This sense that one can not act in good faith with impunity seems to fit with my research in the world of finance. As I argue in my blog or here at TPMCafe after expending great effort to get investors to play within the forex market and avoid dumping national currencies for Gold/Silver, now it seems as if the powers that be will not abide by their own rules. There are just too many people holding the strings who don't see the Sword of Damocles....yet.

How many wasted lives and destroyed families because of this kind of arrogance. But we will see no pentance from those who are the cause, be they in the public view or behind the scenes.

May they, like the Wandering Jew, find no peace.

What a fine well spoken man Mr. Wilkerson is.

And three more years of these bastards! It is almost beyond belief. It feels to me like they have already been in power for a decade or more. Is there any way to impeach an entire administration?

I appreciate what Larry Wilkerson is saying and I don't doubt what he says about Cheney, Powell, and Rumsfeld. I appreciate that he's speaking out.

That said, I'm frustrated by how Willkerson never blames the POTUS. His story seems to be that Bush 43 is an innocent, sorely duped by the evil Cheney and Rumsfeld cabal.

I and most others here I imagine think Bush 43 is no innocent. W's steeped in this mess, and the buck stops in the Oval Office.

Vaughan -- Thanks for your comment. I think Wilkerson is being quite careful to only report what he can personally substantiate -- but through deduction, he has made comments about President Bush's stewardship of these issues. If you read the speech he gave at the New America Foundation, he indicts Bush as one of the worst presidents this nation has had -- although I'd have to go back and look at the exact reference. But at the same point, Wilkerson is careful not to say things about what Bush did or didn't do that he can't personally account for. That's what makes his commentary so important. best, Steve Clemons

Yes, he's fine and upstanding and well-spoken now. But where was he while all this was still going on and he (with his boss, Colin the Coward) sat silently by. Powell and Tony Powell were the ultimate enablers, because the world trusted them and they provided their seal of approval. Without their complicity, Bush would not have had the political cover to invade Iraq. Even today, Colin Powell doesn't have the guts to come out and say what he thinks, leaving Larry Wilkerson to do his dirty work. If Wilkerson and Powell actually viewed the world then as they now say they did, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Whatever happened to the idea of resignation for principle? Yes, I know Colin Powell is the ultimate good soldier, loyal to a fault. But "just following orders" ceases to be an excuse when you leave the armed forces. A Secretary of State is not a soldier, and the President is no longer his Commander-in-Chief. The same goes for Wilkerson, who also held a civilian position. I'm sorry, but I just can't accept them as heroes. Too little, too late.

> Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and likeminded aides. He said Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."

Actually it's ALL of the above

"On the question of detainees picked up in Afghanistan and other fronts in the war on terror, Wilkerson said Bush heard two sides of an impassioned argument within his administration."

Wow.

One-book Bush actually heard two whole sides of an multivariable argument.

That's freaky.

I'd be impressed if I thought for an instant that Bush was even remotely curious about which argument might stand taller.

But I'm willing to bet the ranch that "One-book" hasn't changed his mind on an issue since before pre-school.

In other words, Thomas Gray had it wrong:

Ignorance isn't bliss.

Rather: Ignorant certainty is bliss.

[Ya'all can quote me on that one...]

I agree with rosswords. Wilkerson's bold statements might have made a profound difference if they were uttered 13 months ago. Today, not so much.

It still feels to me like Wilkerson is waging a campaign to deflect responsibility from the Presdent.

"Bush's stated policy, which was heatedly criticized by civil liberties and legal groups at the time, was defensible, Wilkerson said."

There are simply too many lines like that, not merely withholding of factual blame, but actual defenses of the President.

3 years is tooooo long a time. What about a RECALL??

Josh Marshall rightly pointed out that once your approval ratings are in the low thirties, you really have to earn every single percentage point you drop from here on out. And I think Wilkerson's broadsides are doing quite a bit of that heavy lifting at this point -- these attacks truly are devastating because they are so effective at shredding the image of the leadership. And its highly personal; this is hand-to-hand combat, not unlike the stuff Sy Hersh is capable of.

Should Wilkerson be wronged for not blowing the whistle on the unfolding disaster while it was taking place? I am all for a counterfactual approach to history, but who's to say?

One could argue that he has been able to inflict much more damage on the regime by going public just at the right moment -- when public support of the adminstration finally caved in. The flipside of this argument holds that a dramatic dissent in the run-up to the war would have been easy to kill. After all, public opinion was staunchly behind 'whatever' the preznit was going to do, however callous, stupid or disastrous it may turn out to be.

