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Ex-Powell Aide Suggests Pre-War Memo Was Kept From Bush
By Marc Perelman
11/11/05 "The
Forward" -- -- A former top official in the Bush
administration is suggesting that a White House memo outlining the
need for hundreds of thousands of troops for the Iraq invasion was
kept from the president. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of
staff to then-secretary of state Colin Powell during President
Bush's first term, said in a November 7 speech that the National
Security Council had prepared a pre-war memo recommending that
hundreds of thousands of troops and other security personnel were
needed. “I don't know if the president saw it,” Wilkerson told the
audience of military officers and international lawyers, who had
gathered at the military for a conference on on international
humanitarian law.
In response to a follow-up question after his speech, Wilkerson, a
retired U.S. army colonel, said he believed that then-national
security advisor Condoleezza Rice or her deputy, Stephen Hadley, had
blocked the memo, but he acknowledged that he had no clear evidence.
In the end, about 135,000 U.S. troops were sent - a decision that
critics said has hurt America's ability to defeat the insurgency in
Iraq and has led to increased American casualties.
In July 2003, USA Today reported the existence of the NSC memo,
which examined the level of troops in peacekeeping operations and
concluded that some 500,000 troops would need to be deployed to
Iraq. USA Today raised doubts as to whether the president saw the
memo. However, Wilkerson's assertion seemed to take the matter a
step further, suggesting that aides who supported the war
intentionally kept the president in the dark. Wilkerson drew
national attention last month, when, during a speech at the
Washington-based New America Foundation, he accused Vice President
Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of forming a
“cabal” to hijack American foreign policy. “This was not a 'troop
estimate,'” Wilkerson said of the alleged NSC memo, in an e-mail to
the Forward. “It was a comprehensive analysis - succinct to be sure
- of the potential post-war situation, which incidentally, as one
would expect, included estimates of security, engineer, police, and
other forces DOD might have to provide, as well as those of other
agencies/departments (at least that's my memory of the preliminary
stuff).” Wilkerson added, “The reason I suspect it got stopped is
simply that they knew [Cheney] and [Rumsfeld] dissented strongly and
did not want to reopen that box of worms.” The NSC declined to
comment.
An administration official referred to a quote given by the NSC to
USA Today in 2003, saying, “The NSC staff does not make
recommendations or provide estimates to the president on the number
of troops needed for any mission.” When told of this response,
Wilkerson said, “If the NSC was not doing such papers, it was
grievously remiss in my humble opinion.” In his speech this week at
West Point, Wilkerson said that officials in the Pentagon and in
Cheney's office “really pushed the envelope” on permitting harsh
interrogations and treatment of prisoners. Wilkerson recounted how
military lawyers who opposed a series of guidelines allowing harsh
interrogation techniques were silenced, and how he found out
instances of two detainees who died in American facilities in
Afghanistan as early as December 2002. The deaths, he said, were
only confirmed by the Pentagon earlier this year. “We have some
25,000 prisoners and among them maybe 100 real terrorists and we
decided to apply those guidelines,” he said, arguing that torture
was morally wrong, eroding America's image and providing little
intelligence.
Wilkerson told the audience that while he disagreed with many of the
administration's foreign policy moves, what most “got [his]
attention” and made him “very anxious” was the treatment of
detainees advocated by other officials. Just before the infamous
pictures from Abu Ghraib were made public, Wilkerson recounted, he
was ordered by Powell to assemble a comprehensive paper trail
because “this would be big.” Wilkerson said that when the president
outlined in a memorandum that prisoners should be treated humanely
in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva conventions and in
conformity with U.S. values, he and others in government and the
military took it to mean that U.S. troops were told to treat
detainees in a decent manner. “But this is not what I saw in the
paper trail with regards to the office of the vice president and the
Pentagon,” Wilkerson said, adding that he had returned the documents
to the State Department upon his retirement earlier this year. “They
really pushed the envelope.”
Turning to Iraq, he blamed Bush, for whom he voted twice, for
failing to assert himself in the intra-cabinet feuding over the
preparations for the war. “We went in with a plan that was so inept
that it was impossible for me to believe [the president] had been
briefed about it and approved it,” he said, expressing his
conviction that the decisions were made by the top officials at the
Pentagon and by Cheney, whom he described as “the most powerful vice
president” in history. “If you want to change my opinion, Mr.
President, please come out and say you took the decision yourself,”
Wilkerson said. Wilkerson praised his former boss at the State
Department, but acknowledged that his recent criticisms had
estranged him from Powell, who is known for preferring to work
behind the scenes. In the spring of 2004, Wilkerson said, he was
writing resignation letters “twice a week” but, out of loyalty to
Powell, decided to stayed on. “Some nights, I wish I had
[resigned],” he added. Of Powell, Wilkerson said, “The way they
treated him in the end was humiliating, I think he wanted to leave.”
Copyright 2005 © The Forward
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