Oval Office Cabal Information + Links:
Posted Monday, December 26, 2005
Main Entry: ca·bal Pronunciation: k&-'bäl, -'bal Function: noun Etymology: French cabale cabala, intrigue, cabal, from Medieval Latin cabbala cabala, from Late Hebrew qabbAlAh, literally, received (lore) : the artifices and intrigues of a group of persons secretly united to bring about an overturn or usurpation especially in public affairs; also : a group engaged in such artifices and intrigues synonym see PLOT
Word Definition Source: Merriam-Webster Online
http://www.merriam-webster.com/
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Ex-Powell aide hits out at Bush administration: Sunday 25 December 2005
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=130910&Sn=WORL&IssueID=28280
WASHINGTON: The former top aide to then-secretary of state Colin Powell has emerged as an increasingly high-profile and vocal critic of US administration policy at home and abroad, The New York Times reported yesterday.
Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Powell's chief-of-staff, "says his decision to speak in the open about the policy wars of the first Bush term was slow in coming, but a major factor was the revelations about Abu Ghraib, which he said he realised ... had resulted from decisions on prisoner treatment and intelligence set shortly after September 11, 2001," the daily reported.
"What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made," the paper recalled Wilkerson saying in a speech at the New America Foundation in October.
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Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
Published: December 24, 2005
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.
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A Cabal of Criminality By Manuel Valenzuela
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11203.htm
12/02/05 "ICH" -- -- The disaster in Iraq has continued to regress with the same velocity and intensity as when it first started, raging onwards in a classical resistance, guerilla-style form of urban warfare that usually befalls occupying invaders of alien lands, yet as 2005 ends and 2006 gets set to begin, in the minds of millions of Americans finally out of the hypnotic, denial-laced clouds of 9/11, the time has finally arrived to show ever-increasing animosity to a war that was lost the moment the first American boots entered Iraq.
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The White House cabal: October 25, 2005
By Lawrence B. Wilkerson, served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 2005.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wilkerson25oct25,0,7455395.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New America Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.
But it's absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.
Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."
But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well.
I watched these dual decision-making processes operate for four years at the State Department. As chief of staff for 27 months, I had a door adjoining the secretary of State's office. I read virtually every document he read. I read the intelligence briefings and spoke daily with people from all across government.
I knew that what I was observing was not what Congress intended when it passed the 1947 National Security Act. The law created the National Security Council — consisting of the president, vice president and the secretaries of State and Defense — to make sure the nation's vital national security decisions were thoroughly vetted. The NSC has often been expanded, depending on the president in office, to include the CIA director, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Treasury secretary and others, and it has accumulated a staff of sometimes more than 100 people.
But many of the most crucial decisions from 2001 to 2005 were not made within the traditional NSC process.
Scholars and knowledgeable critics of the U.S. decision-making process may rightly say, so what? Haven't all of our presidents in the last half-century failed to conform to the usual process at one time or another? Isn't it the president's prerogative to make decisions with whomever he pleases? Moreover, can he not ignore whomever he pleases? Why should we care that President Bush gave over much of the critical decision-making to his vice president and his secretary of Defense?
Both as a former academic and as a person who has been in the ring with the bull, I believe that there are two reasons we should care. First, such departures from the process have in the past led us into a host of disasters, including the last years of the Vietnam War, the national embarrassment of Watergate (and the first resignation of a president in our history), the Iran-Contra scandal and now the ruinous foreign policy of George W. Bush.
But a second and far more important reason is that the nature of both governance and crisis has changed in the modern age.
From managing the environment to securing sufficient energy resources, from dealing with trafficking in human beings to performing peacekeeping missions abroad, governing is vastly more complicated than ever before in human history.
Further, the crises the U.S. government confronts today are so multifaceted, so complex, so fast-breaking — and almost always with such incredible potential for regional and global ripple effects — that to depart from the systematic decision-making process laid out in the 1947 statute invites disaster.
Discounting the professional experience available within the federal bureaucracy — and ignoring entirely the inevitable but often frustrating dissent that often arises therein — makes for quick and painless decisions. But when government agencies are confronted with decisions in which they did not participate and with which they frequently disagree, their implementation of those decisions is fractured, uncoordinated and inefficient. This is particularly the case if the bureaucracies called upon to execute the decisions are in strong competition with one another over scarce money, talented people, "turf" or power.
It takes firm leadership to preside over the bureaucracy. But it also takes a willingness to listen to dissenting opinions. It requires leaders who can analyze, synthesize, ponder and decide.
The administration's performance during its first four years would have been even worse without Powell's damage control. At least once a week, it seemed, Powell trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet. He held a youthful, inexperienced president's hand. He told him everything would be all right because he, the secretary of State, would fix it. And he did — everything from a serious crisis with China when a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was struck by a Chinese F-8 fighter jet in April 2001, to the secretary's constant reassurances to European leaders following the bitter breach in relations over the Iraq war. It wasn't enough, of course, but it helped.
Today, we have a president whose approval rating is 38% and a vice president who speaks only to Rush Limbaugh and assembled military forces. We have a secretary of Defense presiding over the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of our overstretched armed forces (no surprise to ignored dissenters such as former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki or former Army Secretary Thomas White).
It's a disaster. Given the choice, I'd choose a frustrating bureaucracy over an efficient cabal every time.