Earlier today, somebody mentioned on a previous thread that he was disgusted not only with the adminstration's failure to have any sort of debate about the options it had, but also about the rather naive and tragic tendency of the American public to rally behind a strong leader in times of crisis. Instead of scrutinizing such a powerful leader's actions with all the skepticism it could muster, the public gave their leadership carte blanche -- do whatever you want.

And do whatever they wanted to they damn well did.

I think that's a very important point -- the administration didn't just pull the wool over the eyes and ears of Congress and the public; the public didn't want to hear anything else.

The argument goes like this: the public was sufficiently frightened to hand the job to their leaders and just wasn't interested. At some point, more than half of the American people believed there was a connection between Hussein and Al Qaeda. And I think it's a bit facile to say that's because the media did a lousy job. Sure: the media did an appalling job before the war; but perhaps just as importantly, the public didn't want to hear a complex story with lots of shades of gray. The American public wanted a simple narratvie -- a good guy, bad guy scenario, and they got one.

With a public just as unwilling to listen to an alternative account of what had happened and what might be done, a dissenter from inside the administration would have had no chance of getting his message across.

One could therefore argue that Wilkerson was extremely smart in saving his ammunition for a moment that allowed him to have far more lethal and long-lasting impact on the adminstration's public image.

I'm impressed that Wilkerson is able to have such staying power in the media. He seems to pop at at regular intervals, about every week and a half.

Steve: " Thanks for your comment. I think Wilkerson is being quite careful to only report what he can personally substantiate"

Another reason might be that Wilkerson has sympathy for Bush '41 for whom he has the highest regard. I have also heard the theory that he is trying to engineer a "rescue mission" to get the old hands in there to save the presidency of Bush '43. If Wilkerson does have this intention, GWB has only contempt for the old gaurd that surrounded his father from what I can tell.

Steve's response at 7:03PM makes an excellent point regarding the authority of Wilkerson as a witness. Perhaps I am so used to biased punditry (left and right), people spouting forth heart-felt, yet non-authoritative opinions, that I forget the precious value of truth spoken by first-hand observers like Larry Wilkerson. Telling only about what he knows, not speculating, his testimony and comments have a deep impact.

But what to do with this frustration and angst of a literate, non-Washington-insider, peace-loving citizen? Bloviate and bluster and wail and blog comment--Is Bush 43 not the Worst.President.Ever?

btree:

I think that's a very important point -- the administration didn't just pull the wool over the eyes and ears of Congress and the public; the public didn't want to hear anything else.

Exactly.

And the public's guilt may go even deeper than you suspect:

Is it not possible that the HAVES (USA public) passively accepted this war against Iraqi HAVE NOTS because the HAVES sensed deep down inside that their lifestyles were linked to cheap oil?

Obviously this supposition dares to suggest that some significat part of the American public is guilty of a liquid-gold form of lebensraum.

I can up the ante at this point by going in a number of different directions.

Instead let me confine myself to these queries:

Have the HAVES in history ever willingly (peacefully) accepted a downgrade in their lifestyles?

Or were they ready to go to war to hang onto (for example) their slaves?

An automobile is a sort of a slave, is it not?

koreyel - very interesting. So let me continue in one of the directions you've hinted at:

Giovanni Arrighi for example argues that neoliberalism and neoconservativism are in fact opposed to each other: the claim is that the neoconservativism promoted by Bush Jr (and cronies) displaced the neoliberalism of the Reagan/Clinton era partly because (and this is also fairly novel) the US saw globalization as a threat to its interests. (This corresponds very well with your frightened consumer who wants her army to go and occupt the oil fields).

Behind this analysis is the proposition, taken from David Harvey, that there is a fundamental contradiction between the territorial logic proper to the state (for example, the geopolitical consequences of the location of resources within the borders of nation states), and the deterritorializing logic proper to capital (i.e. the liberalized capital markets of globalization).

See Arrighi's essay Hegemony Unraveling (pdf) for more.

Just wanted to add this:

The current over-extension of the American military is therefore not so much seen as an ideological aberration but as a sign of economic distress. In other words, the rest of the world sees America's energy wars and wrestling over resources and military control points in Central Asia as an act of desperation -- an early symptom of an economy that's in trouble over excessive energy consumption and lack of innovation. (And again, your argument would factor in a quasi-acknowledgement of this state of affairs by the American public).

