Nice to see the State Dep't girlie boys get their panties in a bunch. American diplomats have forgotten that they serve U.S. interests in general and the President in particular.
I have always thought that Powell was one of Bush's worst appointments. Not only because he wasn't very efficient, but because he was a backstabber - and has obviously continued to be so, even out of office. (And even through minions.)
Hey, Wilkerson. Your boss was a weenie. And you're a gutless symp for encouraging him to be the weenie he was.
"Powell's Man"? Powell has a man? (not that there is anything wrong with that)
Good...it's about time.
And as a result, we have voting and freedom in parts of the Middle East (Iraq and Afghanistan-and despite whatever othe failings) unparralled in history...with the very real prospect that the freedoms wil take firm root there, thrive, prosper, and become strong enough to stand on their own.
If that's this particular individual's idea of "sh!t" (with all due respect to the Colonel)...well, then, pile on the manure.
Why do we hear crap like this from foreign sources?
Oh...I forget...sing to the choir!
I wish President Bush all the luck in the world in cleaning out our government "dead wood". They'll be the weeping and knashing of teeth in the meantime but it has to be done. The State Department, CIA, FBI, Pentagon, etc, needs a new broom. Or as has been said, 'your ass is grass and I'm a lawnmower'.
Everything that Wilkerson is complaining about----is the reason I LOVE the Bush Administration....
I love this "Cowboy" POTUS...and I like that he isn't bowing to Kyoto, and International Court..and all of that UN STUFF...that Powell and Wilkerson feel is so important.
We have John Bolton now...it will be handled just fine, thank you very much.
"Asked about the efforts by Mr Bush's key aide Karen Hughes to sell America to the Muslim world he said: "It's hard to sell shit." In remarks quoted by the Washington Post,
I see this "Marine" refers to his country as shit.
"Col Wilkerson said: "If you're unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, if you're declaring the Geneva Conventions not operative, if you're doing a host of things that the world doesn't agree with you on and you're doing it blatantly and in their face, without grace, then you've got to pay the consequences."
Ah, there's the real agenda. Another embittered leftist from foggy bottom.
Just more proof that W should have purged the stinking, pansy, anti-American, career bunch in the State Dept.
Another schmuck leftist trying to make news...
In the immortal words of John McClane..."Yippie-ki-yay...."
Well Col Wilkerson, now we know why you are only a Col.
Sounds like sour grapes to me:
Cheney 'cabal' hijacked US foreign policy
By Edward Alden in Washington
Published: October 20 2005 00:00 | Last updated: October 20 2005 00:19
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40f3-11da-b3f9-00000e2511c8.html
Dick Cheney
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.”
How totally tacky!!
The State Department, Department of Education, and the Department of the Interior, America's internal axis of no good.
As an afterthought: perhaps this should be posted alongside Congressman Weldon's speech on the Able Danger coverup.
Larry Wilkerson Quote:
[Regarding sanctions on Cuba] “Dumbest policy on the face of the earth. It's crazy.” [Gentlemen's Quarterly (GQ), 4/29/2004]
"I call them utopians," explained Wilkerson of the war party seeking a mini-America in the Middle East. "I don't care whether utopians are Vladimir Lenin on a sealed train to Moscow or Paul Wolfowitz. Utopians, I don't like. You're never going to bring utopia, and you're going to hurt a lot of people in the process of trying to do it."
Wilkerson previously told reporters that Bolton would make an "abyssmal" UN Ambassador.
Thursday, 6 May, 2004
Wilkerson said the Secretary of State had spent much of his time doing damage control around the world for the actions of his colleagues.
Mr Wilkerson attacked those he said were making cavalier decisions about sending men and women out to die.
He compared the Deputy Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, to the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin, describing them both as Utopians.
"When all you use is a stick," he pointed out, "you're not going to get too far."
On the US policy towards Cuba, it was the "dumbest policy on the face of the earth," he said. "It's crazy."
As to his boss, Mr Wilkerson said Colin Powell was mentally and physically tired.
He said he was unlikely to serve out a second term if President Bush was re-elected.
May 12, 2005
Secretary of State Powell's Chief of Staff Larry Wilkerson, who told the Committee staff, "when people ignore diplomacy that is aimed at dealing with that [referring to North Korea's nuclear weapons development] problem in order to push their pet rocks in other areas, it bothers me, as a diplomat, and as a citizen of this country." When asked specifically if he thought that Mr. Bolton had done that, Wilkerson said, "Absolutely." Mr. Wilkerson ended his interview with the Committee with the following:
I don't have a large problem with Under Secretary Bolton serving our country. My objections to what we've been talking about here -- that is, him being our ambassador at the United Nations -- stem from two basic things. One, I think he's a lousy leader. And there are 100 to 150 people up there that have to be led; they have to be led well, and they have to be led properly. And I think, in that capacity, if he goes up there, you'll see the proof of the pudding in a year. Second, I differ from a lot of people in Washington, both friend and foe of Under Secretary Bolton, as to his, quote, "brilliance," unquote. I didn't see it. I saw a man who counted beans, who said, "98 today, 99 tomorrow, 100 the next day," and had no willingness -- and, in many cases, no capacity -- to understand the other things that were happening around those beans. And that is just a recipe for problems at the United Nations. And that's the only reason that I said anything."
Or consider the unnamed State Department official who recently told Newsweek that in November 2003, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had complained personally to Mr. Powell that his Undersecretary was taking too tough a line on Iran's nuclear weapons program. "Get a different view of [the Iranian problem]," Mr. Powell is reported to have told the aide. "Bolton is being too tough." Remember that at the time, Britain, along with France and Germany, had recently negotiated a nuclear-freeze deal with Iran, a deal Iran violated within months. (For the record, Mr. Straw denies Newsweek's report.)
May 2001
Thomas White, expected to bring a new style of management to the Pentagon.
Retired Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, a recent appointee to the policy and planning staff of the secretary of state, served with White at the Pentagon in 1989 and 1990. According to Wilkerson, White was “one of the finest armored commanders the Army had at the time.” Noting that White commanded the armored cavalry for Powell’s team during the Gulf War, Wilkerson said White is a “fantastic gentleman, very plain-spoken and a very optimistic and confident guy. Of all the people at the joint chiefs, on staff at the time, White was head-and-shoulders above the rest.”
At Enron, White helped bring the energy industry into the 21st century, Wilkerson said.
The NYT has more on Bolton's bizarre fixation with ElBaradei, as witnessed by Powell's chief of staff Larry Wilkerson:
Mr. Wilkerson said that Mr. Bolton had been a major cause of tension and resentment at the highest levels of the State Department because of his temperament, his treatment of subordinates and the fact that he had "overstepped his bounds" on a number of occasions, including what Mr. Wilkerson called "his moves and gyrations" aimed at preventing Mohamed ElBaradei from being reappointed as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitoring body.
"Now, what do I mean by that?" Mr. Wilkerson said. "I mean, going out of his way to bad-mouth him, to make sure that everybody knew that the maximum power of the United States would be brought to bear against them if he were brought back in," Mr. Wilkerson said of Mr. Bolton's approach to Dr. ElBaradei.