Lawrence Wilkerson Quotations

What he seems to be saying to me now is the president failed to discipline the process the way he should have and that the president is ultimately responsible for this whole mess.

My army right now is truly in bad shape. Problems are brewing.

More important than that, we know that there was a Defense Intelligence Agency dissent on that testimony even before Colin Powell made his presentation, ... We never heard about that.

If we leave precipitously, ... we will (have to) mobilize the nation, put 5 million men and women under arms and go back and take the Middle East within a decade,

Katrina gives us no confidence, ... I am 10 times more worried about what happens to civil liberties after that attack.

I think there has been an agreement formed in the administration ... and the body politic of America - a nuclear armed Iranian leadership is unacceptable.

I wish I had not been involved in it. I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life.

This started from the very beginning when David Addington, the vice president's lawyer, was a staunch advocate of allowing the president in his capacity as commander in chief to deviate from the Geneva Conventions,

When I rationalize for myself not resigning, I did it by saying, 'This is the only sane member of this administration.

I've been there. I've stood on the hot parade ground as a pilot. I've cursed generals.

The secretary of defense under cover of the vice president's office,

(Powell) came through the door ... and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers, and he said, 'This is what I've got to present at the United Nations according to the White House, and you need to look at it,' ... It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose.

It was clear to me there that there was a visible audit trail from the vice president's office through the secretary of defense down to the commanders in the field.

It takes firm leadership to preside over the bureaucracy. But it also takes a willingness to listen to dissenting opinions. It requires leaders who can analyze, synthesize, ponder and decide.

not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either.

If you are a military man you know that you just don't do these sorts of things because once you give just the slightest bit of leeway there are those in the armed forces who will take advantage of that,

If you are a military man, you know that you just don't do these sorts of things, ... they have to do what they have to do to get it.

George actually did call the Secretary, and said, 'I'm really sorry to have to tell you. We don't believe there were any mobile labs for making biological weapons,' ... This was the third or fourth telephone call. And I think it's fair to say the Secretary and Mr. Tenet, at that point, ceased being close. I mean, you can be sincere and you can be honest and you can believe what you're telling the Secretary. But three or four times on substantive issues like that? It's difficult to maintain any warm feelings.

How much influence on their decisions? I think a lot -- in how much the decisions reflect their connections with the cartels and the corporations and so forth, I think a lot. I think the president, too,

The legacy of the Bush administration is a lack of positive action on energy and the environment and profligate and irresponsible spending with no commensurate action to deal with looming liabilities.

Leadership from the Oval Office - and sustained, effective use of the bully pulpit - is essential to getting the American people off their too-pampered butts and into meeting successfully the long-haul challenges of fixing major problems in the very fabric of our republic's life, both domestically and in our international relations.

Let me be candid, my party is full of racists

The Cheney team had, for example, technological supremacy over the National Security Council staff. That is to say, they could read their e-mails. I remember one particular member of the N.S.C. staff wouldn't use e-mail because he knew they were reading it. He did a test case, kind of like the Midway battle, when we'd broken the Japanese code. He thought he'' broken the code, so he sent a test e-mail out that he knew would rile Scooter [Libby], and within an hour Scooter was in his office.