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| O'Neill Accusations Have Little Significance | ||||||
| Many big news stories broke over the time we were away from school but perhaps one of the largest dealt with President Bush and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, here is a brief recap of what happened. | ||||||
| O'Neill was relieved of his position by the Bush administration for what the Drudge Report calls a "disagreement on tax cuts," and shortly thereafter gave an exclusive interview to 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl, where he made what many found to be some eyebrow-raising allegations about President Bush and the Iraq war. O'Neill claimed that Bush had planned to attack Iraq days into his inauguration, eight-months before Sept. 11, 2001, even occurred. My question to you is, who cares? Assuming this is true, why should this matter one bit? | ||||||
| "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill told Stahl in the interview. "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," O'Neill continued. Let me first correct Paul on something: Saddam Hussein is a bad person; he did need to go; and had been a continuous thorn in the United States' side since the first Gulf War. I believe he should have been taken out after he sent Scud missiles to Israel, but he was not, which was a mistake. Nevertheless, it is better late than never, and who better to finish the job than George W. Bush? Secondly, I must congratulate Bush for putting what matters first ahead of all else: this nation's security. It is my firm belief that the first job of our government and president is to protect us, the citizens, from any imminent and possible harm, and Bush has focused on that relentlessly. | ||||||
| I think what really begs the question here, though, is the fact that O'Neill wants to sound almost like a "victim" of Bush. It is the same tired argument that so many liberals have been using for years that Bush is some kind of tyrant that needs to be stopped. I particularly love when the dim-witted liberals among us refer to Bush as Hitler, somehow alleging that our current president is as bad as a man who killed more than six million people and attacked half of Europe, leaving it devastated and ravished. To them, Hitler is not even Hitler anymore, and that sickens me to no end. | ||||||
| Has it ever occurred to anyone that maybe this plan to attack Iraq was a sort of hand-me-down from President Clinton? Have people forgotten Operation Desert Fox? According to http://www.globalsecurity.org, "In November 1998, US President William J. Clinton warned Iraqi leadership that force would be used if they continued to hamper United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspectors efforts," and after these warnings were disregarded by Hussein, United States cruise missiles were unleashed on Iraq. Where was the outcry over this? Where were the Paul O'Neill's and the liberal marches then? Oh yeah, I forgot, Clinton was a Democrat. | ||||||
| President Bush has clearly followed through on what he set out to do and I must commend him for that. He faced the toughest test after Sept. 11, 2001, and handled that with finesse and courage and has since freed two particular countries from not only a murderous regime but also a brutal dictator. Can someone explain to me how this makes one synonymous with Hitler? I didn't think so. | ||||||
| Copyright Gerry Wachovsky, 2004, and Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. | ||||||
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