The Bulldog Manifesto

With sharpshooter precision, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, gave an indicting speech to an audience at the New America think tank yesterday. In the speech, Colonel Wilkerson publicly indicted the Bush administration, making the following charges:

** The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example” of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.”

** Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president.”

** The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel.”

** Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush “one of the finest presidents we have ever had” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either.”

** “There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.”

If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend you view the speech HERE. If you don't have time to watch it all, start at the 48 minute mark of the video and simply view the question and answer session.

Note: Colonel Wilkerson had previously stated that his involvement with Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "the lowest point" in his life.