Text 15972, 89 rader
Skriven 2005-10-20 09:18:52 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: Cabal
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From:

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40f3-11da-b3f9-00000e2511c8.html

‘Cheney cabal hijacked US foreign policy’
By Edward Alden in Washington
Published: October 20 2005 00:00 | Last updated: October 20 2005 00:19

Dick CheneyVice-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.ö

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.ö

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
exampleö 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.ö

■ Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now
secretary of state, was “part of the problemö. Instead of ensuring that Mr
Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president
to build her intimacy with the presidentö.

■ 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 unravelö.

Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush “one of the finest
presidents we have ever hadö 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 eitherö.

“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.ö

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Corrupt, amoral, lying bastards.

Preznit Likesboys was and is being played like a grand piano.  

What do you have when someone whose intelligence has been dulled by years
of drug and alcohol abuse?  Preznit Nosecandy.

I can't wait for the morally challenged boys of the 5-H platoon of the Bush
Bootlickers Brigade to weigh in on this.

Fetch boys.


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