Despite counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke’s suggestions for combating al Qaeda at the Bush Administration’s first National Security Council meeting on January 30, 2001, President Bush was focused elsewhere. ” ‘We’re going to correct the imbalance of the previous [Clinton] administration on the Mideast conflict,’ Bush announced. ‘We’re going to tilt it back toward Israel.’ Bush […]
Category: quotes
1/30/2001
In Ron Suskind’s book The Price of Loyalty, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said “the [Bush] administration had begun planning the overthrow of Saddam Hussein at its first, postinaugurational National Security Council [NSC] meeting in January [30] 2001–rather than in the more deliberative, post-9/11 evidentiary process it had advertised.” – Ron Suskind, The One Percent […]
1/30/2001
When the topic of Iraq was brought up at the Bush Administration’s first National Security Council meeting on January 30, 2001, “Without mentioning any threat, [National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice asserted that ‘Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region.’ According to Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, who attended the meetings, no […]
1/30/2001
In the National Security Council’s first meeting after President Bush entered the White House, “Advocating ‘going after Saddam’ during the January 30 [2001] meeting, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, according to [Treasury Secretary Paul] O’Neill, ‘Imagine what the [Middle East] region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that’s aligned with U.S. interests. […]
1/30/2001
The first meeting of President Bush’s National Security Council took place on January 30, 2001. “The conversation turned to Iraq, where a decade after the end of the Gulf War, American forces still enforced two no-fly zones and the United Nations program of sanctions had been terribly corrupted. As [National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice put […]
1/30/2001
On January 30, 2001, President George W. Bush addressed the sole items on the agenda for his first high-level national security team meeting: “three key objectives: Get rid of Saddam Hussein, end American involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and rearrange the dominoes in the Middle East. …The centerpiece of their recommendations was the removal […]
1/30/2001
The first meeting of President Bush’s National Security Council took place on January 30, 2001. When the subject of regime change in Iraq was discussed, Secretary of State Colin “Powell suggested it was time to revamp sanctions to make them more effective. ‘Why are we even bothering with sanctions?’ retorted [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld. […]
1/30/2001
After President Bush’s January 30, 2001, National Security Council meeting, “Treasury Secretary [Paul] O’Neill was convinced that ‘getting Hussein was now the administration’s focus, that much was already clear.’ But O’Neill believed, the real destabilizing factor in the Middle East was not Saddam Hussein but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict–the issue Bush had just turned his back […]
1/30/2001
The first meeting of President Bush’s National Security Council took place on January 30, 2001. When the subject of regime change in Iraq was discussed, George “Tenet, the CIA director, unrolled oversized surveillance photographs on the table showing antiaircraft batteries around Baghdad and what he called chemical weapons factories. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill […]
1/25/2001
“By 2001 the government still needed a decision at the highest level as to whether al Qaeda was or was not ‘a first order threat,’ [counterterrorism czar] Richard Clarke wrote to [National Security Advisor] Condoleezza Rice on January 25, 2001.” – 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, Page 343 […]