has said all along about the U.S. invasion of Iraq.




In Clark's book, "Winning Modern War", which came out in November, the retired Army general traced the plotting of the war in Iraq back to 1996, when he says a group left over from the first Bush administration recommended that Israel focus on removing Saddam from power.

Clark goes on to write that in 1998, the group of 20, which included Donald H. Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, now Defense Secretary and Deputy Defense Secretary, respectively, wrote a letter to President Clinton, asking him to "aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power."

"We went to a war in Iraq we didn't have to go to," Clark told a group of supporters. "I'm calling on the Congress of the United States to fully investigate exactly why this country went to a war it didn't have to fight."

Clark said he was in the Pentagon immediately after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and heard officials joking that, "'if Saddam didn't do it, he should have, because if he didn't, we're going to get him anyway.'"

[dkf]

1. Good grief...he's going to drag Israel into this? Yiiii.

[JasonDeter]

3. I fully support Israel.

They had more reason than anyone on the planet for the removal of that sicko saddam. He was paying Palestinian families when one of their children blew him or herself up and killed innocent Israeli citizens! If bush* had not boldfaced lied to the American people that the reason for the war was WMD's and said the truth, that taking out saddam would stop the paying of people from blowing themselves and innocents up I would have fully supported the Iraq war. But of course we know bush* has no more ability to tell the truth than his father...the devil.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Not quite.

He implied that current operatives from Team Bush wanted (and may still want) to make Israel do their dirty work.

This has been on the right-wing wish list for years; and the political right within Israel has taken the bait from time to time. I see it as a cynical ploy to make Israel do the PNAC's bidding.

--bkl

[La_Serpiente]

2. oh oh

Will he see the brunt of the AIPAC lobby?