Wilkerson loads and fires again, in LAT op-ed, "The White House Cabal"

[DeepModem Mom]

The White House cabal
By Lawrence B. Wilkerson, LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 2005.


IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.

But it's absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.

Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."

But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well....


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wilkerson25oct25,0,7455395.story

[electropop]

1. Wow, serious stuff.

Fascinating to have an insider's view.

[myrna minx]

2. Wow-Lawrence B. Wilkerson is a Michael Moore loving

Move-on.org donating radical left wing moonbat. Just like Richard Clarke, Scott Ritter, Joseph Wilson, Colleen Rowley, etc. :sarcasm: This is some powerful stuff. This is just scathing!

snip
The administration's performance during its first four years would have been even worse without Powell's damage control. At least once a week, it seemed, Powell trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet. He held a youthful, inexperienced president's hand. He told him everything would be all right because he, the secretary of State, would fix it. And he did — everything from a serious crisis with China when a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was struck by a Chinese F-8 fighter jet in April 2001, to the secretary's constant reassurances to European leaders following the bitter breach in relations over the Iraq war. It wasn't enough, of course, but it helped.

Today, we have a president whose approval rating is 38% and a vice president who speaks only to Rush Limbaugh and assembled military forces. We have a secretary of Defense presiding over the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of our overstretched armed forces (no surprise to ignored dissenters such as former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki or former Army Secretary Thomas White).

It's a disaster. Given the choice, I'd choose a frustrating bureaucracy over an efficient cabal every time.
snip

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Thanks for adding these words about Powell...

a subject about which Wilkerson is expert, beyond a doubt. What a picture he paints!

[myrna minx]

4. I'm surprised that this column doesn't have more interest.

:shrug: Well, it's probably the all of the Fitzmas cheer.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. I just noticed it's on the Greatest Page --

someone posted it ahead of me, which I didn't realize. Wilkerson's name, however, is not in the subject line -- just the title of the piece.