Tonight on MSNBC's The Ed Show, it looked like Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former top aid to Colin Powell, was going to jump right out of the screen and start choking anything associated with Donald Rumsfeld. Earlier today, Rumsfeld had stated on "The Fox News Show" that waterboarding had produced an "enormous amount of information". Listen to Wilkerson's reaction after being asked about Rumsfeld's remarks by Ed Schultz:
Ed then asks him why Rumsfeld would be doing this.
WILKERSON: Well my former boss Colin Powell recently said that Donald Rumsfeld was delusional and deceptive and he could prove both points. My former boss is right. And on this issue Donald Rumsfeld is more delusional than deceptive, probably than any other.
First of all his last statement about hordes of intelligence is preposterous. It didn't produce hoards of intelligence. In fact, I never saw any raw intelligence pass my desk that came from such things that was actionable, that really led to any circumstance at all that produced a result that was positive.
Secondly, Donald Rumsfeld only has as knowledge what his bureaucracy gave him. He wasn't there. He wasn't at the site. Multiple tiers of bureaucracy gave him the information that he had. And he made damned sure that that bureaucracy was sycophants, yes men, yes women. He made sure that the people working for him told him what he wanted to hear.
So one has to expect that Donald Rumsfeld heard what he just said and that was that actionable intelligence was produced by these procedures. It is preposterous.
And let me say one last thing. As Christopher Hitchens said after he was actually waterboarded, this is torture, changing his view. Let me waterboard Donald Rumsfeld and then we'll see if he says it's torture or not.
Wilkerson's anger over Rumsfeld's statements reminds us why the Bush team should not be given an ounce of credit for bringing this sad story to a fitting end for so many who had been directly or indirectly victimized by bin Laden's actions over the years. When Leon Panetta's gave his abysmally ambiguous answer to a question posed to him by NBC's Brian Williams over the use of "enhanced interrogation" (torture) techniques and their effectiveness in providing useful intelligence. It should have been more than obvious, given their history, the right would take whatever advantage it could of it. Panetta should have given an unequivocal denial to the right"s assertion that their "enhanced" techniques helped in any way. Conservatives will take any scrap of garbage they can in order to rewrite the embarrassing, disgusting and, according to many people around the world, even illegal history of the Bush Administration that they once so openly promoted. These torture techniques haven't even been used in years. And exactly what good would information gained 7 or 8 years ago be in aiding the Obama administration now? Rumsfeld's assertion that waterboarding produced a great deal of useful information doesn't make any sense or bin Laden would have been captured or killed in 2002 through 2004 since that's the time period in which it was being used. Bush , Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, et.al.are trying to cover their assess while also taking credit for something they couldn't accomplish in 8 whole years! Thank you Colonel Wilkerson for all your service and for reminding us that guys like Rumsfeld are nothing but cowards and liars who's words should never be trusted. And thank you President Obama for doing what the Bush administration didn't have the courage nor the wisdom to accomplish in the whole 8 years they were pretending to care so much about security.WILKERSON: He's got to. He's got to cover his rear end. I mean there are cases in foreign countries right now being worked by lawyers there. one in Switzerland actually kept President George Bush from visiting Switzerland that will under international auspices against Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Addington et al. They don't dare resort to anything other than defending their positions because ultimately even within their lifetime they may be subject to litigation.
I will predict that as I've said many times before, they will not travel except perhaps to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Those will be the only two countries Cheney, Rumsfeld and others will travel to.
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