A country that prefers to send its army and a bunch of mercenaries to war over oil rather than to switch to renewable energy certainly appears to have a tremendous lack of confidence in its capacity for innovation? Or at least it would certainly look that way to everyone else, wouldn't it?

Good point vaughan thomas. The punditry with few exceptions amount to little more than opinion. But opinion based on streams of information that formulate or influence one or another position must have some value. Purely ideological opinion, or opinion based on deceptions, hype, or false information or partisan hagiography may not amount to much, - but opinions based on research and documentation have some validity do they not?

Hense my dread concern. Im my opinion we swim in an ocean of lies. Deciphering any thing like truth or facts is an Herculean effort requiring exhaustive research of diverse and well founded links.

That said, - the more one investigates and examines the conduct of the Bush government, (and I am referring to the conduct, - the deeds, activities, and actions of the Bush government, - as opposed to the shapeshifting, vapid, and hollow words, promises, warnings, and partisan prognostications of the Bush government) - the more it is evident (in my opinion) that certain neo-fascist elements of the Bush government WHIG/OSP/OSI/??? ruthlessly exploited the horrors and the dead of 9/11 to deceptively and FALSELY terrorise the American people and congress into supporting the bloody, costly wayward misadventure in Iraq based on a festering litany of exaggerated, hyped, dodgey, sexed-up, cherry picked, stovepiped, unvetted, single sourced, and/or patently false justifications and extreme misrepresentations and/or contamination of the intelligence product.

In my opinion, based on all available evidence, - (which a few intrepid journalists, Fitzgerald, congress, the British, our own military, and intelligence apparatus, Wilkerson, and many others on a daily basis continue to reveal and validate) - neo-fascist warmongers and profiteers in the Bush government conducted disinformation warfare on the American people and ruthlessly betrayed the public trust, threw sand in the face of the judicial system, congress, and the people, in an insane attempt to invade, occupy, and erect a proxy government in Iraq, with the dim hope of imposing a pervesion of democracy on the ME, plundering the Iraqi oil, and profiteering wantonly in, and from the war, occupation, and reconstruction efforts.

I am willing to listen to and welcome other opinions and beg some solid information (as opposed to mindless fanaticus exaltation of Bush and Bush government policies and sliming of dissent, alternate opinion, or opposition) to counter or allay my dire opinion, or prove or at least suggest some other objectives and possible designs of the Bush government.

I would like to believe my extreme beliefs cannot possibly be true - that our socalled leadership cannot possibly be this criminal, incompetent, delusional, or "nefarious".

I would like to believe that America is not devolving or being re-engineered into a totalitarian dictatorship commandeered by neo-fascist cabals operating above, beyond, outside, and in total disdain of the law and America's core values and principles, - I would like to believe neo-facists in the Bush government are not bent on implementing the insane supremist Pax Americana neverendingwar and empire ambitions and designs and a New World Order through the terrible swift sword of our hypersuperior military and brilliant weapons. I would like to believe the Bush government is not insidiously eroding or erasing the peoples rights, freedoms, privileges, and protections, and heaping billions of dollars of debt and deficit on our unborn children. I would like to be the Bush government is not redistributing the wealth resources of our nation into 1% of population, and robbing from poor and middle class Americans to feed the superrich, and advancing the best interests of select cronies and oligarchs exclusively. I would like to believer the Bush government is not encouraging American industries to dodge profits in off shore entities and export American jobs. I would like to believe the Bush government does not actually condone torture, rendition, devaint sexual abuse of prisoners, the craven hoisting of blame of privates. I would like to believe the Bush government is not ending of habeaus corpus and due process protection, and the peoples right to petition the government for redress of grievances. I would like to believe the Bush government is not dismantling the separation of church and state, and the checks and balance structures that formally defined our unique experiment in democracy. I would like to believe the Bush government is not perverting American principles, shaming America globally, and betraying the public trust - but unfortunately - based on a wide range of diverse and well researched streams of information, - it is my opinion - that these unholy horrors are indeed true. It is my sad opinion that I cannot believe in good conscience otherwise, or imagine any other possible conclusion.

All of these Bush government deceptions, abuses, failures, horrors, and unholy ends, activities, ambitions, ideologies, and designs are - in my opinion - true - and obvious factbasedrealities that we are only just now begining to thoroughly unearth and comprehend.

But to come back to my earlier point --

The public's unwillingness to look at the underlying causes not only of 9/11 but also of America's much wider and deeper image problems may have had more to do with long-standing cultural tendencies in the US than with deeper insights into the mechanisms of geopolitics or globalization.

