best part of O'Neill revelations:

[shockingelk]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6632-2004Jan10

A senior administration official said O'Neill's "suggestion that the administration was planning an invasion of Iraq days after taking office is laughable. Nobody listened to him when he was in office. Why should anybody now?"

Nobody in the WH listened to the Secretary of the Treasury for two years. I actually don't find that hard to believe.

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. HAHAHAHAHAHA! The asswipes burned themselves now!

Admit that they listened to him, and they admit to wrongdoing.

Say that they didn't listen to him, and they set themselves for a very obvious reason for the economy tanking.

But then, of course, they'll just say "The economy never tanked - we were just feeling the end of the Clinton induced downward slide which we knew would take three years of tax cuts to correct."

[Lefty48197]

2. Bill Clinton made them do it!

"However, other administration officials...
....pointed out that 'regime change' had been the official policy of the U.S. since Bill Clinton said in 1998 that containment of the Iraqi President was no longer sufficient and a change of leadership was necessary".

CBS also says that the author has documents that show the administration examining options for removing Hussein, and planning for the aftermath in the first 3 months of 2001. BUSTED!

[Cocoa]

3. yeah, that doesn't really work in their favor

For one thing, it makes it understandable that O'Neill was dissatisfied.

For another, it calls into question why he was appointed in the first place.

I wonder how many other Bush officials resent the fact that Karl Rove is runnning everything?

[Toots]

4. Pretty much lays to rest the canard that since he was fired

the economy has improved. The insinuation being that the bad economy was O'Neil's fault. If no one listened to him then it couldn't have been his policies that are in question.

[buycitgo]

5. he was a member of the NSC, right?

that has to be true, right?

so: to exactly WHAT intel was he privy?

as a member of that very small, select group, my guess is that he had access to just about all of it, and probably paid MUCH more attention to what went on at those meetings than you-know-who.

given said access, the OFFICIAL response to the going after Saddam bit, according to Scott McClellan, is that he had NO access to information of that sort.

so, once again, who's lying here?