at the New America Foundation on Oct. 20. Wilkerson was the chief of staff to Powell until January of last year. In the op-ed Herbert highlights certain parts of the talk that show how dysfunctional this administration is, and how that endangers our country (quote from Wilkerson):
"What is the next disaster that this crowd will be unprepared to cope with? Or the next lunatic idea that will spring from its ideological bag of tricks?"
He points out that security which was supposed to be a strong point for this administration is not as the public believed (quote from Wilkerson):
"The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. 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."
Herbert addresses the amount of secrecy this administration is noted for, and how this also endangers our country (quote from Herbert):
"Mr. Wilkerson was especially critical of the excessive secrecy that surrounded so many of the most important decisions by the Bush administration, and of what he felt was a general policy of concentrating too much power in the hands of a small group of insiders. As much as possible, government in the United States is supposed to be open and transparent, and a fundamental principle is that decision-making should be subjected to a robust process of checks and balances."
The transcript of Wilkerson's talk can be found here and is worth a read:
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/Wilkerson%20Speech%20--%20WEB.htmor
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9757219/on edit: added the first link
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