Moron, Idiot, or Nefarious Bastard?
Is Dick Cheney guilty of war crimes? Today former Colin Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson participated in a BBC radio program and said that is an “interesting question.”
“It is certainly a domestic crime to advocate terror, and I would suspect that it is, for whatever it’s worth, an international crime as well,” he told the programme.
Wilkerson accused Cheney of ignoring a decision by President Bush on the treatment of prisoners in the war on terror.
He said that there were two sides of the debate within the Bush administration over the treatment of prisoners.
Mr Powell and more dovish members had argued for sticking to the Geneva conventions, which prohibit the torture of detainees.
Meanwhile, the other side “essentially wanted to do away with all restrictions”.
Mr Bush agreed a compromise, that “Geneva would in fact govern all but al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda look-alike detainees”.
“What I’m saying is that, under the vice-president’s protection, the secretary of defence [Donald Rumsfeld] moved out to do what they wanted in the first place, even though the president had made a decision that was clearly a compromise,” Col Wilkerson said.
He said that he laid the blame on the issue of prisoner abuse and post-war planning for Iraq “pretty fairly and squarely” at Mr Cheney’s feet.
But what about Bush?
“I look at the relationship between Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld as being one that produced these two failures in particular, and I see that the president is not holding either of them accountable… so I have to lay some blame at his feet too,” he went on.
I think we’re seeing how much of a weenie Bush truly is. One some level he may realize that Dick and Rummy are screwups, but I think he’s afraid to try to be president without them.
Wilkerson said yesterday that President Bush was “too aloof, too distant from the details” of post-war planning. And much of the muck that we call “U.S. foreign policy” is the result of exploitation of that detatchment by underlings.
Anne Gearan of the Associated Press wrote,
In an Associated Press interview Monday, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who argued that “the president of the United States is all-powerful,” and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant.
The foundation theory of the Bush Administration is, “Our shit don’t stink.” If you understand that’s where they are coming from, they almost make sense.
You’ll like this quote:
Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because “otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.”
I’m seeing hands go up for “nefarious bastard.” But “fool” probably would work as well. I think it’s entirely possible that Cheney and Bush both believed their own hype about the dangers of Saddam and his mighty WMDs. If so, in a strict sense of the word, they didn’t lie. Bush is, I suspect, just too lazy and detatched to have questioned what his staffers put in front of him. And Cheney is just plain delusional.
I stumbled on this paper about delusional thinking —
One common misconception about delusions–reflected in the DSM-IV definition–is that the thinking processes of delusional individuals are defective, or different from those of normal people. In fact, research suggests that delusional people use the same rules of reasoning as everyone else. Indeed, once a normal individual forms a belief, he or she is also reluctant to change it, and will actively seek out confirmatory evidence (”confirmation bias”) and ignore contradictory evidence. Rather than making false inferences, then, some experts now believe that delusional individuals have different experiences from other people, and that their delusional beliefs stem from their attempts to understand these experiences. Thus, it might be more useful to conceptualize delusions as disorders of experience. Delusional individuals also tend to be more alert, and indeed hyperattentive to their environment, and to notice coincidences that other people would likely think of as trivial.
I don’t know about the “different experiences” part, but can’t you just see Cheney obsessively sniffing out anything, corroborated or not, that confirmed his beliefs about Saddam Hussein? Cheney’s are the actions of a delusional man. And he had enablers at the Pentagon Iraq Group who were just too eager to give Cheney what he was looking for. One big dysfunctional family.
Cheney cherry picked intelligence with a certainty born of delusion. Whatever confirmed Cheney’s beliefs were hyped, and whatever contradicted them were ignored.
In his BBC interview, Wilkerson indicated the Secretary of State must’ve had about the same prewar Iraq intelligence that the Senate did. That is to say, some critical parts were left out.
Mr Wilkerson told the BBC he had believed intelligence supported the claim Iraq had a WMD programme, and had then initially accepted the administration’s argument that the major western intelligence agencies had been fooled.
He said he had recently been troubled by disclosures that one key informant was unreliable, while the evidence for claims that Saddam Hussein had contacts with al-Qaida may have been obtained by torture and was the subject of internal dissent prior to the March 2003 US-led invasion.
Mr Wilkerson said a statement from an al-Qaida detainee that allowed Mr Powell to present “some pretty substantive contacts” between Iraq and al-Qaida to the UN security council was “obtained through interrogation techniques other than those authorised by [the] Geneva [convention].”
