Lire, Read :

WEIGHING THE UNIQUENESS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S - NATIONAL SECURITY DECISION-MAKING PROCESS: BOON OR DANGER TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY?
NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION 19/10/05

US policy and the 'Oval Office cabal'
Asia Times 21/10/05

" As top officials in the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office await possible criminal indictments for their efforts to discredit a whistle-blower, a top aide to former secretary of state, Colin Powell, on Wednesday accused a "cabal" led by Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld of hijacking US foreign policy by circumventing or ignoring formal decision-making channels.

Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired colonel, also charged that, as national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice was "part of the problem" by not ensuring that the policy-making process was open to all relevant participants. Wilkerson served as Powell's chief of staff from 2001 to 2005 and when Powell was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of the US Armed Forces during the administration of former president, George H W Bush.

"In some cases, there was real dysfunctionality," said Wilkerson, who spoke at the New America Foundation (NAF), a prominent Washington think tank. "But in most cases ... she made a decision that she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president."

"The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations and perturbations in the national-security [policy-making] process," he 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."

Wilkerson also stressed the "extremely powerful" influence of what he called the "Oval Office cabal" of Cheney and Rumsfeld, both former secretaries of defense with a long-standing personal and professional relationship.

He said they both were members of the "military-industrial complex" that former president, Dwight Eisenhower, warned the nation against in his 1961 farewell address… "