Did He Say "Cabal"?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell:

What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.

ca·bal - A conspiratorial group of plotters.

Didn't anyone learn anything from Iran-Contra?

UPDATE: More excerpts and analysis from Kevin Drum.