The Detached President and His Cabinet's War

Ex-Powell Aide Criticizes Bush on Iraq
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer
11/29/05

"In an Associated Press interview Monday, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson...said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who argued that "the president of the United States is all-powerful," and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant. Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. Wilkerson said that 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." Wilkerson suggested his former boss may agree with him that Bush was too hands-off about Iraq. "What he seems to be saying to me now is the president failed to discipline the process the way he should have and that the president is ultimately responsible for this whole mess," Wilkerson said."