Former Treasury Sec. Paints Bush as 'Blind Man'

subgenius

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill likened President Bush at Cabinet meetings to "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," according to excerpts on Friday from a CBS interview.
O'Neill, who was fired by Bush in December 2002, also said the president did not ask him a single question during their first one-on-one meeting, which lasted an hour.

"As I recall it was just a monologue," he told CBS' "60 Minutes," which will broadcast the entire interview on Sunday.

In making the blind man analogy, O'Neill told CBS his ex-boss did not encourage a free flow of ideas or open debate.

"There is no discernible connection," CBS quoted O'Neill as saying. The president's lack of engagement left his advisers with "little more than hunches about what the president might think," O'Neill said, according to the program.
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http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=4101890

Ow, that's gotta hurt, but I'm sure it will be dismissed as the raving of a disgruntled ex-employee.
 
subgenius said:
...

"There is no discernible connection," CBS quoted O'Neill as saying. The president's lack of engagement left his advisers with "little more than hunches about what the president might think," O'Neill said, according to the program.
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Suffice it to say his advisors know as much about what he thinks as he does himself.
 
Re: Re: Former Treasury Sec. Paints Bush as 'Blind Man'

hgc said:
Suffice it to say his advisors know as much about what he thinks as he does himself.
Click to expand...
As Gordie Howe said when asked why he never wore a helmet, but always wore a cup, "I figure I can always get someone to do my thinking for me."

(gosh I never get tired of this quote),
 
Shameless bump to supercede shemp's thread.
Frankly, O'Neil said that he was completely ignored at the time when he was there. Not exactly a raging Liberal either. If you hire someone you either trust their judgement, or you're guilty of bad judgement in picking them. Just another example of dogmatists attempting to pick people who will do their bidding, rather than picking people who can think for themselves.
Its all about empiricism vs. dogmatism.......
Walk your dogma, park your karma.
 
He may be blind, but he had a vision:

"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."
http://drudgereport.com/flash9.htm
 
Who's in charge?

"Suskind also writes about a White House meeting in which he says the president seems to be wavering about going forward with his second round of tax cuts. "Haven't we already given money to rich people," Suskind says the president uttered, according to a nearly verbatim transcript of an Economic Team meeting he says he obtained from someone at the meeting, "Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?" "

http://drudgereport.com/flash9.htm
 
He offers the most skeptical view of the case for war ever put forward by a top Administration official. "In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction," he told TIME. "There were allegations and assertions by people. But I’ve been around a hell of a long time, and I know the difference between evidence and assertions and illusions or allusions and conclusions that one could draw from a set of assumptions. To me there is a difference between real evidence and everything else. And I never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterize as real evidence."
http://drudgereport.com/flash1.htm

Oh, and here's more ammo for his detractors: he's just trying to make money from a book.
 
Just saw the 60 Minutes piece. Scratch off "making money from a book."
He was high up in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, and the Alcoa Corp. Got some credibility.
 
How much would the Treasury Secretary have to do with any of this anyway? How important was he to the removal of Saddam / The war in Iraq? Why would he be shown evidence of WMD in Iraq?

IOW, How much of this would have been discussed with him?
 
LTC8K6 said:
How much would the Treasury Secretary have to do with any of this anyway? How important was he to the removal of Saddam / The war in Iraq? Why would he be shown evidence of WMD in Iraq?

IOW, How much of this would have been discussed with him?
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The Treasury Secretary is a member of the National Security Council. O'Neill claims to have gotten copies of all the CIA, and other, intelligence reports, and to have read them.
 
LTC8K6 said:
How much would the Treasury Secretary have to do with any of this anyway? How important was he to the removal of Saddam / The war in Iraq? Why would he be shown evidence of WMD in Iraq?

IOW, How much of this would have been discussed with him?
Click to expand...

Before 1st quarter 2003, The Treasury Dept. was responsible for the US Secret Service, the U.S. Customs Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Of course, these have all been moved to the Dept. of Homeland Security, but during O'Neill's tenure, he was responsible for them.
 
subgenius said:
Just saw the 60 Minutes piece. Scratch off "making money from a book."
He was high up in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, and the Alcoa Corp. Got some credibility.
Click to expand...

O'Neill is increadibly credible. When researching my paper on Iraq I researched each member of the cabinet, and I found no dirt on him, and in fact he seemed out of place ideologically among the others because he had done many good things and had a track record of high personal integrety. It confused the heck out of me at the time as to why he was even in the administration, but he was a long time friend of Bush Sr, so I just assumed that was why, probably was why actually.

I feel a lot better now that he has been able to come out about the truth, knowing that at least there are a still few "good guys" left at the top.
 
Isn't O'Neill Bono's buddy (the guy from U2, not the bad skiier)?

Does this give him more or less credibility?
 
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