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So if you're going to call me on my honor, YOU should at least be honorable enough yourself to point out my faults and show me exactly where my "historical pattern of exaggerations, half-truths and outright lies" exists...as you say... if indeed it does.

It is only in this way that you can prove YOU're not a liar yourself... about me.

Bring it.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml

(CBS) A year ago, Paul O'Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts.

Now, O'Neill - who is known for speaking his mind - talks for the first time about his two years inside the Bush administration. His story is the centerpiece of a new book being published this week about the way the Bush White House is run.

Entitled "The Price of Loyalty," the book by a former Wall Street Journal reporter draws on interviews with high-level officials who gave the author their personal accounts of meetings with the president, their notes and documents. [Simon and Schuster, the book's publisher, and CBSNews.com, are both units of Viacom.]

But the main source of the book was Paul O'Neill. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.
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Paul O'Neill says he is going public because he thinks the Bush Administration has been too secretive about how decisions have been made.

Will this be seen as a “kiss-and-tell" book?

“I've come to believe that people will say damn near anything, so I'm sure somebody will say all of that and more,” says O’Neill, who was George Bush's top economic policy official.

In the book, O’Neill says that the president did not make decisions in a methodical way: there was no free-flow of ideas or open debate.

At cabinet meetings, he says the president was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection," forcing top officials to act "on little more than hunches about what the president might think."

This is what O'Neill says happened at his first hour-long, one-on-one meeting with Mr. Bush: “I went in with a long list of things to talk about, and I thought to engage on and as the book says, I was surprised that it turned out me talking, and the president just listening … As I recall, it was mostly a monologue.”

He also says that President Bush was disengaged, at least on domestic issues, and that disturbed him. And he says that wasn't his experience when he worked as a top official under Presidents Nixon and Ford, or the way he ran things when he was chairman of Alcoa.

O'Neill readily agreed to tell his story to the book's author Ron Suskind – and he adds that he's taking no money for his part in the book.

Suskind says he interviewed hundreds of people for the book – including several cabinet members.

O'Neill is the only one who spoke on the record, but Suskind says that someone high up in the administration – Donald Rumsfeld - warned O’Neill not to do this book.

Was it a warning, or a threat?

“I don't think so. I think it was the White House concerned,” says Suskind. “Understandably, because O'Neill has spent extraordinary amounts of time with the president. They said, ‘This could really be the one moment where things are revealed.’"
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Not only did O'Neill give Suskind his time, he gave him 19,000 internal documents.

“Everything's there: Memoranda to the President, handwritten "thank you" notes, 100-page documents. Stuff that's sensitive,” says Suskind, adding that in some cases, it included transcripts of private, high-level National Security Council meetings. “You don’t get higher than that.”

And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.

"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’" says O’Neill. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.”

And that came up at this first meeting, says O’Neill, who adds that the discussion of Iraq continued at the next National Security Council meeting two days later.

He got briefing materials under this cover sheet. “There are memos. One of them marked, secret, says, ‘Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,’" adds Suskind, who says that they discussed an occupation of Iraq in January and February of 2001.
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Based on his interviews with O'Neill and several other officials at the meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq's oil wealth.

He obtained one Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001, and entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts," which includes a map of potential areas for exploration.

“It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions,” says Suskind. “On oil in Iraq.”

During the campaign, candidate Bush had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."

“The thing that's most surprising, I think, is how emphatically, from the very first, the administration had said ‘X’ during the campaign, but from the first day was often doing ‘Y,’” says Suskind. “Not just saying ‘Y,’ but actively moving toward the opposite of what they had said during the election.”

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.
But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, Suskind writes that O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

“Cheney, at this moment, shows his hand,” says Suskind. “He says, ‘You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.’ … O'Neill is speechless.”

”It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society,” says O’Neill. “And I thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was a lot more important than a tax reduction.”

Did he think it was irresponsible? “Well, it's for sure not what I would have done,” says O’Neill.

The former treasury secretary accuses Vice President****Cheney of not being an honest broker, but, with a handful of others, part of "a praetorian guard that encircled the president" to block out contrary views. "This is the way****likes it," says O’Neill.
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Meanwhile, the White House was losing patience with O'Neill. He was becoming known for a series of off-the-cuff remarks his critics called gaffes. One of them sent the dollar into a nosedive and required major damage control.

Twice during stock market meltdowns, O'Neill was not available to the president: He was out of the country - one time on a trip to Africa with the Irish rock star Bono.

“Africa made an enormous splash. It was like a road show,” says Suskind. “He comes back and the president says to him at a meeting, ‘You know, you're getting quite a cult following.’ And it clearly was not a joke. And it was not said in jest.”

Suskind writes that the relationship grew tenser and that the president even took a jab at O'Neill in public, at an economic forum in Texas.

