IF THE PRESIDENT'S DRIVING, IS IT STILL A HIJACKING?

Cheney 'cabal' hijacked foreign policy (Edward Alden, Financial Times, 10/20/05)

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “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.

What the colonel views as a design flaw actually should be regarded as a feature, as James Mann made clear in Rise of the Vulcans. The colonel is understandably loyal to his boss, Colin Powell, who did lose his share of the foreign policy battles. But Don Rumsfeld was brought in precisely so that Colin Powell would not run roughshod over foreign policy, as James Mann also made clear in his book. That Cheney has proven so influential really only drives home the point that foreign policy in this administration flows from the White House, rather than from cabinet secretaries.