White House intimidation…. or Paul O’Neill’s nature?

Josh Marshall suggests — with tongue partially in cheek — that Paul O’Neill’s backtracking must be due to Karl Rove’s bullying, echoing the John DiIulio experience of last year. Paul O’Neill being intimidated by Karl Rove? That dog won’t hunt. Unlike John DiIulio, Paul O’Neill is too senior to desire another cabinet-level position, and has what is referred to in DC lexicon as “f**k-you money” — i.e., O’Neill doesn’t have to play nice in oreder to guarantee a future revenue stream. Plus, as the original Time story points out, O’Neill refused to go along with Cheney’s direct suggestion that he say he resigned:

Cheney called. “Paul, the President has decided to make some changes in the economic team. And you’re part of the change,” he told O’Neill. The bloodless way he was cut loose by his old chum shocked O’Neill, Suskind writes, but what came after was even more shocking. Cheney asked him to announce that it was O’Neill’s decision to leave Washington to return to private life. O’Neill refused, saying “I’m too old to begin telling lies now.”

Paul O’Neill is old, rich, secure in himself, and previously refused a direct request from Dick Cheney. A year later, what could Karl Rove possibly do that would intimidate him? [Compromising pictures of O’Neill with Jillian Barberie?–ed. Hell, that would have helped him!] Instead of intimidation, let’s consider another possibility, one based on O’Neill’s track record as Treasury Secretary. When I was working there, the following would happen like clockwork every two weeks:

a) O’Neill say something that he thought meant X, when in fact it could be interpreted as either X or Y — and Y is either controversial or wrong; b) The financial press would seize on the statement as suggestive of Y; c) O’Neill would have to issue a clarifying statement that he really meant X and not Y

The same thing is going on here. O’Neill said on the Today Show:

People are trying to say that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration. Actually there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be a regime change in Iraq.

In this case, O’Neill’s predeliction for foot-in-mouth disease is compounded by the fact that much of what O’Neill said comes indirectly through Ron Suskind’s book. Finally, it’s worth noting that the many of the usual suspects aren’t biting on this non-story. Spencer Ackerman, who’s co-authored a lot of TNR’s more damaging assessments of the Bush team’s invade-at-all-costs mentality, is quite clear that the O’Neill charge is bogus:

Contrary to much of the hype surrounding it (CNN.com headlined its story on the book, “O’Neill: Bush planned Iraq invasion before 9/11“) it doesn’t really answer the question of whether Bush was planning war from day one or just regime change by other means. At the first meeting of Bush’s National Security Council–held January 30, 2001–Condoleezza Rice set the tone by announcing that “Iraq is destabilizing the region.” Bush clearly favored some kind of action against Saddam Hussein, but the shape of the action appeared to be undetermined at this point. O’Neill’s notes quote Bush ordering Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Hugh Shelton to “examine our military options,” including “how it might look” to use U.S. troops in support of an insurrection. Yet, at the same meeting, he also ordered Secretary of State Colin Powell to plan a new sanctions regime–a course of action that administration hawks believed would inhibit, rather than engender, Saddam’s downfall. It appears that Bush was indicating his preference for a more aggressive approach than the Clinton administration took against Saddam, but that he was still casting about for options as to what that might entail…. [I]t appears from O’Neill’s notes that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was the only high-level official who was advocating “sending in U.S. troops to support and defend [an Iraqi opposition] insurgency.” Clearly Bush’s desire to have Rumsfeld and Shelton review military options for Iraq created a new policy menu, but O’Neill never indicates Bush’s actual preference among these options–and certainly not so early in the administration…. [I]t is a valuable addition to the historical record to know that the president was determined to topple Saddam long before September 11. But that’s not the same thing as a president who had already decided to go to war. Ironically, a book written to condemn the administration’s lack of straight talk on the Iraq issue has produced even less straight talk itself.

[But what about Brad DeLong‘s claim that what Bush said yesterday contradicted your earlier post?–ed.] Hmmm…. Brad quotes Bush as follows:

The stated policy of my administration toward Saddam Hussein was very clear — like the previous administration, we were for regime change.

A touch, a touch, I do confe– oh, wait a minute, let’s put that quote in context, shall we?:

“The stated policy of my administration toward Saddam Hussein was very clear — like the previous administration, we were for regime change,” Bush told a joint news conference in Monterrey, Mexico, with Mexican President Vicente Fox. “And in the initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with (enforcing a no-fly zone over Iraq) and so we were fashioning policy along those lines.” Bush said al-Qaida’s surprise Sept. 11 attacks on the United States put him on a hair trigger to take pre-emptive action against Iraq rather than await evidence of a new threat to Americans. “September the 11th made me realize that America was no longer protected by oceans and we had to take threats very seriously no matter where they may be materializing,” Bush said.

Let’s also go to this January 2003 statement from Bush:

Actually, prior to September 11, we were discussing smart sanctions. We were trying to fashion a sanction regime that would make it more likely to be able to contain somebody like Saddam Hussein. After September 11, the doctrine of containment just doesn’t hold any water.

I said two things in my previous O’Neill post — that Bush had given Colin Powell the lead on Iraq prior to 9/11, and that he changed his mind after that date. Nothing Bush said contradicts that. [But Brad also links to this ABC report saying Bush wanted a review of military policy options!–ed.] A review of options — particularly in the first months of an administration — is nothing new. But there’s a big difference between evaluating policy options and acting on them. The key question, as Ackerman notes, is whether the administration moved forward on these options. The evidence says no. Until 9/11, Powell had the lead on Iraq and Rumsfeld seemed close to leaving the administration (though not because of Iraq). Sure, Bush wanted to get rid of Hussein, but so did Clinton and all of Congress. The question was, what was Bush prepared to do to change the regime? And there is no evidence to support the charge that prior to 9/11, Bush was planning to invade Iraq.