The two men were never close. And O'Neill was not amused when Mr. Bush began calling him "The Big O." He thought the president's habit of giving people nicknames was a form of bullying. Everything came to a head for O'Neill at a November 2002 meeting at the White House of the economic team.

“It's a huge meeting. You got****Cheney from the, you know, secure location on the video. The President is there,” says Suskind, who was given a nearly verbatim transcript by someone who attended the meeting.

He says everyone expected Mr. Bush to rubber stamp the plan under discussion: a big new tax cut. But, according to Suskind, the president was perhaps having second thoughts about cutting taxes again, and was uncharacteristically engaged.

“He asks, ‘Haven't we already given money to rich people? This second tax cut's gonna do it again,’” says Suskind.

“He says, ‘Didn’t we already, why are we doing it again?’ Now, his advisers, they say, ‘Well Mr. President, the upper class, they're the entrepreneurs. That's the standard response.’ And the president kind of goes, ‘OK.’ That's their response. And then, he comes back to it again. ‘Well, shouldn't we be giving money to the middle, won't people be able to say, ‘You did it once, and then you did it twice, and what was it good for?’"

But according to the transcript, White House political advisor Karl Rove jumped in.

“Karl Rove is saying to the president, a kind of mantra. ‘Stick to principle. Stick to principle.’ He says it over and over again,” says Suskind. “Don’t waver.”

In the end, the president didn't. And nine days after that meeting in which O'Neill made it clear he could not publicly support another tax cut, the vice president called and asked him to resign.

With the deficit now climbing towards $400 billion, O'Neill maintains he was in the right.

But look at the economy today.

“Yes, well, in the last quarter the growth rate was 8.2 percent. It was terrific,” says O’Neill. “I think the tax cut made a difference. But without the tax cut, we would have had 6 percent real growth, and the prospect of dealing with transformation of Social Security and fundamentally fixing the tax system. And to me, those were compelling competitors for, against more tax cuts.”
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While in the book O'Neill comes off as constantly appalled at Mr. Bush, he was surprised when Stahl told him she found his portrait of the president unflattering.

“Hmmm, you really think so,” asks O’Neill, who says he isn’t joking. “Well, I’ll be darned.”

“You're giving me the impression that you're just going to be stunned if they attack you for this book,” says Stahl to O’Neill. “And they're going to say, I predict, you know, it's sour grapes. He's getting back because he was fired.”
“I will be really disappointed if they react that way because I think they'll be hard put to,” says O’Neill.

Is he prepared for it?

“Well, I don't think I need to be because I can't imagine that I'm going to be attacked for telling the truth,” says O’Neill. “Why would I be attacked for telling the truth?”

White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked about the book on Friday and said "The president is someone that leads and acts decisively on our biggest priorities and that is exactly what he'll continue to do."

And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.

"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’" says O’Neill. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.”

And that came up at this first meeting, says O’Neill, who adds that the discussion of Iraq continued at the next National Security Council meeting two days later.

He got briefing materials under this cover sheet. “There are memos. One of them marked, secret, says, ‘Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,’" adds Suskind, who says that they discussed an occupation of Iraq in January and February of 2001.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Based on his interviews with O'Neill and several other officials at the meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq's oil wealth.

He obtained one Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001, and entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts," which includes a map of potential areas for exploration.

“It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions,” says Suskind. “On oil in Iraq.”

How evil is the US Empire?
Posted: 1/24/2005 10:56:08 PM by Elwood
The United States neo-empire has fallen into a downward spiral the last few years since Bush has been in office. What is your opinion of the historical militarism of the United States?
The invasion of Iraq? Viet Nam? Prescott Bush, Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller building Hitler up to where he ruled Germany? Starting wars with Spain and Mexico under false pretenses to seize California, Texas, Cuba, The Phillipines? Joining with the Japanese Army in attacking Siberia in 1918?

19th century SEALS did it for the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), oh yeah there wasn't an MIC until WWII.

MajMike: you are a corpse in an advanced state of decay.

YOU're the one with character issues.

You're ridiculous.

So watchman, is it that you do not believe any of the ones posted here, or is it that you do not believe that humans engage in Conspiracies at all?
Because history is full of them and I am SURE that there are those in the world today who are ploting something for us.
I know that you believe others (i.e. Muslims) are ploting/conspirying against us, why the problem accepting that we too are capable of conspiracies?

So watchman, is it that you do not believe any of the ones posted here, or is it that you do not believe that humans engage in Conspiracies at all?
Because history is full of them and I am SURE that there are those in the world today who are ploting something for us.
I know that you believe others (i.e. Muslims) are ploting/conspirying against us, why the problem accepting that we too are capable of conspiracies?

The conspiracy theories that make the Best Seller's list are highly unlikely to ever be true...

