Bush bruised by tell-all revelations
George W Bush planned to invade Iraq soon after his inauguration as president, with or without evidence of weapons of mass destruction, according to a former US Treasury secretary.
Paul O’Neill, who once held a seat on the National Security Council, said the White House distorted and used intelligence on WMD as a pretext to oust Saddam Hussein.
“In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterise as evidence of weapons of mass destruction,” he told Time magazine.
“There were allegations and assertions by people. I never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterise as real evidence.”
His comments come ahead of the publication of his book The Price of Loyalty with Ron Suskind this week, in which he claims Mr Bush was uninterested in listening to the arguments of his peers, leaving his aides playing “blind man’s buff” as they tried to interpret his aloofness.
Mr O’Neill said the White House was driven by a conservative philosophy that pandered to the “corporate crowd”.
He also said “regime change” in Iraq was being planned almost as soon as Mr Bush took office.
Mr O’Neill said defeating Saddam was “topic A” at the very first meeting of George W Bush’s National Security Council, just over a week after his inauguration on January 20th 2001.
