by Scott Ott
(2004-01-11) -- From the earliest days of the Bush administration, the president made it clear that he intended to "ruin" Bill Clinton's increasingly successful diplomatic effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein, according to former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill.
"Regime change in Iraq was the official policy of the Clinton administration since 1998, but Bush foolishly rejected Clinton's ingenious strategy," Mr. O'Neill told Ron Suskind, author of the new book The Price of Loyalty. "President Clinton's diplomatic effort to appear cowardly, indecisive and careless about the plight of 25 million Iraqis was on the brink of bearing fruit. We had suckered Saddam into thinking America was weak. If Clinton had been re-elected to a third term, he would have shocked and awed Saddam by launching a decisive verbal attack in the U.N. Security Council. The statue would have fallen in Baghdad from the sheer force of Clinton's intellect."
Mr. O'Neill said former President Clinton didn't use a faster method to implement regime change in Iraq because, "he just didn't care that much about oil. He was not obsessed with oil the way some people are."
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