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Wilkerson Criticizes Administration

by TChris

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking freely on the company he kept:

  • President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of postwar planning.
  • Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard." (Tough choice.)

Those who directed and triggered the president's power felt unconstrained in its use.

Cheney's office, Rumsfeld aides and others argued "that the president of the United States is all-powerful, that as commander in chief the president of the United States can do anything he damn well pleases," Wilkerson said. ...

Wilkerson thinks the president sought compromise between the Pentagon view (those we label "enemy" have no rights) and the reality-based view that presidential behavior is limited by the law. If so (and does that really sound like the president we know?), the Pentagon and CIA followed their own paths.

In the field, the United States followed the policies of hard-liners who wanted essentially unchecked ability to detain and harshly interrogate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, Wilkerson said.

Wilkerson says he isn't quite convinced that the administration cherry-picked intelligence, regardless of its reliability, to make a case for war, although his willingness to suspend disbelief in the obvious seems to be fading. Describing himself as "somewhat estranged" from Powell, Wilkerson "said Powell may have had doubts about the extent of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein but was convinced by then-CIA Director George Tenet and others that the intelligence behind the push toward war was sound."

There's nothing startingly new in Wilkerson's interview, but the more often the truth repeats in the mainstream media, the greater the chance that the audience will question the lies that will surely follow.

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    Re: Wilkerson Criticizes Administration (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:29 PM EST
    Who is this guy, Captain Obvious?

    Re: Wilkerson Criticizes Administration (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:29 PM EST
    One of his recent stops as he makes the media rounds was Democracy Now, where in addition to the usual questions about the "cabal," and torture policies, he was asked about the coup in Haiti. He suggests that Powell & the State Dept. were sidelined by the hardliners just as they had been in the lead-up to Iraqi regime change. Amy Goodman, Col. Wilkerson & Maxine Waters on Haiti -- Powell Sidelined Again?

    Re: Wilkerson Criticizes Administration (none / 0) (#3)
    by Ernesto Del Mundo on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:29 PM EST
    All he is describing here is the classic Neocon symptom: hubris