The White House Cabal (Major Barf Alert)

LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 2005.

IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.

But it's absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.

Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."

But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well.

"I watched these dual decision-making processes operate for four years at the State Department. As chief of staff for 27 months, I had a door adjoining the secretary of State's office. I read virtually every document he read. I read the intelligence briefings and spoke daily with people from all across government."

And now you're nothing but a sniveling traitor. Congratulations.

So a security team made up of the constitutionally elected Vice President and constitutionally approved and vetted Cabinet members and their staff are a "secret cabal"?

This guy is pedaling paranoid hogwash to the boobs who will not only eat it up but pay handsomely for the meal.

Yes, that horrible Bush-Cheney cabal which ousted Saddam Hussein, destroyed the Taliban, got Syria out of Lebanon, forced Libya to disclose its wmds, has Bin-Laden hiding in caves, prevented any domestic terrorism since 9/11, and tipped the balance of the mideast from despotism to democracy. What a horrible group of neocons. (smirk) Good riddance to Wilkerson.

A " cabal" is not a group named by the President to their positions and who serve at the pleasure of the President. The Vice-President (who is a former Secretary of Defense and prosecuted a war against Saddam) and the Secretary of Defense are the individuals who were tasked with implimenting the Iraqi War. I suppose he should have sought counsel from Warren Christopher, Madeline Albright or Sandy Berger. The fact that this man was chief of staff to Colin Powell is enough to cut Powell out of the loop.

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