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Rumsfeld Denies That Iraq Was Immediate Target of Bush Administration
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday denied recent allegations by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill that the Bush administration had begun planning to depose former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein soon after taking office, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Jan. 12). According to a new book on O’Neill’s term in the Bush administration, the White House began planning to remove Hussein in its first National Security Council meeting, held on Jan. 30, 2001. During a Pentagon press briefing yesterday, however, Rumsfeld said that a policy of “regime change” in Iraq had been inherited from the Clinton administration and that the Bush administration had been concerned about Iraqi attempts to shoot down planes operating in the no-fly-zones in the northern and southern sections of the country. “All I know is that when we arrived, the policy of the United States government, since 1998, has been regime change in Iraq. … As secretary of defense, asking pilots to go forth in Iraq, in the north, in the south on a daily basis and put their lives at risk … is not a happy prospect. And clearly, it was something that this president had to address, did address,” Rumsfeld said (Loeb/Milbank, Washington Post, Jan. 14).
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