From The Financial Times, 10/20/05:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40f3-11da-b3f9-00000e2511c8.html
Cheney 'cabal' hijacked foreign policy
By Edward Alden in Washington
Vice-President ***** 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."
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Republican battles seem to breaking out all over Washington.
Harry
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