Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill says Iraq invasion planned long before 9/11

The Bush Administration began laying plans for an invasion of Iraq including the use of American troops within days of President Bush’s inauguration in January of 2001, not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks as has been previously reported. That is what former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider. O’Neill talks to Lesley Stahl in the interview, to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Jan. 11 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

O’Neill is on a role! (See the posting three stories down)

PS The Project for a New American Century planned this war several years ago.

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Drop that computer, terrorist scum

DJ Mitchell emails:

From an AP article on a U.S. raid in Tikrit:

“Troops also seized bomb-making materials, including wireless door bells commonly used as triggers, computers and a handful of weapons.”

It is well known that computers are a terrorist weapon, and anyone in possession of one is a threat to the security of the United States.

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Protestant loyalist racist attacks in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland, which is 99% white, is fast becoming the race-hate capital of Europe. It holds the UK’s record for the highest rate of racist attacks: spitting and stoning in the street, human excrement on doorsteps, swastikas on walls, pipe bombs, arson, the ransacking of houses with baseball bats and crow bars, and white supremacist leaflets nailed to front doors.

But in the past weeks, fear has deepened. Protestant working-class neighbourhoods are showing a pattern of orchestrated house attacks aimed at “ethnically cleansing” minority groups.

It is happening in streets run by loyalist paramilitaries, where every Chinese takeaway owner already pays protection money and racists have plentiful access to guns.

Slugger O’Toole, a blog covering Northern Ireland politics, played a leading role in getting this story out, with two postings that got major media attention, who then followed up with stories of their own.

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Former Treasury Secretary blasts Bush

This is a hoot!

A former US treasury secretary has given an unflattering account of his time under President George W Bush.

Paul O’Neill describes Mr Bush as being disengaged and says that at cabinet meetings the president was like a blind man in a room full of deaf people.

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Schwarzenegger proposes billions in cuts

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a $99.1 billion budget plan Friday and proposed cutting billions of dollars from public health and welfare programs to help pay for it.

A Republican wants to slash public health and welfare budgets? Now there’s a shocker.

Schwarzenegger did not include any new taxes in his budget plan Friday, but in addition to the cuts, he requested higher state park fees and tuition increases of as much as 40 percent for college students

Ah, “no new taxes”, just lots of hikes in non-tax revenue sources. Would someone remind me again why Arnold is a new kind of politician?

Expect howls of protests from cities, counties, and other municipalities - regardless of party affiliation. The party is over. The wars begin.

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