Paul O'Neill

I have been wanting to write about this person for a few days but couldn't wrap my brain around what I wanted to say. Fortunately, James Taranto at the Wall Street Opinion Journal took the words right out of my mouth here: bq. Remember Paul O'Neill? Neither did we, but he was President Bush's first Treasury secretary. Gently shown the door a little over a year ago, O'Neill has resurfaced, having collaborated on a new book, "The Price of Loyalty," by erstwhile Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind. O'Neill is now a critic, sort of, of the Bush administration, and for about 36 hours--between the time "60 Minutes" aired Sunday and the time "Today" aired today--he was a hero of the Angry Left, driving former Enron adviser Paul Krugman into a frenzy of excitement. bq. Krugman credits O'Neill with showing "courage" by "giving us an invaluable, scathing insider's picture of the Bush administration." Among other things, O'Neill reveals that President Bush wanted to cut taxes. But didn't he make some mention of that in the 2000 campaign? "Most startling of all," Krugman writes, "Donald Rumsfeld pushed the idea of regime change in Iraq as a way to transform the Middle East at a National Security Council meeting in February 2001." Yadda. yadda. yadda... 15 minutes and all that good stuff... James goes on here: bq. It's cute, too, how last week the Angry Left was denouncing the Bush administration for having "no plan" for Iraq, and now the complaint is that it did have a plan. And more: bq. This underscores why the Democrats are in such deep trouble. So effectively have they convinced themselves of an absurdly overwrought case against President Bush that they've forgotten you can't beat an incumbent without a plausible challenger--and thus they seem likely to end up with Howard Dean, or maybe Wesley Clark. But we'd better stop there; we don't want to ruin the story by telling you how it ends. The other thing is that it wasn't Bush who had the first concrete plan for regime change in Iraq. That honor belongs to our president Clinton who signed his own plan into power a full three years before Bush came to office. As reported in the Wall Street Journal: bq. According to Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, "The 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act was passed by an unanimous Senate and a near-unanimous House," after which Mr. Clinton certified it as the law of the land with his signature. And more: bq. According to a report in Newsweek just three months ago, after Clinton signed the Iraqi Liberation Act, "the U.S. government convened a conference with the [Iraqi National Congress] and other opposition groups in London to discuss 'regime change.'" bq. In January 1999, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even appointed a special representative for transition in Iraq, Frank Ricciardone, who reportedly had "a mandate to coordinate opposition to Saddam." bq. Said Albright at the time: "He will be assisted by a team that will include both a military and a political adviser with extensive on-the-ground experience in the region. ... With the aid of Frank Ricciardone and his team, we will persist in helping the Iraqi people re-integrate themselves into the world community by freeing themselves from a leader they do not want, do not deserve and never chose." bq. Two months later, the Clinton administration's plans for a post-Saddam Iraq were already well under way, with State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin explaining to reporters: "What we're trying to do ... is strengthen an Iraqi opposition movement that can lay out solid plans for the post-Saddam recovery in all sectors of national life." And we will hear a correction from the left saying that it wasn't a Bush plot after all??? (crickets) I'm waiting...