Issues of Loyalty

A great deal has been said the last few days, particularly since the disclosures from Paul O'Neill in the new Ron Susskind book, regarding people who "betray" the president, who "stab him in the back", who question the commander in chief.

Let's set aside for a moment the issue of Mr. Bush in particular because my take on this is that it does not matter if the president in question is a Dem or GOPer (or other).

Mr. O'Neill - and others who have come forward like him - are indeed appointed at the pleasure of the president. However, to whom should the greater loyalty be directed: the specific president or the people of the United States?

The American public deserves to know exactly how the war in Iraq came to happen, and it seems especially important since the versions of the reasoning have so often changed. It does make a difference if the plan was to take out Saddam from the beginning rather than, due to intelligence we were told supported the Bush Administration's view that Saddam and company presented a true danger to America, we went to war only grudgingly.

Mr. O'Neill's disclosure of the discussion of finding a way to rid the world of Saddam is critically important because the claim is now from the White House that these plans were simply an extension of a 1998 plan from President Clinton for regime change in Iraq. Even though another official has come forward to support Mr. O'Neill's claims of the strong emphasis on taking out Saddam and dividing up Iraq's oil fields months before 9-11 (and remember, there are no ties between Saddam and Osama based on evidence presented thus far), Mr. Rumsfeld claimed yesterday we were just doing Clinton's job (albeit better) and suggested O'Neill was making up a lot of this stuff.

This sounds vaguely plausible unless you go back and look at the record. Both Secretary of State Colin Powell and NSA chief Condoleeza Rice both told us early in 2001 that we were NOT seeking regime change, that disarmament was the objective. We also heard repeatedly that Mr. Clinton was a pathological liar and cheat and that this administration would be following almost nothing of what had been put into place under Mr. Clinton's leadership. As recently as the summer of 2000, now VP Dick Cheney was arguing before Congress (in his position then as head of Halliburton) that things had changed so much in Iraq since the Gulf War that we should be doing business with Saddam.

So if these now public officials were saying one thing to us and doing an entirely different thing behind the scenes, we need to know this. While I can appreciate that the Bush Administration would not like these facts divulged,I feel Mr. O'Neill's greater loyalty should be to the country he served rather than the man who put him in the job.

It seems to be increasingly clear that the interests of the American people may not be the same thing as the interests and goals of its president or the people around him. It makes one wonder why the president and his people are so derisive of any press that dares to ask questions rather than simply accept carefully worded press releases from the White House. However, much of the press has not served the American public well in this regard. They've been very "loyal" to the president, to our detriment.

I think we desperately need more people like Paul O'Neill to tell us what really happens in this administration while I believe it matters very little whether the president and his people like it or not. They're supposed to be representing us and working for us rather than treating us like a pesky detail.