Yahoo! News - Report: Bush Planned Iraqi Invasion Pre-Sept. 11: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill charges in a new book that President Bush (news - web sites) entered office in January 2001 intent on invading Iraq (news - web sites) and was in search of a way to go about it.

O'Neill, fired in December 2002 as part of a shake-up of Bush's economic team, has become the first major insider of the Bush administration to launch an attack on the president.

He likened Bush at Cabinet meetings to 'a blind man in a room full of deaf people,' according to excerpts from a CBS interview to promote a book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, 'The Price of Loyalty.'"

Interesting. The director of the faith based initiative (Dilulio) also made some harsh claims about how the Bush administration made decisions. Dilulio immediately retracted his comments (though not convincingly), but now we see similar remarks from the former Treasury Sec. To get this from a former cabinet official is significant, albeit from a disgruntled former employee. The main point, however, is that it confirms other information--that Bush had decided long before the Iraq war to attack Iraq and was looking for a reason. That strikes me as a terrible precedent, and will ultimately undermine American foreign policy in the future.