The Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's Chief-of-Staff, is the shrillest creature on the planet earth:

FT.com / World - Transcript: Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson: transcript of talk given by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January.

I want to thank Steve [Clemons] and the American Foundation for giving me this opportunity and thank some of my friends for turning out. I see an assistant secretary over here, I think he's left that post now, who used to spend some time in my office. And I see others around the room. I see some journalists in here who have been trying religiously to get me over the last 3 or 4 months. You finally got me....

[I]n a very intimate way, I saw the George W. Bush administration from 2001 to early 2005.... I don't think even his critics would have argued that FDR wasn't a brilliant politician and a brilliant leader. But... how often does America get brilliant leaders?... I can count them myself on one hand.... So we need a system of checks and balances and institutional fabric that can withstand anybody, or at least nearly so. You laugh, but I'm not trying to solicit your laughter.... It's the old business of checks and balances....

Decisions that send men and women to die, decisions that have the potential to send men and women to die, decisions that confront situations like natural disasters and cause needless death or cause people to suffer misery that they shouldn't have to suffer, domestic and international decisions, should not be made in a secret way.... [F]undamental decisions about foreign policy should not be made in secret.... I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita and I could go on back, we haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence....

Now, let me get a little more specific.... Almost everyone since the 1947 act, with the exception, I think, of Eisenhower, has in some way or another, perterbated, flummoxed, twisted, drew evolutionary trends with, whatever, the national security decision-making process.... John Kennedy trusted his brother... far more than he should have. Richard Nixon, oh my God.... Jimmy Carter allowed Brezinski to essentially negate his Secretary of State.... [W]hat Sandy Berger did to Madeline Albright.... But no one... has so flummoxed the process as the present administration. What do I mean by that? Remember what I said about the bureaucracy: if it's going to implement your decisions it has to participate in those decisions.... The complexity of the crises that confront governments today are just unprecedented.... [Y]our bureaucracy has got to be staffed with good people and they've got to work together... under leadership they trust....

That is not the case today....

[T]he case that I saw for 4 plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations, changes to the national security process. What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense... that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.... Read George Packer's book The Assassin's Gate.... And I wish... I had been able to help George Packer write that book. In some places I could have given him a hell of a lot more specifics.... But if you want to read how the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal flummoxed the process, read that book. And, of course, there are other names in there, Under Secretary of Defense Doug Feith, whom most of you probably know Tommy Frank said was the "stupidest blankety blank man in the world." He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man. And yet, and yet, after the Secretary of State agrees to a $400 billion department, rather than a $30 billion department, having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere. That's not making excuses for the State Department. That's telling you how decisions were made and telling you how things got accomplished. Read George's book.

In so many ways I wanted to believe for 4 years that what I was seeing... was an extremely weak national security advisor [Condi Rice]... an extremely powerful Vice President... an extremely powerful... Secretary of Defense, remember a Vice President who's been Secretary of Defense... and also is a member of what Dwight Eisenhower... called in his farewell address the military industrial complex and don't you think they aren't....

So you've got this collegiality there between the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President. And then you've got a President who is not versed in international relations. And not too much interested in them either. And so it's not too difficult to make decisions in this... Oval Office cabal... that are the opposite of what you thought were made in the formal process.... And to myself I said, okay, put on your academic hat. Who's causing this? Well, the national security advisor. Even if the framers didn't envision that position, even if it's not subject to confirmation by the Senate, the national security advisor should be doing a better job. Now, I've come to a different conclusion.

Comments

[trostky]

I sympathize with his complaints, as will most readers no doubt, but his premise is historically flawed.

"Decisions that send men and women to die ... should not be made in a secret way," he says.

Let's be honest here: What president since the original George W. has not made such decisions in secret? Am I missing a nuance here?

[Daverz]

I don't think he neccessarily means the decisions have to be public ones. Here's the context quote:

Remember what I said about the bureaucracy: if it's going to implement your decisions it has to participate in those decisions.... The complexity of the crises that confront governments today are just unprecedented.... [Y]our bureaucracy has got to be staffed with good people and they've got to work together... under leadership they trust....

[Movie Guy]

"Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's Chief-of-Staff, is the shrillest creature on the planet earth"

Come on. He was just being honest. A rare and misjudged quality these days.

