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Classic stuff from a retired Marine colonel:
Ex-Powell aide assails Bush's foreign policy
By Brian Knowlton
International Herald Tribune
The retired colonel who was Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff has offered a remarkably blunt criticism of the administration he served, saying that foreign policy had been usurped by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" and that President George W. Bush had left the country more vulnerable, not less, to future crises.
The comments came in a speech Wednesday by Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked for Powell at the State Department from 2002 to early 2005.
His remarks provided an unusually frank look at key cleavages in the Bush administration - particularly during the first term - and come at a time when the White House has been under mounting pressure on a variety of fronts.
In the speech to the New America Foundation, an independent public-policy institute in Washington, Wilkerson suggested that secrecy, arrogance and internal feuding had taken a heavy toll in the Bush administration and on its ability to handle crises.
"When you cut the bureaucracy out of your decisions" and fail to "stop the feuding elements in that bureaucracy, as they carry out your decision, you're courting disaster," he said.
"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."
He suggested that dysfunction within the administration was so grave that "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." Wilkerson, a tough-talking former director of the Marine Corps War College, said that in his years in or close to government, he had seen its national security apparatus twisted and tortured in many ways.
But what he saw in the first Bush term "was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations, perturbations."
"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." He was equally unsparing of a top former Rumsfeld aide, Douglas Feith, saying, "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Alluding to Defense Department tensions with the State Department following the Iraq invasion, Wilkerson said Feith had been "given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves."
The retired colonel referred to Bush as someone who "is not versed in international relations - and not too much interested in them, either." He was far more admiring of the president's father, whom he called "one of the finest presidents we've ever had."
Wilkerson is considered a close confidant of Powell, but said Powell did not approve of his public criticisms.
Wilkerson had become more outspoken since leaving the State Department in January, but never so much as on Wednesday.
Earlier this year, for example, he said that the former undersecretary of state John Bolton would be an "abysmal ambassador" to the United Nations.
Ex-Powell aide assails Bush's foreign policy
By Brian Knowlton
International Herald Tribune
The retired colonel who was Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff has offered a remarkably blunt criticism of the administration he served, saying that foreign policy had been usurped by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" and that President George W. Bush had left the country more vulnerable, not less, to future crises.
The comments came in a speech Wednesday by Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked for Powell at the State Department from 2002 to early 2005.
His remarks provided an unusually frank look at key cleavages in the Bush administration - particularly during the first term - and come at a time when the White House has been under mounting pressure on a variety of fronts.
In the speech to the New America Foundation, an independent public-policy institute in Washington, Wilkerson suggested that secrecy, arrogance and internal feuding had taken a heavy toll in the Bush administration and on its ability to handle crises.
"When you cut the bureaucracy out of your decisions" and fail to "stop the feuding elements in that bureaucracy, as they carry out your decision, you're courting disaster," he said.
"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."
He suggested that dysfunction within the administration was so grave that "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." Wilkerson, a tough-talking former director of the Marine Corps War College, said that in his years in or close to government, he had seen its national security apparatus twisted and tortured in many ways.
But what he saw in the first Bush term "was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations, perturbations."
"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." He was equally unsparing of a top former Rumsfeld aide, Douglas Feith, saying, "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Alluding to Defense Department tensions with the State Department following the Iraq invasion, Wilkerson said Feith had been "given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves."
The retired colonel referred to Bush as someone who "is not versed in international relations - and not too much interested in them, either." He was far more admiring of the president's father, whom he called "one of the finest presidents we've ever had."
Wilkerson is considered a close confidant of Powell, but said Powell did not approve of his public criticisms.
Wilkerson had become more outspoken since leaving the State Department in January, but never so much as on Wednesday.
Earlier this year, for example, he said that the former undersecretary of state John Bolton would be an "abysmal ambassador" to the United Nations.
Sorry, couldn't resist. Go on.
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