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Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
Published: December 24, 2005
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1020-01.htm
Thursday, October 20, 2005 by Inter Press Service
Powell Aide Blasts Rice, Cheney- Rumsfeld 'Cabal'
by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - As top officials in the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office await possible criminal indictments for their efforts to discredit a whistleblower, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Wednesday, accused a ''cabal'' led by Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld of hijacking U.S. foreign policy by circumventing or ignoring formal decision-making channels.
Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Powell’s chief of staff from 2001 to 2005 and when Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces during the administration of former president George H.W. Bush, 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.
''In some cases, there was real dysfunctionality,'' said Wilkerson, who spoke at the New America Foundation, a prominent Washington think tank. ''But in most cases..., she (Rice) 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,'' he said, ''was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardisations, and perturbations in the national-security (policy-making) process'', he added.
''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 that 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, adding that both were members of the ''military-industrial complex'' that former President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation against in his 1961 Farewell Address. ''… don’t you think they aren’t among us today in a concentration of power that is just unparalleled'', he asked. {Goto LINK}
Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service
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Colonel Finally Saw Whites of Their Eyes: By Dana Milbank
Thursday, October 20, 2005; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101902246.html
As Colin Powell's right-hand man at the State Department, Larry Wilkerson seethed quietly during President Bush's first term. Yesterday, Colonel Wilkerson made up for lost time.
He said the vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy. He said of former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith: "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Addressing scholars, journalists and others at the New America Foundation, Wilkerson accused Bush of "cowboyism" and said he had viewed Condoleezza Rice as "extremely weak." Of American diplomacy, he fretted, "I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore."…..
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KEY LINK: SPEECH BY COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, USA (RET.) FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 2002-2005 TO NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION /
AMERICAN STRATEGY PROGRAM POLICY FORUM / WEIGHING THE UNIQUENESS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S NATIONAL SECURITY DECISION-MAKING PROCESS: BOON OR DANGER TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY? = WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2005 / WASHINGTON, D.C.
“What I saw was a cabal…” Key Speech by Col. Wilkerson: 10-19-05
Websource:
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/Wilkerson%20Speech%20--%20WEB.htm
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The Bertrand Russell Tribunal + Bush Cabal Plotted War on Iraq Years ago
by Sara Flounders, co-coordinator of the International Action Center, testified at the Brussels tribunal = April 29, 2004, Workers World newspaper
URL Link: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FLO404B.html
A well-planned, politically solid session of the World Tribunal on Iraq took place April 15-17 in Brussels, Belgium. The hearings showed that key Bush administration members planned aggression against Iraq starting years before the war was launched…..
Related Link:
International Action Center +Founded by Ramsey Clark, Former U.S. Attorney General
http://www.iacenter.org/
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Bush Cabal Hides Patriot II Police State in HR2417
Rep. Ron Paul/Rep Dennis Moore
Mr. Speaker, I rise with great concerns over the Intelligence Authorization Conference Report. I do not agree that Members of Congress should vote in favor of an authorization that most know almost nothing about--including the most basic issue of the level of funding.
What most concerns me about this conference report, though, is something that should outrage every single American citizen. I am referring to the stealth addition of language drastically expanding FBI powers to secretly and without court order snoop into the business and financial transactions of American citizens. These expanded internal police powers will enable the FBI to demand transaction records from businesses, including auto dealers, travel agents, pawnbrokers and more, without the approval or knowledge of a judge or grand jury.
Websource:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/121903patriot2.html
Congressional Record: December 9, 2003 (Extensions) Page E2491
CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 2417, INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR
FISCAL YEAR 2004
Link: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h112203.html
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The Cabal: A geoplutocratic "elite" bent on global domination by Richard Boylan, Ph.D.
http://www.drboylan.com/cabal.html
"The Cabal" refers to a claque of global-scale plutocratic manipulators who use their immense wealth, prestige and power to control governments and economies to perpetuate their stranglehold on global society. This group is comprised of the most selfish, megalomaniacal, and sociopathic individuals, some of whom are bigshots in the Bilderberg Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission global policy-making groups. But these groups are not synonymous with The Cabal, since BC, CFR and TLC also contain some well-intentioned individuals. The Cabal is a kind of "parallel government" to the official elected and appointed governments of the more developed countries.
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The Criminal "High Cabal" + The Reign of Lawlessness
http://www.hermes-press.com/criminality.htm
The American "High Cabal" adopted criminality as their primary strategy when they seized control of the United States in the first two decades of the twentieth century. 1
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The Demonic Cabal: Norman D. Livergood
http://www.hermes-press.com/cabal_index.htm
From all available evidence referenced in the "recommended sources" section below,* it's clear that the most compelling hypothesis explaining the interconnected crimes, lies, and human slaughter occurring in our modern world is that a demonic cabal took control of the United States in the early part of the twentieth century and is now methodically destroying American and world institutions and values. The main goal of the cabal has been to consolidate political, economic, and social power in its hands while obliterating the minds of the masses to establish a militaristic, imperialistic dictatorship.
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"Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution. Pass on the torch. Join us, give up your life for the people!"
~~ Comrade George L. Jackson, General Field Marshal ~Black Panther Party {1942–1971}
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/index-beb.html
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Blogger Note: The blog above has also been posted with the Humane Rights Agenda Yahoo Group via the URL Link below. Good knowledge of history and current events can help us understand the present and serve as a guide for wise future action.
Please Click Here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/message/34989
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1 comment:
now I know it!
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