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.