By ANNE GEARAN
The Associated PressMonday, November 28, 2005; 6:50 PM
WASHINGTON — A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees arose from White House and Pentagon officials who argued that “the president of the United States is all-powerful” and the Geneva Conventions irrelevant.
In an Associated Press interview, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said President Bush was “too aloof, too distant from the details” of postwar planning. Underlings exploited Bush’s detachment and made poor decisions, Wilkerson said.
Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded 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.”
[You Know Me: All evidence clearly indicates that Cheney falls into the “nefarious bastard” category.]
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. Abuse of prisoners, and even the deaths of some who had been interrogated in Afghanistan and elsewhere, have bruised the U.S. image abroad and undermined support for the Iraq war.
Cheney’s office, Rumsfeld aides and others argued “that the president of the United States is all-powerful, that as commander in chief the president of the United States can do anything he damn well pleases,” Wilkerson said.”
Wilkerson is, you will remember, is no radical left winger. He is a retired Colonel and long-time aide to Colin Powell. He clearly indicates that Cheney is running the show and is very angry at Cheney’s misdeeds.
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Rhodes, Hadley, Rice, Powell, Perle, Gingrich, and a whole host of other Bush administration officials should be in prison for their multiple crimes against humanity and the U. S. Constitution. Bush should be impeached and removed from office for a violation of oath of office to uphold the Constitution, which he has clearly failed to do in allowing the violations of the Geneva Conventions.
4 Comments
November 28, 2005 at 8:12 pm
Another Repub bites the dust. Cunningham of Cal will be spending his twighlight years in the state penn.
Maybe these stupid voters will start getting the drift….ya think!
November 28, 2005 at 8:44 pm
The 30% true believers would vote for Adolph Hitler if he said on FAUX News, Limbaugh, and O’Reilly that he was for family values, hates gays, and will give up his gun when they pry his coled, dead finger off the trigger.
November 29, 2005 at 10:05 am
i am coming down on the side of nefarious bastard also….no reason to expect the human beings living inside the borders of the US are any different from those that lived inside the borders of germany in the 1930’s. we are all “cut from the same cloth” as they say….
….I am hopeful we will be able to put a stop to it before it reaches the epic proportions we all know are possible…..
November 29, 2005 at 10:58 pm
Dick Cheney is what doctors extact from humans on a hourly basis….tumors!
Let hope that the American patriots see the truth!