“More important than that, we know that there was a Defence Intelligence Agency dissent on that testimony even before Colin Powell made his presentation,” he told Today. “We never heard about that.”
Now an increasingly isolated Cheney is still pushing for torture, absolutely certain he is right and everyone else is wrong. No amount of empirical evidence would shake him, I suspect. Bush is isolated in his own bubble, in a “gray world of religious idealism.” And neither one of these guys has the mental clarity to make rational decisions.
Can we survive three more years like this?
See also : David Corn; transcript of BBC interview.
Wilkerson is a true American hero,,but what I cannot understand is why the world is not listening to him.Rumsfeld tried to discredit him by saying he didn’t know him and had never saw him in any cabinet meetings,, but he could not agrue anything Wilkerson had said.
Wilkerson has said how conflicted he was to come forward with the information he had , because he wanted to be loyal to his party and his friends, but instead he chose to be loyal to his country and after all that inner conflict no one seems to care what he has to say..
I am starting to wonder, given the example of Mr .Wilkerson, what,if anything , will grab the attention of the nation…Does mr bush need to get a blow job before people care?
The things Mr.Wilkerson has said since his first piece in the LA TIMES( i think that was the paper, i read too much) should have been a big fat red flag for anyone who heard about it….yet it went totally un noticed by mainstream America,,,or is it just that mainstream America doesn’t care?
Comment by justme — November 29, 2005 @ 3:12 pm
It may actually be too late for Wilkerson’s revenge to do any good. Apparently Colin Powell was duped, and used by the administration because he was the guy everybody believed. Senator Pete Domenici said on Sunday that he thought the WH was being honest about WMDs because Colin Powell had said it.
Both Powell and Wilkerson knew all this was happening years ago, and did NOTHING. Now, as the Rs are saying, it’s old news.
Comment by merciless — November 29, 2005 @ 3:33 pm
But the bible admonishes us….” putting your hand to the plow..don’t look back”
Georgie has joined the ranks of Torquemada and John Calvin.
I was particularly impressed with Bush’s wisdom in compromise on the torure question.What does al Qaida look alikes mean? a tad vague,no?
Comment by Swami — November 29, 2005 @ 3:39 pm
I always thought Cheney was just a nefarious bastard, and Bush was the delusion one. But the DSM-IV characteristic of “hyperattentive to their environment” sure doesn’t jive with that locked-door moment, does it? I’m still not convinced Cheney is delusional though, since he only acts if, ultimately, the action personally benefits him.
I’d like to believe Colin Powell is a smart, honorable man who would’ve hired similar people for his staff. But then how could they have been so fooled by delusional Chimps and nefarious bastards? Now he and Wilkerson seem to be making excuses. It all does seem too late, way too late.
Comment by joanr16 — November 29, 2005 @ 4:10 pm
How good is info obtained by torture? Good enough to go to war on?
Comment by Ken Melvin — November 29, 2005 @ 4:11 pm
Torture is not about information; it’s about domination. The torturer does not want to find the truth - for the truth would condemn him - instead he wants to bend the truth. He wants assent, not data. Like the search for truth, it, too, becomes an end in itself. It, too, is an expression of character.
Comment by paradoctor — November 29, 2005 @ 4:17 pm
In re mental states: I’m under the impression that psychiatrists find the whole Ayn Rand/Libertarian thing bogus, that most corporate executives are certifiable, and that bush is obviously schizophrenic.
Comment by Ken Melvin — November 29, 2005 @ 4:32 pm
Bush, Cheney, et al. just moved on, from second tier players in Texas or Wyoming to a much bigger game, to running the whole world for them and their pals’ benefit. They’re really simple to understand if you realize that they view the world as their oyster. If Colin Powell has weaknesses, they’ll exploit them, and they did. “Everything exists for me” is their motto.
Comment by alyosha — November 29, 2005 @ 4:38 pm
Powell is very much a politician and has a better reputation than he deserves.
Comment by Easter Lemming Liberal News — November 29, 2005 @ 5:44 pm
All that is going down now is proof that Bush needed to be reelected before we can undo his damage. If Kerry were in office people would think this was all payback and you know that’s exactly how the smear machine would paint it.