For a brief moment after the 9-11 attacks, the question was "why do they hate us (so much)?" or even better, "what went wrong?". Days later, these promising lines of inquiry had been purged and eliminated permanently from the national conversation -- after it was realized how many uncomfortable facts would be unearthed and how many difficult follow-ups would have been raised by these two powerful questions.

So instead of making it difficult for everyone, the public just decided to leave it to their leaders to retaliate, kill some foreigners according to the applicable hate-doctrine of the day, and declare victory.

I am sorry but where was Wilkerson before the election? He stood back so that Bush can win and continue to run the same policies he now called stupid and harmful ?

Somebody please ask Wilkerson why he did not speak up before the election.

So yeah, absolutely.

Why precisely did Wilkerson came forward when he did, and were the ifs and whens of this decision entirely of his own choosing?

Perhaps Steve might be able to help us out with some details? :-)

Check out http:///www.traprockpeace.org/podcasts transcript/

Sorry;

http://www.traprockpeace.org/podcasts transcript/
Scott Ritter speech - a MUST read!

This morning on BBC Radio 4 Col. WIlkerson accused Cheney of "advocating the use of terror" and when asked if Cheney was guilty of war crimes, he said "that's an interesting question." Then he admitted he felt the vice president was guilty of domestic crimes, and probably war crimes as well.

He also says he formerly believed that intelligence wasn't manipulated by the administration, but now he's rethinking that position in light of recent revelations re: al-Libi and Curveball.

I can't find a transcript, but the British papers will probably cover it soon.

The details of the interview are at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today1_wilkerson_20051129.ram - 5 minutes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today3_cheney_20051129.ram - 10 minutes

I heard the second piece which was an interview with Col Wilkerson.

Here's a link to Col Wilkerson's comments on the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4480638.stm

Intuition or Projection ??

Wilkerson's public comments appear to be increasing in intensity and specificity. From here it's as if Powell, via Wilkerson is 'warning' Bush, speaking a code 'I'm gonna let you off, I'm not gonna tar you, . . .e.g.

"too aloof, too distant from the details" of postwar planning. Underlings exploited Bush's detachment and made poor decisions, Wilkerson said.

to what end ? Is Powell foolishly thinking Bush can be pressured to do the right thing ? come clean ? and what is the 'right thing' in Powell's mind ?

and if this is what's going on, does Powell have an 'or else' ? is WIlkerson going to start leaking documents ?

Of course there is every reason to believe accepted wisdom that Powell is simply saving face, hitting back, etc. but my intuitive voice gets louder with each new Wilkerson appearance.

Steve, the "all powerful" Presidency is a manifestation of the "Unitary Presidency" theory (niocon Historian S.Calabesi) which Cheney's then counsel and now COS Addington espouses. It's a dangerous tendency and by no means limited to the post 9/11 war policies. It needs to be addressed not just as a source of policy missteps, but on a fundamental constitutional and ideological level

Bush must approve of the torture policy. When it became public, Bush said nothing to repudiate his policy. Cheney defends it publicly. A president who was truly appalled and upset could put a stop to it immediately.

Der Führer schützt das Recht...

The theories of the administration hardliners are remarkably similar to those of legal theorists like Carl Schmitt and Werner Best in Nazi Germany.

I suspect Bush authorized -- if he did not order -- torture in his still-classified Memorandum of Notification to the CIA of Sept. 17, 2001. (Read Richard Clarke's book for Bush's fly-off-the-handle reaction on 9/11.)

Thereafter, government lawyers and everybody else in the administration spun things so that Bush would not be legally liable.

"All powerfull President" fits with Dopey's comment that he's the president and he can do whatever he goddamned wants. For a "strict constructionist", he certainly shows contempt for the Constitution by thwarting Congress and refusing to submit documents or to give testimony when requested. He's so good at skirting the consitutional processes, he should wear a kilt. Congressional oversight be damned.

That the White House team believes this does not surprise me. Conservatives are basically congenital conformists. They need a Mommy and Daddy to tell them what to think. I fault Congress, both parties, for not protecting the rights of the legislative branch. But then, the Neocons got their wish for an attack inside the US and almost without exception, everyone became a knee jerk patriot. We didn't even take the time to question bombing Afghanistan, knowing the 9/11 highjackers were Saudis whom we had paid to go to Afghanistan in the first place. Too bad for Afghanis. They are in the way of the great pipeline.

George Bush is OUR disgrace. Why wait 3 more years to correct this?