Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.), former State Department Chief of Staff, spoke yesterday at the New America Foundation (listen here--says video, but didn't work for me) and charged that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld ran a "secret cabal" on critical issues and made their decisions without the rest of the bureaucracy being aware of them.
Col. Wilkerson is working on a book, so instantly there will be some attacks in that area, which is a shame. Much of what Col. Wilkerson spoke about was important and provocative. There is a partial transcript here that leaves out some of the better sound bites later on and all the questions, but it is worth reading.
Here's the quote that is getting the biggest play today:
I don’t know what the case is today. I wish I did. But the case that I saw for 4 plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations, [inaudible], changes to the national security [inaudible] process. What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense and [inaudible] on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
And then when the bureaucracy was presented with those decisions and carried them out, it was presented in such a disjointed incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn’t know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.
This is very damning, but I'm not so sure that Col. Wilkerson isn't settling a few scores for his old boss, Colin Powell. I don't see that Cheney are being all that secretive at all, and unless Wilkerson is intimating that Bush is asleep at the wheel or completely out of touch (Which he doesn't by the way) just how secret is this? Unless Bush "wakes up" and fires somebody, don't we need to assume that the president supports the Veep and the Secretary? I'm not convinced that Col. Wilkerson has the ability as a bureaucrat to call this one.
If Wilkerson wants to make accusations at Bush, which he may in his book, then we would get somewhere.
He does contradict himself slightly in the Q&A about the president's level of engagement and in the body of his speech faults Condi Rice for being an extremely weak NSA because of her closeness to Bush.
The problem we are seeing is that with one party in charge of the executive and the legislative branches, and stuffing the judicial ever more, we are witnessing a supreme and dangerous act of hubris. There are no checks and balances at this point (unless Harriet Miers gets dumped) because the Democrats cannot organize themselves into a cohesive opposition.
If we are to take Wilkerson at his word, and I don't see any reason not to, what he is describing without explicitly saying (ex the "secret cabal") is that we have a ship of state without a captain. Bush is not in charge, and Cheney, once a deliberate and thoughtful manager, needs to be but is constrained by the constitution and his own sense of right. So Cheney looks to Rumsfeld and together they divvy up the work, leading to chaos. In the mix, add a reference to the military-industrial complex and you have the makings of your cabal.
Now, Wilkerson is calling for the National Security Act of 1947 to be followed, augmented, to get to more transparency in decision making.
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.
[...]
When you cut the bureaucracy out of your decisions and then foist your decisions on us out of the blue on that bureaucracy, you can't expect that bureaucracy to carry your decision out very well and, furthermore, if you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in that bureaucracy, as they carry out your decision, you're courting disaster.
And 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. Read it some time again.
For those who think this is just a lefty-looney going after the president, read or listen to his comments on the other presidents first and keep in mind this quote:
Practical experience, sitting at the right hand of a very powerful Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [inaudible - noise] and watching probably one of the finest Presidents we've ever had, that's how I feel about George H. W. Bush, exercise one of the greatest adeptnesses at foreign policy I've ever seen.
So many things happened in George H. W. Bush's 4 years that I think when historians write about it with dispassion 25, 30 years from now, they're going to give that man enormous credit for knowing how to make the process work. Took him a while, took them about 9 to 10 months to get their act together. But once they did, they worked very well.
Of course Bush pere is a liberal, right?
Wilkerson also expressed that we will be very embarrassed 10 years from by the prisoner abuse scandals and that behavior like that isn't pervasive in the ranks unless it is condoned. He also said that "A radical change in the nature of the enemy does not mean or require a radical change in the nature of America."
Clearly, this is a charge that policy has been derailed by Wilkerson's "cabal." It is a disturbing and audacious accusation to make, but holds more sway here.
I believe that Wilkerson is not putting on an act here, which is not the same thing as saying that I think he is right or telling the "truth," only that he believes what he is saying. But is his argument with Cheney/Rumsfeld or with Bush?
I'm trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and there are a lot that just don't fit anywhere.
I tend to discount accusations of conspiracies, primarily because I feel that Hanlon's Razor applies:
Given the stunning lack of competence we have seen in this administration (which seems to be descending even further into a mire of mediocrity), I'm finding any kind of sinister, secretive cabal, which implies some level of organization and competence, increasingly implausible.
Posted by: Jack | October 22, 2005 at 05:25 AM