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O'Neill backtracks on Bush broadside Regrets using `vivid language'

Tries to distance himself from book

TIM HARPER - WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON—Under concerted attack from the White House, former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill retreated yesterday.

O'Neill said his contention that President George W. Bush came to office fixated on ousting Saddam Hussein was really just a government policy of regime change in Iraq that he inherited from the preceding Bill Clinton administration.

O'Neill said he would probably even vote for Bush in November's presidential election.

The author of the book detailing O'Neill's 23 months in the Bush cabinet, Ron Suskind, also came under fire from his former employer, the Wall Street Journal, where he won a Pulitzer.

In an editorial yesterday, the paper called its former reporter a "well-known Bush antagonist."

The controversy created by O'Neill and Suskind has played into the hands of Democrats vying for their party's presidential nomination and two of the leading candidates, former Vermont governor Howard Dean and retired NATO Gen. Wesley Clark, took the revelations and ran.

Still, as Suskind's The Price of Loyalty was released yesterday, it was clear O'Neill had already done some damage to his former boss.

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted twice calling O'Neill before the explosive insider account was published — but says he never tried to dissuade him from co-operating with the book's author.

Rumsfeld said at a news conference yesterday that his former colleague appeared to "completely misunderstand" what was being said inside the cabinet room about Bush's determination to oust Saddam.

The book is replete with stories of a president who appeared zoned out at meetings and said he operated on "instinct" and "gut," not briefing books.

In the book, O'Neill laments the fact that as a 65-year-old man he had to be given a nickname, a Bush habit.

The president immediately began calling him "Pablo." Later he started calling his treasury secretary "Big O."

He said Bush called Secretary of State Colin Powell "Balloonfoot."

Yesterday, O'Neill told NBC's Today show he had no classified documents from his time in cabinet and passed unopened to Suskind many documents he had been given.

He said he regretted using some "vivid language" and seemed to distance himself from the book, reminding the audience "this is Ron Suskind's book, this is not my book."

Rumsfeld said if O'Neill thought Bush came into office with a predisposition to invade Iraq, that is a "total misunderstanding" of the situation.

But he said when the administration came into power in January, 2001, the only place in the world where an enemy fired at Americans "with impunity" was in Iraq, where pilots were enforcing "no-fly zones."

"It was something the president had to address, did address," Rumsfeld said.

Still, Democrats picked up the ball.

Clark compared the length of time it took Bush to investigate a White House leak that identified a CIA agent last summer and the alacrity with which the treasury department decided it had to investigate whether O'Neill had secret documents.

"They're not concerned about national security, but they're real concerned about political security," Clark said.

Dean unleashed new TV ads in Iowa — where the first Democratic caucuses measuring voters' candidate preferences take place next Monday — picking up on the O'Neill allegations.

He reminded voters that others seeking the nomination, Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and North Carolina Senator John Edwards, backed the war while Dean did not.

And in an interview to be published in Rolling Stone magazine, Dean — without specifically mentioning the war in Iraq — said Bush had some type of obsessive need to please his father, who allowed Saddam to remain in power after the 1991 Gulf war and lost his bid for re-election.

"This president is not interested in being a good president," the former Vermont governor said. "He's interested in some complicated psychological situation that he has with his father.

"He is obsessed with being re-elected, and his obsession with re-election is hurting the country."

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