Historians know that Bush Senior arranged for the U.S. to sell millions of dollars of weapons to Hussein almost up to the time that he decided to invade Iraq country during the Gulf War. His administration sold weapons to the Iranians at a time when they were declared a terrorist nation and held American citizens hostage. As Yogi Berra once said, it's "Deja vu all over again." ...............
The Ford plant in Germany played a major role in the Nazi war effort. While their American factories produced weapons for the allies, their German subsidiary manufactured troop transports, tracked vehicles, Panzer tanks, anti-tank guns and other crucial equipment for the Nazis. Providing weapons for both contestants in a world war was extraordinarily lucrative.

It is alleged that high ranking American officials including Edsel Ford oversaw the German plant's operations even during the war. Unlike most American businesses doing business in Germany during the war, Ford enjoyed significant independence and was never seized by the Nazi government.

..................The du Ponts financed anti-semitic, facist groups in the U.S. and along with some of America's most prominent families, promoted sterilization programs to assist in the effort to promote the white race over those deemed to be defective.
............The members wore hoods and black ropes, with skull and crossbones. They fire-bombed union meetings, murdered union organizers................
Standard Oil has also been implicated in providing crucial support for the Nazi war machine. The helped the Germans develop plants and gave them the necessary technology for the manufacture of synthetic fuels and leaded gas. Standard also assisited the Germans in stockpiling $20 million worth or petrolium products in anticipation of the war. This deal was concluded with the assistance of the Wall Street investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman where the senior managing partner was George H.W. Bush's father, Prescott Bush.........
The Curtis-Wright Aviation Corporation was another U.S. company doing business with the Nazis. Their planes were well suited for dive bombing. Although the Nazi pilots used this technique as an integral part of their blitzkrieg strategy of warfare, it was developed by the US. It was so effective that air plane manufacturers were forbidden to teach this to foreigners. Curtis-Wright managed to manuever around this inconvenient policy by not 'teaching' it, but rather demonstrating it at air shows in order to boost sales to Hitler.
Adding insult to injury, several of these American corporations who had collaborated had the audacity to sue the American government for damage that had been inflicted on their German plants by Allied bombers. GM managed to extract $33 million for the destruction of their Folke-Wulf plant. ITT received $27 million and Ford, a mere $1 million.................

the postwar report stating that Ford and GM did not produce Panzers for Germany because of their affiliation with the U.S. - is false. It was made by an individual in a responsible position at the end of the war

The following two missions, to the industrial areas at Frankfurt on the 25th and the Ford Motor factory at Cologne on the 27th of September (1944), were milk runs. Only minor flak damage on both missions and no enemy fighters. Seemed kind of odd to be dropping bombs on factory buildings with the familiar script "Ford" logo painted on the roofs.

A well-known anti-semite, Henry Ford, published anti-Jewish slanders and was awarded the highest medal Hitler could award a foreigner (The Grand Cross of the German Eagle). Ford was even named in Hitler's auto-biography, Mein Kampf, as the only man in America who was fully independent from Jewish control.

A US Army report shows Ford, the company, as an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler's regime whose German division made huge profits in becoming an "arsenal of Nazism."
..........
"Robert Schmidt, the man appointed to run Ford Werke in 1939, states that the company used forced laborers even before the Nazis put the plant in trusteeship." Ford also placed a rabid Nazi as head of Fordwerke, and US Government documents show that Ford was in constant communication with the Ford plants in Nazi-occupied Vichy France.

There were a lot of people who profited from their dealings with the Nazis. As I pointed out, men like Ford and Lindbergh believed strongly in fascism as a philosophy. There were other like George Herbert Walker and (his son-in-law Prescott) Bush who simply whored themselves out for a profit.

The issues at stake for the American automobile corporations go far beyond the relatively modest sums involved in settling any lawsuit. .............. They deny that their huge business interests in Nazi Germany led them, wittingly or unwittingly, to also become "the a***nal of fascism."
..................
documents discovered in German and American archives show a much more complicated picture. In certain instances, American managers of both GM and Ford went along with the conversion of their German plants to military production at a time when U.S. government documents show they were still resisting calls by the Roosevelt administration to step up military production in their plants at home................
Both Ford and General Motors declined requests for access to their wartime archives

How can any of you not admit Iraq is at the very least a horribly misplaced priority? The election in Saudi Arabia was a joke, those Wahabi are still getting lots of "government" money to fuel the seeds of hatred for the US. Where did 15 of 19 hijackers come from? What was the only quasi secular government in the Mid East? Other than Israel who in the Mid East hated Osama more than Sunni's in Iraq? We're selling planes to the Pakistanis, the same Pakastanis who's military gave Osama and his boys medical care? I supported Bush in our entry into Afghanistan and I of course support our troops wherever they are, but don't ask let alone expect me to excuse the President and the Administration for shamefully misrepresenting a purported threat.