The Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal Exposed!
It was merely a brown bag lunch event today at the New America Foundation on Connecticut Avenue in Washington DC. But the speaker, Larry Wilkerson, Former Chief of Staff, State Department, 2002-2005, has lanced bulbous tumor of secrecy and deceit growing out of the Vice President's Office. You can find the audio file here of the earthshaking speech:
The story has been picked up by Edward Alden, Washington correspondent for the Financial Times, who has written a report with a link to the full written transcript in the FT's October 20th edition. Alden points to three other specific charges made by Wilkerson:
■ 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”
The worm has turned, friends...
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....
They’ve got every Congressman, every Senator, they got it covered. Now, it’s not to say that they aren’t smart businessmen. They are, and women. They are. But it’s something we should be looking at, something we should be looking at. 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.
The story has been picked up by Edward Alden, Washington correspondent for the Financial Times, who has written a report with a link to the full written transcript in the FT's October 20th edition. Alden points to three other specific charges made by Wilkerson:
■ 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”
The worm has turned, friends...
posted by Nur-al-Cubicle | 7:36 PM
2 Comments:
It's nice, I guess, but nothing in your post actually represented a fact that I could sink my teeth into.
Cheney and Rummy call a lot of shots because Bush is a rube.
Condi is a lackey.
The military is in dire straights.
This guy might just be a rat leaving a sinking ship.
I kinda wish there was more meat on him. A diet of rats.
Via Skippy the Bush Kangaroo I see this... at Salon.com...
The new Pentagon papers by Karen Kwiatkowski
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