Saddam's ouster planned before Sept. 11: US official

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, January 11, 2004

Saddam's ouster planned before Sept. 11: US official

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Former US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says Washington began making plans for an invasion of Iraq within days of President George W. Bush's inauguration in January 2001, eight months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

O'Neil's comments, made in an interview with the CBS' "60 Minutes" to be broadcast Sunday night, stood in sharp contrast with the claim of the Bush administration that the United States prepared the war against Iraq only after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neil said at the interview, the excerpt of which was released Saturday.

O'Neill was fired by the White House for his disagreement on Bush's tax cuts. He is the main source for an upcoming book, "The Price of Loyalty," authored by Ron Suskind.

Suskind told CBS that O'Neill and other White House insiders gave him documents indicating that in the first three months of 2001, the administration was looking at military options for removing Saddam from power and planning for the aftermath of his downfall.

A Pentagon document titled "Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" outlines areas of oil exploration, Suskind said. "It talks about contractors around the world from...30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq."

In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one at a National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it," he says.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected O'Neill's remarks on Saturday, saying the former Treasury secretary "is more about trying to justify his own opinions than looking at the reality of the results we are achieving on behalf of the American people."

The Bush administration launched the Iraq war last March, citing the imminent threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and Baghdad's ties with al-Qaida. No any such weapons and al-Qaidaties have been found.

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