[Peace-discuss] O'Neill's remarks and their weight (fwd)

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Here's the Paul O'Neill interview on CBS' 60 MINUTES:
	<http://www.corvusworld.com/oneill.htm>

The former CEO is no better than he should be.  He seems to be busily
back-peddling. The following is from today's AP report.  --CGE]

...O'Neill also said Tuesday said he did not mean to imply that the
administration was wrong to begin contingency planning for a regime change
in Iraq but that he was surprised that it was at the top of the agenda at
the first Cabinet meeting.

O'Neill in the book contends the administration's decision-making process
was often chaotic and Bush Cabinet meetings made the president look "like
a blind man in a room full of deaf people."

O'Neill told the "Today" show he was guilty of using some "vivid" language
during his hundreds of hours of interviews with Suskind for the book. "If
I could take it back, I would take it back," he said of the blind man
quote.

Asked if he plans to vote for Bush in November's presidential election,
O'Neill said he "probably" would. "I don't see anyone who is better
prepared or more capable," he told NBC...

Asked specifically whether O'Neill was correct in saying that planning for
the war had begun far ahead of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush
said that when he had become president he had inherited a policy of
"regime change" from former President Clinton and had decided to adopt it
as his own. [That's true. --CGE]