You left out a few good portions of his speech to the New America Foundation.

[realist]

if only he, and others like him, had been honest sooner.

[ilsm]

Colin Powell should have asked the hard questions, then resigned.

But, Wilkerson like Powel are Old Army.

Loyalty first despite truth. They "broke starch" and "paid their schillings" and never could make Kennedy's Profile in Courage.

[Jonathan Goldberg]

"Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's Chief-of-Staff, is the shrillest creature on the planet earth"

Paul Krugman, move over. It seems as if "shrill" is what they say when they can't say "wrong." Of course, on this blog that's VERY old news.

[Adam]

The video of the talk is here -
(http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=event&EveID=520)

[kharris]

And waddayaknow, we have to read it in the FT. A Google news query finds it also in NY Newsday and the Science Daily (a press release), but not in the WP, NYT, or WSJ. Did I miss something, or is a 39% presidential approval rating still not enough to lead major US dailies to report the news?

[Steady Eddie]

Actually, kharris, though it pains me to do so, I have to point out that the WaPo, at least, did cover Wilkerson's talk, and fairly:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101902246.html

Their editorial/op-ed pages nauseate me daily, and my wife has to veto my monthly desire to cancel our subscription (based on her reasonable desire to catch up on local goings-on). But at least some of their reporting has improved of late, and Dan Froomkin and Walter Pincus are irreplaceable.

Maybe your Googling didn't find it because it was headlined as "Colonel Finally Saw Whites of Their Eyes" as part of Dana Milbank's typically cutesy coverage. But maybe the Colin Powell overlay made Milbank back off from his usual obnoxious snarkiness, because he reported this one OK, mostly by letting Wilkerson speak for himself.

[John]

I'd just like to know what Wilkerson's rank is in the Ancient, Hermetic, and Occult Order of the Shrill. Surely he's more than a mere Greater Soggoth.

[SamChevre]

Remember what I said about the bureaucracy: if it's going to implement your decisions it has to participate in those decisions.

That statement makes me very nervous. The idea that elected leaders should only make decisions that the bureaucracy approves--doesn't that contradict the whole point of electing leaders? (Isn't that reasoning, applied to military affairs, what gets you military coups?)

[David A Spitzley]

Re: SamChevre's comments -

No, elected leaders are there to determine what priorities and weighting to give to different objectives. Bureaucrats are there to provide informed commentary as to what steps are likely to help achieve or hinder objectives, and whether specific steps are or are not feasible to carry out.

Almost nobody possesses enough specific knowledge to function as an elected official without leaning heavily on bureaucrats for technical support (Thomas Jefferson may have been the last one...scary guy...). Wilkerson is basically saying Bush's administration blew off its professional support staff throughout the executive branch because they wouldn't tell the administration what it wanted to hear.

[Bernard Yomtov]

Where was Wilkerson a year ago?

[Ari]

Remember, however, absurd the Administration claims that led the rush to war, the rush was so fierce that only Ted Kennedy and Robert Bryd voted against the idea of war in the Senate. The speech before the United Nations by Colin Powell was riddled with nonsensical statements, but where was the questioning press? After all this time we are still at war in Iraq, still finding American soldiers wounded and killed when we waken, still learning the American planes are bombing in urban areas 30 months after the war began.

[Jim Dandy]

Wilkerson and his boss Colin Powell are certainly no paragons of virtue or of courage.

They had every chance to prove themselves during the actual process that Wilkerson now decries when they were actually in a key position to be able to make a difference to the outcome.

Now that it is safe for them to speak out and, because of the increasing public exposure of their own compromised position, they seek to cover their tracks by appearing to be on the side of the angels.

[Ari]

What is puzzling to me is why there is not more evident anti-war sentiment. Is it a combination of no draft and a casualty rate of only a couple of soldiers a day? Will this war then be able to drag on for years more? Is the drain of the war on soldiers and resources however slowly draining our country? Can we afford this war indefinitely?

[Ari]

Though I have thought we should withdraw from Iraq for several years, and I hated the idea of war to begin with, I seldom find agreement among acquaintences. My acquaintences complain about the war and about the Administration handling of the war, but the war does not effect them so the complaints are really muted. Still, even the most conservative are resentful of Republicans because of the war and other issues.