- #281
Informal Logic
Saw this bumper sticker yesterday: Can't wait for 2008
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9757219/...Now there are many critics who will say you cannot in our system of government force the executive branch to do something that it doesn't want to do. The framers of the 1947 act I don't think would agree with that.
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We need something like that today. Let me tell you why I say that. Decisions that send men and women to die, decisions that have the potential to send men and women to die, decisions that confront situations like natural disasters and cause needless death or cause people to suffer misery that they shouldn't have to suffer, domestic and international decisions, should not be made in a secret way.
That's a very, very provocative statement, I think. All my life I've been taught to guard the nation's secrets. All my life I have followed the rules. I've gone through my special background investigations and all the other things that you need to do and I understand that the nation's secrets need guarding.
But fundamental decisions about foreign policy should not be made in secret…
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When you cut the bureaucracy out of your decisions and then foist your decisions on us out of the blue on that bureaucracy, you can't expect that bureaucracy to carry your decision out very well and, furthermore, if you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in that bureaucracy, as they carry out your decision, you're courting disaster.
And I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita and I could go on back, we haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence. Read it some time again.
…Read in there what they say about the necessity of people to [UI background voice] tyranny or to throw off ineptitude or to throw off that which is not doing what the people want it to do.
And you're talking about the potential for, I think, real dangerous times if we don't get our act together. Now, let me get a little more specific. This is where I'm sure the journalists will get their pens out. Almost everyone since the '47 act, with the exception, I think, of Eisenhower, has in some way or another, perterbated, flummoxed, twisted, drew evolutionary trends with, whatever, the national security decision-making process.
I mean, John Kennedy trusted his brother, who was Attorney General, made his brother Attorney General, probably far more than he should have. Richard Nixon, oh my God, took a position that was not even envisioned in the original framers of the act's minds, national security minds, that are not subject to confirmation by the Senate, advise and consent. Took that position and gave it to his Secretary of State, concentrating power in ways that still reverberate in this country.
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…Another one in my study of the act's implementation has so flummoxed the process as the present administration. What do I mean by that?
Remember what I said about the bureaucracy if it's going to implement your decisions having to participate in those decisions. And let me add one other dimension to that.
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The complexity of the crises that confront governments today are just unprecedented. At the same time, especially in America, but I submit to you that in Japan, in China and in a number of other countries soon to be probably the European Union, it's just as bad, if not in some ways worse.
…That doesn't mean you have to add a Department of Homeland Security with 70,000 disparate entities thrown under somebody in order to handle them. But it does mean that your bureaucracy has got to be staffed with good people and they've got to work together and they've got to work under leadership they trust and leadership that, on basic issues, they agree with.
And that if they don't agree, they can dissent and dissent and dissent. And if their dissent is such that they feel so passionate about it, they can resign and know why they're resigning. That is not the case today…
...the case that I saw for 4 plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations, [UI], changes to the national security [UI] process. What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense and [UI] on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
Read George Packer's book The Assassin's [UI] if you haven't already. …if you want to read how the Cheney Rumsfeld cabal flummoxed the process, read that book. And, of course, there are other names in there, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas [UI], whom most of you probably know Tommy Frank said was stupidest blankety blank man in the world. He was. Let me testify to that...
And yet, and yet, after the Secretary of State agrees to a $400 billion department, rather than a $30 billion department, having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere. That's not making excuses for the State Department.
That's telling you how decisions were made and telling you how things got accomplished.
...[UI] tell you how many contractors who did billion dollars or so business with the Defense Department that we have in 1988 and how many do we have now. …They've got every Congressman, every Senator, they got it covered. …So you've got this collegiality there between the Secretary of Defense 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.
I guess he is next to have his character assassinated.SOS2008 said:Since this covers many thread topics (the need for checks and balance, Homeland Security, cronyism, Cheney vs. Powell, Bush's lack of international savvy, etc.), I am posting this here.
The following are excerpts from a talk given by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January. Originally from the Financial Times, updated by MSNBC Oct. 20, 2005, his talk focuses on the 1947 National Security Act:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9757219/