The O’Neill book (technically written by Suskind).

It is remarkable how quickly discussion of the book (except by Brad DeLong) has become discussion of the first point on the agenda of the first Bush cabinet meeting (Iraq). I hope journalists take their job more seriously than I take my little hobby and have actually read some of the book. I admit I am writing about comments about comments about a 60 minutes interview. The narrowness might be due to my ignorance.

I have the sense that the issue has become either

Dem Spin: Was Bush strangely obsessed with Saddam Hussein long before 9/11 causing the US response to 9/11 to be directed in large part to an evil regime which had nothing to do with 9/11 ?
(suggested answer yes)

Republican Spin: Did Bush declare an intention to invade Iraq (as opposed to an intention to change the regime by some means) in his first cabinet meeting. (suggested answer no).

Everything after that first cabinet meeting is to be considered once it is cleared up whose spin is unspun (on the 12th of never that is).

My suspicion is that this is because I am not the only one who can’t wait to read the book before talking about what it says.

On that narrow issue I have some thoughts. On the Dem spin, I think the answer is obviously yes and everyone who follows the news knows that it is yes and knew it before O’Neill appeared on 60 minutes. This is an example of something recently mentioned by (I think) Josh Marshall (maybe in this context). A scoop is when a public figure says something everyone knows is true but which no prominent official has admitted. Also see “In front of your nose” by George Orwell.

On the Republican spin the answer is clearly no as, for example, O’Neill claims. Regime change does not logically imply an invasion. Hypothetically it could have been achieved by a coup or a popular uprising. Hypothetically it could have been achieved because Saddam and all the Ba’athists decided to retire. I think it is already known that the discussion of what to do about Iraq was based in part on belief (or feigned belief) in the possibility of a coup or uprising.

This means that some lefty bloggers who “interpret” O’Neill as having said that Bush had decided to invade by Feb 2001 and lied to the American people misinterpreted him. It also means that the hypothesis that O’Neill has caved under pressure is premature. His clarifications are clearly really clarifications not retractions (so far).

I actually disagree with Brad on one point. He said (more or less) that Clinton’s policy consisted of containment … and hoping really hard that Saddam would be overthrown by a coup or popular uprising. I think the Clinton administration attempted to arrange a coup in a covert operation that seems to have stayed, at least, low profile. My understanding is that part of the basis for State dept and CIA suspicion of Ahmad Chalabi is that he claimed that with money etc. he could arrange a coup and failed to deliver even much of an attempted coup.

If this vague memory of mine corresponds to reality, it is relevant to the 1st Cabinet meeting issue. The reason is that the frustrations of the Clinton administration should have made it clear that it was unlikely that the Iraqi regime could be changed within four years without an invasion. I think this is clearly true. This means that the decision Saddam Hussein must go is, in practice, equivalent to the decision to invade, although Bush probably didn’t think so. My guess is that the relatively well informed understood this and that they were only pretending to consider a coup or uprising as other than very improbable to postpone the showdown between hawks and doves.

In any case, O’Neill’s original point is valid and striking. The fact that the no 1 item on the agenda of Bush’s first cabinet meeting was Saddam Hussein means that Bush had an unhealthy obsession with Saddam Hussein which he hadn’t shared with the American people.

Also I think it is fair to say that the Bush administration assertion that disarmament means regime change was incoherent. Notice this has nothing to do with O’Neill or what they were saying in private or anything like that. It is a clear contradiction in terms. At the time, two interpretations were possible, that it was a climb down or that it had nothing to do with Bush administration decisions. O’Neill’s evidence makes it seem more likely that the second interpretation is correct. The clearly nonsensical statement would, in that case, be an attempt to deceive, among others, the American people. Still the nonsense has long been in front of our noses.

Well the point was supposed to be that there is way too much focus on the first cabinet meeting and not say on economic policy about which O’Neill knows a good bit more.