WILKERSON: "They got to the point where the end justified the means." -->

[Stephanie]

He also says of the post-war planning for Iraq, "This is ineptitude and incompetence of the first order."

<excerpt>



The policy of war, dictated by a small group

RAY SUAREZ: How did this work in practice?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON (Ret.): Well, with regard to Iraq, it was centered in Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feif's office. Other people were sprinkled throughout the government.

RAY SUAREZ: Wilkerson says that a faction of the Central Intelligence Agency was aligned with the vice president's office. At times, this group was in conflict with CIA Director George Tenet, the DCI.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON (Ret.): And so, you would get one part of the agency, the official part, if you will, with the DCI as the mouthpiece of that official part, saying, "Wait a minute. I don't think that ought to go in the president's state of the union address; that's not right. We don't have firm evidence that Iraq is seeking uranium from the country of Niger, so it shouldn't go in there."

Then you would have this dissenting body in the agency report up the chain to the vice president's office and back in it would go, into the state of the union address.
___

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON (Ret.): I am coming to believe that the intelligence was politicized. I'm coming to believe that there was a band centered in the Pentagon that went about politicizing that intelligence. I don't doubt their sincerity. I don't doubt that they believed that they were taking the nation to war for a good purpose -- removal of Saddam Hussein, whatever -- I don't doubt that most of them, if not all of them believed that he was a threat, whether it was an imminent threat or not, I don't know. That kind of hits the line of my belief factor. But I think they got to the point where the end justified the means.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/july-dec05/wilk_11-4.html

[BanzaiBonnie]

1. And that's why the end justifies the means...

Is such a BAD policy.

People can justify almost anything. Criminals will always have a good reason for their criminal activities. Often what has been done for a good cause turns VERY BAD --- it's criminal.

Have you ever noticed it's usually the belief of a small percentage of the population and/or a small, dedicated group who push their actions onto a larger group. And it's accomplished through some combination of force and deception.

[gratuitous]

4. This is the worse side of the old saying

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." The usual meaning is that in the interest of doing good, many incidental evils can get perpetrated. And it's weighing those goods against those evils that engender discussion and debate. Is it good that fewer people are in poverty? Yes. Should we tax people who have more money so that we can help the poverty-stricken? Let the discussion and debate begin.

However, the worse side of the old saying is that as long as you can even tangentially relate whatever you're doing to some "good," then you can do pretty much as you please. As long as you're brazen enough about it, and the criminal enterprise running our country has brass, if nothing else. The simple declarative that torture is bad becomes "Is torture really that bad?" And the slippery slope snares another victim.

Okay, boiling someone alive for the pure pleasure of the interrogators, that's bad. Pretty much. But what if the president says it's okay to do that? Boiling someone alive might intimidate some other terrorist in custody to say what he knows. Now is it so bad to boil that guy alive? After all, if we hadn't boiled Ahmed alive, Mohammed would never have talked. And if Mohammed hadn't talked, his nefarious scheme might have come off, and thousands could have been killed. And isn't it better to boil one guy alive than to have all those thousands of others killed?

All of a sudden, you've tripped over from boiling a guy alive is unequivocally bad to boiling a guy alive may actually be a moral imperative: How else will we know whether Mohammed will talk unless we boil Ahmed alive? We can't take a chance of having a witch among us, so let's burn Prudence just to be on the safe side. If she's not a witch, well, she'll go to Heaven, which is better than living here. And if she is a witch, then we've done our Godly duty. Sorry Prudence, but frying time is here.

[Stephanie]

2. kick for Mo Dowd

[Stephanie]

3. Wilkerson on Addington Writing the Torture Policy >

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/july-dec05/wilk_11-4.html

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RAY SUAREZ: This backing off of the Geneva Accords, Wilkerson says, led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON (Ret.): There's a fine line between the brutal behavior necessary to yield force -- wield force, for the state, and going over that line.

So one of the reasons you have these codes instilled in every soldier's heart, and you have this love of war and so forth, is not just it's American values, but you want to give the leaders, the platoon leaders and the company commanders and the battalion commanders the tools to control this use of brute force for the state.

When you relax those rules, you're inviting real problems; you're inviting the kind of problems we had at Abu Ghraib. I have to go back to the vice president's office and hold it culpable, too, because one of the early-on, aggressive participants in this debate about whether or not America could, in fact, change 200 years of policy was David Addington. He's the person that's replacing Scooter Libby. He was the intellectual legal guru, if you will, behind the discussion about the commander in chief having the right in this new situation -- new situation being the war on terror -- to make exceptions.

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