Backstairs at the White House

I didn't comment on it at the time, but a couple of weeks ago, Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff during his tenure as secretary of state, delivered a devastating critique of the Bush administration. He described a cabal between Cheney and Rumsfeld that "made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made," and went on to discuss other members of the administration and how things worked.

Well, he's back again. He spoke to Morning Edition yesterday and claimed that the policy of abusing detainees held by the military could be traced back to the vice president's office. Earlier today, Dan Froomkin expressed surprise that no one (aside from Agence France Presse) had picked up this story, but he predicted that other press outlets would be following it soon enough. How much this boils down to cause and effect I don't know, but a search of Google News shows he was right. That link brought less than fifty hits when I checked it just before typing these characters. Let's hope it's risen by the time you're reading. Froomkin also provides a partial transcript of the radio interview.

Speaking of big stories that I never addressed, Brent Scowcroft sounded off against the administration in last week's New Yorker. Go ahead and read it if you haven't seen it yet.