The Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal

From Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2001-2005:

[T]he case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardisations, and perturbations in the national-security [policy-making] process. 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. ...

You’ve got this collegiality there between the secretary of defence and the vice president. And then you’ve got a president who is not versed in international relations -- and not too much interested in them either. ...

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.

Billmon has a lot more.