What makes you think what Franks said didn't clear all the way up the line? It seems perfectly consistent with my favorite Polish joke from Rummy:
Rumsfeld dismissed suggestions that the United States planned to intervene by itself in Iraq.
``Trying to promote and perpetuate the concept of unilateralism is not on the mark,'' Rumsfeld told reporters after meeting with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski at the presidential palace. nytimes.com
People don't usually accuse Rummy of disloyalty. Powell is another story, of course. Even wimpy "neo-liberal" Kinsley was all over Powell for alleged disloyalty a month ago, see #reply-17975183 . Elsewhere in my wanderings today, I stumbled on this year old article, where Iraq was already Perle's prime target back before 10/1/2001, regardless of what the Secretary of State might have been thinking.
But in which direction? NEWSWEEK has learned that at a two-day meeting of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, which is chaired by hard-liner Richard Perle, eminent conservatives including Henry Kissinger, James Schlesinger, Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich reached a consensus that Iraq should be targeted quickly after Afghanistan. “When the U.S. loses what may be more than 6,000 people, there has to be reaction so that the world clearly knows that things have changed,” Gingrich told NEWSWEEK. msnbc.com
Why, exactly, Perle and his merry band of out-of-office retreads and hotheads get to run things is another one of those conundrums. |
