I just came across this link to an absolutely damning story in the Financial Times – courtesy BuzzFlash.
One of Powell’s senior aides speaks up and it puts Cheney & Co in a bad light. As well as Powell. More below.
He basically states that Cheney usurped control of foreign policy and short-circuited normal processes with absolutely devastating results:
Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government’s foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.
In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “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.
(snip)
“If you’re not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran.”
Apparently no longer buddies with his former boss:
Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.
“He’s not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world’s most loyal soldier.”
It is time for Colin Powell to come clean! “Loyal soldier” – come on. There is no need to – no; it is actually shameful to remain loyal to a corrupt and criminal regime. And this is his last chance for any measure of redemption; if he remains silent now and the expected indictments come through it will be too late for him. He will remain forever associated with the Dark Side.
I suggest you read the whole story!
Can Colin still be rescued and redeemed from the Dark Side?
Powell knows that jumping into the fray now would accomplish nothing. I suggest his approach is more “reality-based” than many other ex-administration staffers. Entirely too much noise now. I suspect his book is already written, and will be released when (or if) the Country returns to a more rational state.
Right now there’s plenty of fuel on that fire.
It’s hard for me to admire, at best a water boy and at worst a patsy, who when he has the chance doesn’t fight back against the conspiracy of lies that has cost his fellow soldiers nearly 2000 deaths.
I call that criminally misplaced loyalty.
Video is here.