Re: A real soldier speaks

On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 23:07:56 -0500, "Joe S." <anon@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

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>QUOTE
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>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/18/AR2006011802607.html?sub=AR
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>Breaking Ranks
>Larry Wilkerson Attacked the Iraq War. In the Process, He Lost the
>Friendship of Colin Powell.
>
>By Richard Leiby
>Washington Post Staff Writer
>Thursday, January 19, 2006; Page C01
>
>In an overheated old schoolroom in Washington, Larry Wilkerson, a retired
>Army colonel, is doing his best to impose military discipline on 25 pupils
>as they prepare to attack a mountain of pizza, cupcakes and cookies. It is
>the year-end party for Macfarland Middle School's Colin L. Powell Leadership
>Club, a tutoring and mentoring program that Wilkerson oversees as a
>volunteer. Striding before his charges in smart burgundy suspenders, the
>colonel -- everybody here calls him the colonel -- makes a point about duty:
>
>"If you're not attending the meetings, you aren't a member of the club. It's
>as simple as that." He rebukes a boy who has shown up for the party but
>otherwise been scarce. "You know how I'll feel if you don't come to
>subsequent meetings," Wilkerson warns, "and you don't want to get me angry."
>
>Then he drops the bluff demeanor and authorizes the kids to start chowing
>down. "Try to keep as much as you can off the floor," he says in a Southern
>accent softened by frequent chuckles. For the next hour he circulates
>through the room, greeting each student by name -- Jamie, Angela, Trevon,
>Tanya -- encouraging them to keep their grades up, prodding them to complete
>their community-service projects, inquiring about sometimes precarious home
>lives.
>
>Since 1998, Wilkerson has devoted himself to helping at-risk children at
>Macfarland in the name of Colin Powell, whom he refers to as "my boss" and
>"the general." Wilkerson works tirelessly to keep them in the club and to
>secure scholarships for them at private high schools.
>
>Yet these days he and Powell are estranged: This program represents the last
>remnant of a long, deep friendship between them. Like ex-spouses in an
>uneasy detente, "we decided we'd just communicate over the kids," says
>Wilkerson, sounding pained by the situation.
>
>The split came as both men left the administration -- Powell as secretary of
>state, Wilkerson as his chief of staff -- after working side by side for 16
>years. Wilkerson, a once-loyal Republican with 31 years of Army service, has
>emerged in recent months as a merciless critic of President Bush and his top
>people, accusing them of carrying out a reckless foreign policy and
>imperiling the future of the U.S. military.
>
>"My wife would probably shoot me if I headed to the ballot box with a
>Republican vote again," he says. "This is not a Republican administration,
>not in my view. This is a radical administration."
>
>Wilkerson calls Bush an unsophisticated leader who has been easily swayed by
>"messianic" neoconservatives and power-hungry, secretive schemers in the
>administration. In a landmark speech in October, Wilkerson 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."
>
>He is particularly appalled by U.S. treatment of enemy detainees, counting
>at least 100 deaths in custody during the course of the war on terrorism --
>27 of them ruled homicides. "Murder is torture," he says. "It's not torture
>lite."
>
>As for the invasion of Iraq? A blunder of historic proportions, he believes.
>
>"This is really a very inept administration," says Wilkerson, who has
>credentials not only as an insider in the Bush I, Clinton and Bush II
>presidencies but also as a former professor at two of the nation's war
>colleges. "As a teacher who's studied every administration since 1945, I
>think this is probably the worst ineptitude in governance, decision-making
>and leadership I've seen in 50-plus years. You've got to go back and think
>about that. That includes the Bay of Pigs, that includes -- oh my God,
>Vietnam. That includes Iran-contra, Watergate."
>
>Such a critique, coming from a man who was long thought to speak for Powell,
>is seismic in Washington power circles. Some observers used to regard Powell
>and Wilkerson as so close that they enjoyed a "mind meld," but now Powell
>distances himself from the pronouncements of his former aide.
>
>Often described as the ultimate loyal soldier -- and, like Wilkerson, a
>Vietnam combat veteran -- Powell has largely kept his mouth zipped. Whatever
>public regret or private disappointment Powell may have about selling the
>Iraq war, he still supports the commander in chief -- most recently during
>the flap over domestic electronic eavesdropping -- and occasionally dines
>with Bush.
>
>Now consulting in the private sector, Powell declined to answer questions
>about Wilkerson's version of episodes in their tenure together. "General
>Powell considers Colonel Wilkerson a good friend of 16 years," an aide said
>by e-mail. "He has no other comment."
>
>Powell did address Wilkerson's central charge of secretive White House
>decision-making in an interview with the BBC in December. "I wouldn't
>characterize it the way Larry has, calling it a cabal," Powell said. "Now
>what Larry is suggesting in his comments is that very often maybe Mr.
>Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney would take decisions in to the president
>that the rest of us weren't aware of. That did happen, on a number of
>occasions."
>
>The White House offered no specific rebuttal of Wilkerson's views, but a
>spokesman gave a statement taking issue with the notion that Bush was
>somehow misled about the need to invade Iraq (a charge Wilkerson hasn't made
>outright). "President Bush made his decision to go to war in Iraq based on
>the intelligence given to him by the intelligence community. It was the
>president's decision, and the president made that decision based on the
>totality of the evidence presented to him," said the spokesman, who asked
>that his name not be used "because of the nature of the topic."
>
>Interviewed by CNN in November, Rumsfeld termed the suggestion of a cabal
>"ridiculous" and said of Wilkerson, "In terms of having firsthand
>information, I just can't imagine that he does."
>
>Making a Military Man
>
>
>
>Wilkerson, 60, got his start with Powell as a speechwriter and you can see
>why. He tends to talk in fully formed paragraphs. Over a lunch of barbecued
>chicken salad, he begins his life story this way:
>
>"I was born in Gaffney, South Carolina, which is right near Spartanburg,
>which is right near Greenville. My dad was a World War II vet -- B-17
>bombardier and navigator. He came home from the war and entered the South
>Carolina National Guard, so I kind of grew up riding around in Jeeps and
>shooting .30-caliber machine guns. I shot my first Browning .30-caliber at
>9. That is to say, the National Guardsmen made me think I was shooting it."
>
>The family later moved to Houston, where Wilkerson graduated from high
>school. (Aside here on George W. Bush: "I see hard-headedness, I see
>arrogance, I see hubris, I see what I saw in a lot of Texans.")
>
>Wilkerson went north to study philosophy and English lit at Bucknell but
>quit college in his senior year. He was newly married yet determined to go
>to Vietnam. It was 1966.
>
>"I felt an obligation because my dad had fought," he says, "and I thought
>that was kind of your duty."
>
>Eventually he got there as an Army officer, spending a year in what he calls
>the "hottest combat" possible, piloting his OH-6A helicopter close to the
>jungle canopy, scouting out the enemy on behalf of the infantry.
>
>"We got shot at nearly every day," he says. A brush with death came when a
>sniper's bullet pierced the helicopter's cockpit plexiglass, but he was
>never wounded or shot down. "My men used to call me the Teflon guy. . . . I
>felt like I had some kind of protective coating on me because I think I flew
>about 1,100 combat hours, which is a lot of hours."
>
>(Predictable aside on hawks like *** Cheney, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith
>and Paul Wolfowitz: "None of these guys ever heard a bullet go by their ears
>in combat.")
>
>After Vietnam, Wilkerson went on to the elite Airborne and Ranger schools,
>earned his bachelor's in English literature and advanced degrees in
>international relations and national security. Rising through the ranks, he
>attended the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., and eventually returned
>there to teach. He later served as acting director at the Marine Corps War
>College at Quantico.
>
>He made a natural professor. In conversation, he often lectures in a lofty
>but folksy way, citing the works of the great war theoretician Karl von
>Clausewitz or putting the zeal of neocons in historical context: Their
>fellow travelers, he says, were Lenin and the Bolsheviks and the Jacobins of
>the French Revolution -- utopians who had no qualms using the guillotine in
>service of their ideals.
>
>(Long aside on how Bush, who criticized "nation building" as a candidate in
>2000, became a globe-changing Jacobin: "Here we are with a failure in Iraq,
>a massive failure. Not only an intelligence failure, but it looks like it's
>gonna be a real failure on the ground. How do you suddenly transform that?
>Well, you suddenly become a Jacobin yourself, you're suddenly for this
>messianic spread of freedom and democracy around the world. You're suddenly
>an advocate of all things that John F. Kennedy was an advocate of: 'We will
>bear any burden, pay any price.' You've discarded John Quincy Adams, who
>said we're the friends of liberty everywhere, the custodians only of our
>own. And you've suddenly said, 'I'm the custodian of the whole world's
>liberty, and by God if you don't realize it I'm going to bring it to you --
>and if I have to bring it to you at the point of a gun, that's the way I'm
>going to bring it to you!' ")
>
>But back to the biography: Wilkerson spent years in Korea, Japan and Hawaii,
>assigned to the Navy's Pacific Command, where he burnished his skills as an
>executive assistant to the top brass.
>
>"He's the most competent Army officer I've ever worked with," says retired
>Lt. Gen. James W. Crysel, one of Wilkerson's bosses at Pacific Command. "He
>could run a large corporation."
