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 […]
Category: quotes
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 […]
1/30/2001
“Seeing little reason, or intelligence justification, for war at the close of the inaugural National Security Council meeting [on January 30, 2001], Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was perplexed. ‘Who, exactly, was pushing this foreign policy?’ he wondered to himself. And ‘why Saddam, why now, and why [was] this central to U.S. interests?’ ” – James […]
1/30/2001
“It was little wonder that during his first National Security Council meeting [on January 30, 2001], when the only topics on the agenda were Israel and Iraq, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill thought that all the issues had already been decided. ‘The meeting had seemed scripted,’ he thought. …[Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld had said little, […]
1/30/2001
Deputy Secretary of the Interior Stephen “Griles was a lead actor in the Cheney Energy Task Force [that first convened on January 30, 2001], serving as the Interior Department’s chief representative. As such, he played a lead role in mapping out the U.S. oil industry’s interests in Iraq’s oil fields and developing some of the […]
1/30/2001
“Among those who have revealed the early planning of the [Iraq] war are Paul O’Neill, President Bush’s first treasury secretary and an official member of the Cheney Energy Task Force. According to O’Neill, regime change in Iraq was the number one item on the agenda at the very first Bush administration National Security Council meeting […]
1/30/2001
“We were told by the president [Bush] that the war [in Iraq] was his last choice. But it is now clear that it was always his first preference. His former secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill, confirmed that Iraq was ‘topic A’ at the very first meeting of the Bush National Security Council just ten […]
1/25/2001
Counterterrorism czar Richard “Clarke and his aides composed a three-page memorandum to [National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice dated January 25 [2001]…He urged covert aid to [Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah] Massoud, new Predator [drone] flights, and other measures. A Cabinet-level meeting about al Qaeda’s imminent threat was ‘urgently needed,’ he and his chief of staff, […]