HR: FOR A NEFARIOUS MAIN$TREAM NEOCON RAG AS THE 'FINANCIAL TIMES' HAS BECOME, THIS IS AN EXCEPTIONAL ARTICLE.

"SECRET DECISION-MAKING WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR MISTAKES."

By Edward Alden in Washington

October 20 - 2005 - 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.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

TRANSCRIPT: COLONEL WILKERSON ON US FOREIGN POLICY - URL.:  http://tinyurl.com/8zz6f

Mr Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran.

It also resulted in bitter battles in the administration among those excluded from the decisions.

“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.”

The comments, made at the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, were the harshest attack on the administration by a former senior official since criticisms by Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism czar, and Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary, early last year.

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."

AMONG HIS OTHER CHARGES:

The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example” of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.”

Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president”. - [FPF on Rice - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/9ppyk]

START VOTING WITH THEIR FEET

The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel”.

Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush “one of the finest presidents we have ever had” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either”.

“There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.”

Find this article at Url.:  http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40f3-11da-b3f9-00000e2511c8,ft_acl=,s01=1.html

Fwd.by:

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
 http://tinyurl.com/66dmo
The Netherlands
 FPF@Chello.nl

MAIN$TREAM MEDIA MAKE MORONS!

* *The Dutch author this far has worked abroad for international media for more than 4 decades, as a fully independent foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism.
And listening to the deafening silence by all so called 'leaders' manifesting themselves as war criminals: they should be jailed!

* OUR FUTURE: APOCALYPSE NOW AND THE BRAVE NEW WORLD - THE MOST CHILLING STORY ON WHY ALL THIS HAPPENS AND WHO DOES IT - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/ax5zt

* The Nuremberg principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment." - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/byurp

* 'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC: video & text-interview of the United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

* The leaked 'Downing Street Memos' expose the criminal lies by war criminals like Bush, Blair, Berlusconi(It.) Balkenende(NL) - their collaborating media and other malignant ilk - Url.: http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/

* MSNBC - Poll: Ninety-four (94) percent believes that George Bush and the neocon media mislead the nation to go to war with Iraq - Url.:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8248969/

* ''The Lancet'' and the ''Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health'' report: ''Over 100.000 killed in the illegal Iraq war''-Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/5gys7

* Bush interview. ABC: No WMD's but many killed: "It was worth it" - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/6bal9

* Former Secr. of State Madeleine Albright in her comment on half a million dead children in Iraq: "We think it's worth it" On CBS 60' Minutes - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/2vmc8

* The must-see three-part BBC Documentary, "The Power of Nightmares," puts it bluntly: "Al-Qaeda is a (neocon) myth." - See Url.:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html

* In Indonesia they steal millions, making and 'fighting' their own terror - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/cq36f

* Wayne Madsen: ''What has Israel to do with 9/11?'' - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/bj754 - 'American neocons' - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/b5vsb - The US Federal Reserve and the private banks owning it - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/d3ntq

* Are their Corporate News Media Incompetent, Criminally Negligent or Complicit? - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/cqpfe

* Brainwashed? - Take the free 'Gullibility Factor' test to find out if you're really a mind slave, or not - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/cbgnc

* Colin Powell: 'It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the state of Israel' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/22p6c

* Neoconservatism as a Jewish Movement - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/5k7vx

* American car magnate Henry Ford investigated 85 years ago the global problem - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/2xz35

* Help all the troops of whatever nationality to come back from abroad! We need them badly at home in many countries - AND WITH ALL THEIR WEAPONS, WHICH WE PAID FOR BY TAXES - to fight with us against our so called 'governments' and their malignant managers - Url.:  http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

* The World Can't Wait! - Drive out the neocons and their 'Bush Regime' - Mobilize for November 2, 2005! - Url.:  http://www.worldcantwait.org/

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