>
>Retired Rear Adm. Stewart A. Ring, whom Wilkerson served for three years, is
>similarly effusive: "He is the most principled individual I have ever met
>and ever worked with. He is a remarkable guy with essentially no ego. He
>stands up for what he thinks is right -- not for Larry Wilkerson, but for
>what is right."
>
>Such high praise won him an interview with Powell in early 1989, when the
>general was exiting as national security adviser in the Reagan White House
>and heading to Army Forces Command in Atlanta. Wilkerson says he was happy
>where he was, teaching at the Naval War College, and that evidently
>impressed Powell: "He said he didn't like overly ambitious people, and it
>was clear that I was content doing what I was doing and I wasn't really
>politicking for a job with him."
>
>(An aside on Powell's personality: "He can be the most endearing person
>you'd ever want to meet in your life. The next minute he can be colder than
>fish.")
>
>Powell's Confidant
>
>
>
>It was, as they say, the start of a beautiful friendship, spanning Powell's
>stint as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Persian Gulf War, the general's
>return to private life -- during which he launched America's Promise, the
>nonprofit initiative that seeded the Macfarland school project -- and
>Powell's support for candidate Bush and appointment as secretary of state.
>
>Powell has long been known as a "reluctant warrior." Before the 9/11
>attacks, he took the view that 10 years of U.N. sanctions had contained
>Saddam Hussein and expressed skepticism that Iraq had any ability to use
>weapons of mass destruction.
>
>Having prepared Powell's testimony and speeches, and having received
>top-level intelligence briefings, Wilkerson also knew the post-9/11 case
>against Hussein was not airtight. Powell "presented a number of alternatives
>to war," Wilkerson recalls. "Those alternatives did not entail the use of
>force, or they did not entail the use of force immediately. And when he was
>made aware of the decision otherwise, he became the good soldier that he
>was. I know how he operates and he would have decided, 'Okay, I lost, and
>now I'll carry out the decision as best I can' -- and make it seem like it
>was his decision."
>
>Powell's office on the State Department's sixth floor had a private door
>that led directly to Wilkerson's office. One particular visit burns brightly
>in Wilkerson's memory: It was November 2002, after the U.N. Security Council
>voted 15-0 to order Iraq to admit weapons inspectors, and Powell was in a
>contemplative mood.
>
>"He walked into my office, and he said to me, musing and looking out across
>the greenery there toward National Airport -- I wrote it down on my
>calendar, that's the reason I know what he said -- 'I wonder what will
>happen if we put half a million troops on the ground, and scour Iraq from
>one corner to the other, and find no weapons of mass destruction?' And he
>left that rhetorical question hanging in the air as he went back into his
>office."
>
>Bad Information
>
>
>
>Wilkerson, as it turned out, became the point man for making the case for
>preemptive war against Hussein. He put together the task force that, during
>a week at CIA headquarters, vetted all the intelligence reports used for
>Powell's famous pro-war presentation in February 2003 to the Security
>Council, where he brandished a vial of fake anthrax, played excerpts of
>intercepted Iraqi military chatter, and warned of mobile bioweapon
>"factories" and other doomsday machines, none of which actually existed.
>
>How did it happen?
>
>"Larry thought they had cleaned out the obvious garbage, but it turned out
>there was more," says James A. Kelly, a former assistant secretary of state
>who's known Wilkerson for 20 years. "Larry felt that he let down the
>secretary, but the job was so big in cleaning out the misinformation."
>
>Wilkerson won't say outright that he and Powell were deliberately snowed by
>intelligence reports tailored to fit a political push for war, but he has
>edged closer to that view, noting, "I've begun to wonder." It turns out that
>the administration relied on fabricators' claims about Hussein's illusory
>WMD programs and, in one case, an al Qaeda suspect whom the CIA turned over
>to alleged torturers in Egypt.
>
>"I kick myself in the ass," Wilkerson says. "How did we ever get to that
>place?"
>
>The speech tarnished Powell's gold-plated reputation, but he has never
>publicly pointed a finger at then-CIA Director George Tenet or the White
>House.
>
>"Nothing was spun to me," Powell told David Frost in a BBC television
>interview last month. "What really upset me more than anything else was that
>there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some
>of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced up to us."
>
>Why didn't the doubts reach Powell? Perhaps because then he wouldn't have
>given the speech at all?
>
>"That's right," Wilkerson says, shooting a hard, solemn stare across the
>restaurant table. "That's right."
>
>He also says, "I am prepared to entertain the idea that they used him."
