Thursday, November 03, 2005
 Last month Colin Powell's former Cheif of Staff Larry Wilkerson publicly attacked the Bush Adminstration, describing the actions of the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense as a "cabal".
Perhaps you read this quote: "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." I know all my readers are brilliant but let's just throw the definition out there anyway because Tuesday Rummy was asked about it. ca·bal (ke-băl', -bäl') n.
1. A conspiratorial group of plotters or intriguers: "Espionage is quite precisely it—a cabal of powerful men, working secretly" (Frank Conroy).
2. A secret scheme or plot. The key word here is Secret.
Secret in a representative democracy is a bad thing because those people are supposed to be working for us. We are supposed to know what they are doing so that we can tell them to keep it up or to knock it off. Normally people work in secret because they are up to no good.
Sometimes people work in secret because that's their job. For example Valerie Wilson worked in secret to protect us. Until Scooter Libby and others in the White House outted her as some weird payback for her husband publicly calling BushCo liars.
Not every CIA operation is good though.
Yesterday the Washington Post reported that the White House has been using the CIA to interrogate and imprison alleged al Qaeda operatives in Eastern Europe, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries.
In a press conference held Tuesday the Defense Secretary was asked about Col. Wilkerson's claim and not only did Rummy pretend not to know who Gen. Powell's Cheif of Staff was, but he reacted so oddly that if it weren't for the Department of Defense's transcript I wouldnt have believed it myself because, Goodness Gracious, it sounded like Mrs. Doubtfire or Larry Haskel had grabbed the mic. Q. Mr. Secretary, recently Larry Wilkerson, the former State Department official, has described what he said was a cabal between you and Vice President Cheney in forming public policy leading up to the war. And he described what he said was a seriously dysfunctional foreign policy. I don't think we've heard you speak on that. Can you just respond to that?
SEC. RUMSFELD: I haven't read this. I've heard about it. And I don't know the man. I've never met the man, and I don't believe he's ever been in a meeting of the NSC. So it's hard for me to understand exactly what his insights might have been.
 But, obviously, the president is the one who makes foreign policy, and the secretary of State is the one that implements foreign policy. And it's the country's policy.
I don't know what else one could say.
Q. If I can just follow up. He seems to be complaining that the State Department's role in that was minimized in the lead-up to the war.
SEC. RUMSFELD: My experience in those meetings is that the president is the principal person who decides these things, and if he -- what was his job, this fellow?
Q. He was -- forgive me, I cover the Pentagon, but he was the chief of staff to Powell.
Q. He was chief of staff to Powell.
SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know what his perspective was or what his expectations were.
Q. Do you think he was speaking for Secretary Powell?
SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh my goodness. Secretary Powell is perfectly capable of speaking for himself. I can't imagine --
Q. You didn't interpret it that way?
SEC. RUMSFELD: I didn't.
Q. So there was no cabal?
SEC. RUMSFELD: Of course not. My goodness gracious. The president of the United States makes these decisions, and he did it in open meetings and discussions that went on, and at great length. And that kind of a perspective obviously is looking through the wrong end of a telescope, I think. Do you think that this could explain why the Instapundit, who writes about the war and politics and Iraq 20-30 times a day hasn't mentioned the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld since September 7? Or only three times since June? Aren't we in a war? Or is there really that little good news in Iraq to selectively blog about?
Makes you wonder who supports cabals, who supports transparancy and who supports torture. People can talk all they want about the war on Terror, but what happens when we are the ones on the wrong end of terror and lies and corruption?
Instead, the law professor from Tennessee has chosen to write about Cindy Sheehan, negatively, 15 times since August 15.
I guess Glenn's saying that she's America's real enemy.
Secret torture, perjury, no wmds, cabals, lies... that gets a pass for the world's most popular right-wing blogger. But a mother of a fallen soldier who asks for peace? No mercy.
cabal was also a great video game + raymi + the void got his
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Previously on busblog...
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