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To: blam

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.”


21 posted on 10/20/2005 6:58:21 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
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To: Jim Robinson

George H W Bush may have known how to make foreign policy work...but, if he had taken Saddam out, perhaps his son wouldn't have had to..


34 posted on 10/20/2005 7:17:20 PM PDT by Txsleuth (Please say a prayer, and hold positive thoughts for Texas Cowboy...and Faith.)
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To: Jim Robinson
"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."

Answers that question.

35 posted on 10/20/2005 7:21:16 PM PDT by blam
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