>
>Leaving the Fold
>
>
>
>By early 2004, it was clear to Wilkerson that the Pentagon's failure to
>prepare for the war's aftermath -- including dismissal of Army Gen. Eric
>Shinseki's warnings as well as peacekeeping and nation-building plans -- had
>led to mounting deaths and injuries for U.S. ground troops. Nor was there,
>in Wilkerson's view, any thought given to future replenishment of the Army
>and Marine combat troops as the insurgency continued.
>
>"Larry Wilkerson is a man of the Army in the finest sense," says Kelly. "He
>cares deeply about the U.S. Army . . . and he hates to see this institution
>badly damaged, and he believes it has been badly damaged."
>
>Revelations about Abu Ghraib and the skirting of the Geneva Conventions
>added to Wilkerson's anger. He came to see Powell as the administration's
>lone voice of reason -- but Powell was being shut out.
>
>"Combine the detainee abuse issue with the ineptitude of post-invasion
>planning for Iraq, wrap both in this blanket of secretive decision-making .
>. . and you get the overall reason for my speaking out," Wilkerson says.
>
>"It never became personal for Powell, because he believed in the process,"
>says Robert Charles, a former assistant secretary of state who worked with
>both men. "I believe it was harder for Larry, because he felt such great
>empathy for the boss, the most seasoned military officer he had ever served
>with."
>
>(Another aside from Wilkerson, on this period with Powell: "I can say in all
>truth that in 16 years he never blew his stack. He got mad at me one time
>and asked me to leave the office -- told me to leave the office -- and that
>was towards the end when he was truly embattled, embittered and besieged, in
>my view. And even though it made me a little angry, I didn't take it that
>seriously because I knew at that point he was not a happy camper.")
>
>Wilkerson went so far as to draft a letter of resignation to Bush. He never
>sent it and now wonders whether he should have come out guns blazing before
>the 2004 election. But becoming a vocal political defector in Washington can
>mean lonely exile, a loss of stature and income.
>
>"I know it's very hard to put kids, job security and all that sort of stuff
>aside. I think that's the answer to why more people don't speak out."
>
>For Wilkerson, there was another reason: It might seem a betrayal of Powell,
>his hero, the man who signed photos to him with sentiments like, "To LW,
>You're the greatest!"
>
>Larry and Barbara Wilkerson, married for 39 years, live frugally in a Falls
>Church townhouse. She works at a Hallmark card shop. Their son is an Air
>Force navigator who's done duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their daughter,
>now a homemaker, served in the Army. Departing from government after Bush's
>second inauguration, Wilkerson had to decide: Would he speak his conscience
>or remain the quiet man like Powell?
>
>"My wife said to me: 'You have two choices, my man. You can think more about
>him or you can think more about your country. I suggest you do the latter.'
>"
>
>The Most Important Things
>
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>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>For years Barbara Wilkerson, 55, has baked cupcakes and cookies for the kids
>in the Powell club at Macfarland. After distributing treats at the year-end
>party, wearing her festive red blazer and a rhinestone teddy bear pin, she
>sat down for a moment to talk about her husband.
>
>"The most important person in his whole life has been General Powell," she
>says. "And the general has never let him down."
>
>Even more important than Barbara Wilkerson?
>
>"Well," she hesitates, unsure how to put it. "When you're married to an Army
>person, the Army is always -- that's kind of the thing. But he wouldn't put
>anybody above his country, that's for sure."
>
>She and others who know Wilkerson well say he has no intention of cashing in
>as a Bush critic. He hasn't joined a think tank or become a cable news
>pundit-for-hire. He has turned down publishers who want him to write a
>tell-all book for big money.
>
>Wilkerson says he may write an academic text about presidential
>decision-making. This month he began supplementing his retirement with
>part-time teaching jobs at George Washington University and the College of
>William & Mary.
>
>Recently a speakers bureau called Wilkerson to ask what fee he would want
>for a speech to a corporate audience. "I said I'd speak for the highest fee
>they'd pay," he recalls.
>
>But there was a condition: The money couldn't go to him. He said he wanted
>it all donated to scholarships for children in the Colin L. Powell
>Leadership Club.
>
>After the party the colonel helps with the cleanup. He lugs a bag of garbage
>out the door. All part of his duty.
>
>Walking to his car, he offers a final aside, about poetry. The colonel
>sometimes uses poems to tutor the kids in reading. He mentions a line that
>Powell always liked because it described the depth of family ties:
>
>"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you
>in."
>
>"In fact," says Wilkerson, "one time he quoted it to me and I said, 'You
>know where that came from?'
>
>"He said, 'Yeah, it came from me.' I said no, that's from Robert Frost's
>poem."
>
>Powell may or may not have known that already. The poem is called "The Death
>of the Hired Man."
>
>END QUOTE
>

It seems to me that there's a party line that all of your
"real soldiers" follow, to a tee.
.

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