|
Add this to
the list of defectors speaking out in public…before the ship of state goes over
the cliff? By the way,
internet rumors that Cheney may resign and Bush would elevate Rice are highly
entertaining – we hope. Everyone
else from his trusted circle has been dispatched to other posts where they can best protect his presidency,
and Laura might not want the job, although she can be trusted to provide a
presidential pardon. - kwc For more on
this subject, see Frontline’s Truth, War and
Consequences http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/ ‘Cheney
cabal hijacked US foreign policy’
By Edward Alden in Washington, Financial
Times, October 20 2005 Vice-President Dick
Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy
apparatus, deciding
in secret
to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the
world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on
Wednesday. In a scathing attack
on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last
January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United
States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on
critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were
being made. “Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret,
but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences. Mr Wilkerson said
such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long
refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran. It also resulted in bitter battles in
the administration among those excluded from the decisions. “If you're not prepared to stop
the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you
are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq,
in North Korea, in Iran.” The comments, made at
the New America
Foundation,
a Washington think-tank, were the harshest attack on the administration by a
former senior official since criticisms by Richard Clarke, former White House
terrorism czar, and Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary, early last year. Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led
to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State
Department. “He's not happy with
my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world's most loyal
soldier." Among his other
charges: ■ The detainee abuse
at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example” of the decision-making
problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green
light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You
don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned
it.” ■ Condoleezza Rice,
the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of
the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible
advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the
president”. ■ The military,
particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised.
Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in
Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel”. Mr Wilkerson said
former president George H.W. Bush “one of the finest presidents we have ever
had” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son
was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them
either”. “There's a vast
difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some
of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected
positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.” Transcript of Wilkerson’s remarks http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c925a686-40f4-11da-b3f9-00000e2511c8.html |
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