US: Colonel Wilkerson Censures "Amateurish Foreign Policy"

[naaman fletcher]

Havana, 10 November (Prensa Latina) The protection afforded by the US government to confessed Cuban-American terrorists, while it includes Cuba on a list of terrorist states, exemplifies Washington's amateurish foreign policy, admitted retired army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005.

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Wilkerson says that "when I was chief of staff of the Department of State from 2002-2005, I noted several reports -on human rights, on corruption, on state sponsors of terrorism- that were completed and issued as much for political reasons as for the reasons purported in the explanatory prefaces to the reports".

He adds that "these political reasons quite frequently had nothing to do with genuine criticism and everything to do with special interest groups to whom politicians were pandering. I believe Cuba's inclusion on the terrorism list is a glaring example of such a report".

Further on he confesses that "I sometimes felt a considerable degree of shame with regard to my country's issuing certain of the reports without listing itself as a violator. It always seemed to me to be both arrogant and hypocritical".

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