Comment by Rick — November 29, 2005 @ 6:58 pm
Bush far, far down in the hole he has created whistles a little tune, ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ I think, as he puts his back to the next swing of the pick. Then setting it down he says:
“Condy, honey, give me the shovel will ya got this nice ‘n loose here.”
Using the shovel he fills up the old wooden bucket tied to a thick rope which ascends upward, out of sight.
“Yo, Dick haul away will ya,” the leader of the free world yells up the shaft.
“We gittin’ ther’ Condy, baby.”
Yes, the President labors on into the ever darkening night, digging that hole deeper and deeper.
Oblivious to everything and everyone else.
Comment by A. Citizen — November 30, 2005 @ 12:26 am
[…] Well, good luck with that. In spite of the mountains of direct, smoking-gun evidence, most of the Right is still in denial about the, shall we say, misrepresentation of intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s WMDs. But I want to point to this bit from “Bush’s Lost Year” by James Fallows in the October 2004 Atlantic Monthly: As a political matter, whether the United States is now safer or more vulnerable is of course ferociously controversial. That the war was necessary—and beneficial—is the Bush Administration’s central claim. That it was not is the central claim of its critics. But among national-security professionals there is surprisingly little controversy. Except for those in government and in the opinion industries whose job it is to defend the Administration’s record, they tend to see America’s response to 9/11 as a catastrophe. I have sat through arguments among soldiers and scholars about whether the invasion of Iraq should be considered the worst strategic error in American history—or only the worst since Vietnam. Some of these people argue that the United States had no choice but to fight, given a pre-war consensus among its intelligence agencies that Iraq actually had WMD supplies. Many say that things in Iraq will eventually look much better than they do now. But about the conduct and effect of the war in Iraq one view prevails: it has increased the threats America faces, and has reduced the military, financial, and diplomatic tools with which we can respond. “Let me tell you my gut feeling,” a senior figure at one of America’s military-sponsored think tanks told me recently, after we had talked for twenty minutes about details of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. “If I can be blunt, the Administration is full of shit. In my view we are much, much worse off now than when we went into Iraq. That is not a partisan position. I voted for these guys. But I think they are incompetent, and I have had a very close perspective on what is happening. Certainly in the long run we have harmed ourselves. We are playing to the enemy’s political advantage. Whatever tactical victories we may gain along the way, this will prove to be a strategic blunder.“ […]
Pingback by The Mahablog » Why We’re Stuck in Iraq — December 6, 2005 @ 1:02 pm
[…] That might work, except Cheney is more often wrong than right. Josh provides lots of examples. Worse, I strongly suspect Cheney is pathologically delusional. I wrote about this in the past; see “Moron, Idiot, or Nefarious Bastard?” […]
Pingback by The Mahablog » “Its’ Kind of Freaky” — February 16, 2006 @ 10:21 am
[…] But now to the psychopathology — Eskow points out that the recent shooting incident (”Get loaded, shoot a guy in the face, tell the world it’s his fault, then make him crawl.”) is illustrative of antisocial personality disorder as defined by the DSM psychiatric manual. Well, yes; Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the top officials of the Bush Administration could fill the Personality Disorder Hall of Fame. But does “they’ve got the candy” really account for Bush’s following among the people of the U.S.? It might explain why other Republican politicians kowtow to the Bushies, but it doesn’t explain Bush devotion among the hoi polloi. […]
Pingback by The Mahablog » Patriotism v. Paranoia — February 20, 2006 @ 9:46 am
[…] I maintain, as I’ve said before, that Cheney is no mere liar. I think he suffers from some kind of psychological disorder and is pathologically delusional. He repeats long-debunked claims because he really believes them, and no amount of mere empirical evidence is gonna change his mind. According to stuff I’ve read online (which of course is always reliable [wink]), people with delusional disorder are not psychotic and usually appear to be completely normal. In fact, the line between someone with delusional disorder and someone without can be a bit fuzzy. The delusional, however, tend to invest a disproportionate amount of mental energy into maintaining their delusions, often interpreting unrelated matters or simple coincidences as “proof” that their belief is true. And they are hypervigilent about finding more and more “proof.” […]
Pingback by The Mahablog » Holy Bleep — September 10, 2006 @ 1:47 pm
[…] (Waving arm) I know! I know! He’s got a reverse polarity tin foil hat that detects thought waves that bounce off the moon and channels them directly into his brain! […]
Pingback by The Mahablog » More News That Isn’t News — September 29, 2006 @ 6:37 pm