a_unique_person
21st March 2006, 07:40 PM
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1597565.htm
COLONEL LARRY WILKERSON: If you look at our Government structure since World War II, principally since the 1947 National Security Act set up the decision-making process and the national security structure that we have today, you can find during that 50-plus-year period many times when the statutory process was flummoxed, it was adumbrated and obscured and deviated from, choose your verb. We have had accumulations of power during that period, for example, that our founding fathers would find egregious. I only need cite one when Henry Kissinger was both National Security Adviser and Secretary of State to give you some idea of how this has happened in the past. Today, what we have is the most powerful Vice President in the history of the republic. We have a Vice President who has a staff that equates to the National Security Council staff, that is the statutory staff under the law. We have a Vice President who gets numerous bites at the apple, so to speak, with the President of the United States and who has inordinate and dramatic influence on the President of the United States, through not just his own demeanour and his own feelings and opinion but also through the enormous staff that he has that, as I said, is the equivalent of the statutory staff. So, while in the past we might have had accumulation of power in a man who was both Secretary of State and National Security Adviser - we might have had different concentrations of power during Iran Contra and so forth that led to failures - we now have a unique concentration of power and it is in the office of the Vice President and it is amplified by the fact that the office of the Vice President tends to depend largely on the Defence Department when it comes to advice and consent with regard to many of the most important national security decisions and that's what I call a cabal.
.....
COLONEL LARRY WILKERSON: I think, unquestionably. I'm hearing from lieutenants, captains, majors, generals, many in uniform, many of whom were my students in years passed when I taught at the nation's war colleges. I'm hearing from the civilians who were foreign service officers, civil service and so forth in our embassy in Baghdad and I can tell you that the morale in the uniformed military is being impacted and I can also tell you that our ground forces are stretched to the point where you hear talk about withdrawal from Iraq. Within 24 months, we're going to have to withdraw from Iraq, whether the situation there, politically, economically and so forth, is adequate or not because we've stretched our ground forces to the point of breaking. We have officers who are leaving the Army and the Marine Corps now because they don't want to do a third and possibly a fourth tour in Afghanistan or Iraq. We have people who are beginning to question their leaders, just as they did in Vietnam. We have families that are beginning to fall apart because of second and third tours in Iraq. This is a situation with which I am well familiar. The signs are there and the signs are available for anyone to see, which is what makes me consider Secretary Rumsfeld an inadequate Secretary of Defence at best because he doesn't seem to see those signs, or if he does, he's not doing anything about it.
Another nail in the coffin. The US cannot win now, no matter what. It won't take much for the insurgents to hold on for a few more years. And the reason for it all is the worst president in 50 years is incapable of standing up to a cabal centred around the Vice President.
COLONEL LARRY WILKERSON: If you look at our Government structure since World War II, principally since the 1947 National Security Act set up the decision-making process and the national security structure that we have today, you can find during that 50-plus-year period many times when the statutory process was flummoxed, it was adumbrated and obscured and deviated from, choose your verb. We have had accumulations of power during that period, for example, that our founding fathers would find egregious. I only need cite one when Henry Kissinger was both National Security Adviser and Secretary of State to give you some idea of how this has happened in the past. Today, what we have is the most powerful Vice President in the history of the republic. We have a Vice President who has a staff that equates to the National Security Council staff, that is the statutory staff under the law. We have a Vice President who gets numerous bites at the apple, so to speak, with the President of the United States and who has inordinate and dramatic influence on the President of the United States, through not just his own demeanour and his own feelings and opinion but also through the enormous staff that he has that, as I said, is the equivalent of the statutory staff. So, while in the past we might have had accumulation of power in a man who was both Secretary of State and National Security Adviser - we might have had different concentrations of power during Iran Contra and so forth that led to failures - we now have a unique concentration of power and it is in the office of the Vice President and it is amplified by the fact that the office of the Vice President tends to depend largely on the Defence Department when it comes to advice and consent with regard to many of the most important national security decisions and that's what I call a cabal.
.....
COLONEL LARRY WILKERSON: I think, unquestionably. I'm hearing from lieutenants, captains, majors, generals, many in uniform, many of whom were my students in years passed when I taught at the nation's war colleges. I'm hearing from the civilians who were foreign service officers, civil service and so forth in our embassy in Baghdad and I can tell you that the morale in the uniformed military is being impacted and I can also tell you that our ground forces are stretched to the point where you hear talk about withdrawal from Iraq. Within 24 months, we're going to have to withdraw from Iraq, whether the situation there, politically, economically and so forth, is adequate or not because we've stretched our ground forces to the point of breaking. We have officers who are leaving the Army and the Marine Corps now because they don't want to do a third and possibly a fourth tour in Afghanistan or Iraq. We have people who are beginning to question their leaders, just as they did in Vietnam. We have families that are beginning to fall apart because of second and third tours in Iraq. This is a situation with which I am well familiar. The signs are there and the signs are available for anyone to see, which is what makes me consider Secretary Rumsfeld an inadequate Secretary of Defence at best because he doesn't seem to see those signs, or if he does, he's not doing anything about it.
Another nail in the coffin. The US cannot win now, no matter what. It won't take much for the insurgents to hold on for a few more years. And the reason for it all is the worst president in 50 years is incapable of standing up to a cabal centred around the Vice President.