In a famously tight-lipped administration, former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill has become the first major figure to tell unflattering tales out of school.

* In a famously tight-lipped administration, former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill has become the first major figure to tell unflattering tales out of school. In The Price of Loyalty, O'Neill accuses Bush of being disengaged from domestic business, but very engaged in toppling Iraq, even before 9/11 changed the nation's threat perception. The author of the book in which O'Neill unburdens himself is, interestingly, Ron Suskind, a journalist who snagged the previous biggest Bush defector, John J. DiIulio Jr., former head of the White House's faith-based-policy office, revealing his complaints in an article in Esquire. Birds of a feather flock together--or does Suskind elicit only certain kinds of song? On the evidence of their accounts, both O'Neill and DiIulio are opinionated, strong-willed, and not very clubbable men. Maybe Bush should cultivate such people, but clearly he does not--and clearly such men resent him for it. As for the announcement that Bush precociously disliked Iraq, what is the surprise? Bush identified Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as dangerous rogue nations as early as 1999, when he was campaigning for office. Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, had made "regime change" in Iraq a priority in 1998. Were they wrong?