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Former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, didn't mince any words this Friday evening during an appearance on Ed Schultz's show, when asked what he thought about John Sununu going off the rails again and claiming that Powell only endorsed President Obama "because he's black."

Former Powell Chief of Staff: ‘My party is full of racists’:

Former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson told Ed Schultz of MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” on Friday that the Republican Party is “full of racists,” and that the main reason most Republicans want President Barack Obama to lose the election to former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) in November is because of the president’s race. [...]

“Let me just be candid,” Wilkerson said. “My party full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as Commander in Chief and President, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that’s despicable.”

We've all known this since the Republicans aren't even trying to be subtle with their racism any more. They've gone from dog whistles to blow horns with their race baiting. It is nice to see them just straight up called out for it though, which happens all too rarely these days.

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The former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged Tuesday to testify against former Vice President Dick Cheney if he is ever tried for war crimes.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson told Democracy Now's Amy Goodman that he would participate in a trial even if it meant personal repercussions.

"I, unfortunately -- and I've admitted to this a number of times, publicly and privately -- was the person who put together Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations Security Council on 5 February, 2003," Wilkerson said. "It was probably the biggest mistake of my life. I regret it to this day. I regret not having resigned over it."

In an interview that aired on NBC Monday, Cheney told Jamie Gangel that unlike President George W. Bush, he did not have a "sickening feeling" when they discovered there were no weapons of mass destruction after the invasion of Iraq.

"I think we did the right thing," Cheney said.

Joining Wilkerson and Goodman to discuss Cheney's new book "In My Time," Salon's Glenn Greenwald said that it was disturbing to see the former vice president treated simply as an "elder statesman."

"The evidence is overwhelming... that Dick Cheney is not just a political figure with controversial views, but is an actual criminal, that he was centrally involved in a whole variety not just of war crimes in Iraq, but of domestic crimes, as well, including the authorization of warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens in violation of FISA, which says that you go to jail for five years for each offense, as well as the authorization and implementation of a worldwide torture regime that, according to General Barry McCaffrey, resulted in the murder -- his word -- of dozens of detainees, far beyond just the three or four cases of waterboarding that media figures typically ask Cheney about," Greenwald explained.

"And as a result, Dick Cheney goes around the country profiting off of this, you know, sleazy, sensationalistic, self-serving book, basically profiting from his crimes, and at the same time normalizing the idea that these kind of policies, though maybe in the view of some wrongheaded, are perfectly legitimate political choices to make. And I think that’s the really damaging legacy from all of this."

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Ed Schultz asked former Colin Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson about Donald Rumsfeld's repeated claims that the United States got actionable intelligence from waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and others, and his claim that waterboarding is not torture. Wilkerson did not hold back his disdain for this torture apologist.

Wilkerson reminded me a little bit of Jesse Ventura when he said this a couple of years ago about Dick Cheney -- Jesse Ventura: You Give Me a Water Board, Dick Cheney and One Hour, and I'll Have Him Confess to the Sharon Tate Murders.

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.

Schultz asked him why he thought Rumsfeld was doing this.

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.

Now that's something you don't hear anyone remind the public of on television. Thanks Lawrence.

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Keith talks to Retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson about Dick Cheney's recent criticism of President Obama's foreign policy.

OLBERMANN: The very day before Mr. Obama‘s speech tonight, former Vice President Cheney gave an interview primarily about Mr. Obama‘s Afghanistan plan in which Mr. Cheney accused the U.S. president, in legalese, of treason and revealed, not for the first time, that the vice president, who failed to fight terrorism, had instead personally succumbed to its most insidious aspect, panic.

In a 90 minute interview yesterday with “Politico,” Mr. Cheney revealed that unlike authentically tough people, he‘s still so panicked. But he still mistakes acting tough for being tough and makes the corollary error that failing to act tough implies that you are weak.

Because, apparently, in trashing America‘s president the day before a vital foreign policy speech, Mr. Cheney cannot conceive that displays of grace and humility might arise instead from actual grace and humility.

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August 20, 2009 MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show

MADDOW: Today, Tom Ridge says he stands by that statement about his own department. But in his new book, Mr. Ridge reveals his own suspicions that the Bush administration did try to use the threat of terror attacks for the political gain of the president and his party.

Of the days immediately prior to the 2004 election when polls showed Bush and Kerry in a virtual dead heat and when a new tape from Bin Laden surfaced, Ridge recalls, quote, "Attorney General Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level and was supported by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, is this about security or politics? Post-election analysis demonstrated a significant increase in the president`s approval rating in the days after the raising of the threat level."

Tom Ridge is scheduled to join us on this show on September 1st. I very much look forward to the opportunity to interview him. Until then, his word, his written word taken in context from a pre-released copy of his new book stands as a powerful and credible suggestion that what Keith Olbermann and many others suspected at the time back in 2004 was indeed true.

The Bush administration did manipulate the public`s fear of terrorism quite literally in a day-to-day way in order to stay in power.

Joining us now is Ret. Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. He was chief-of-staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. Col. Wilkerson, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

RET. COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, UNITED STATES ARMY: Thank you for having me, Rachel.

MADDOW: What is your reaction to Tom Ridge`s accusations made in this book? Was the color-coded threat level increased for political reasons?

WILKERSON: The governor has a position from which, if he`s saying that, I have to give his saying it some respect and some credibility.

I also know from my position in the administration having witnessed Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman and others doing what they did as political strategists that much was driven by political interests, domestic political interests, not international relations and national security or other interests, and that oftentimes, we did develop policy that was focused toward domestic issues, political issues, that is, they would give the Republicans an edge when, in fact, that position might contradict national security interests.

So, you know, I don`t know whether the governor is right in what he`s saying or not, but I do know that there is an environment in which what he`s saying could have been true. And let me just say one other thing, this is really amazing to me as a Republican, watching this happen.

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Rachel came to the same conclusion I did when first hearing about this story and trying to make some sense of it. Since it was public information that the CIA was going after al Qaeda terrorists, what made CIA Director Leon Panetta feel the need to come running to Congress as soon as he knew about this program, and to stop it immediately? Something isn't adding up here.

MADDOW: It has now been five full days since we first got news that the CIA had been operating some sort of secret program that it was actively hiding from the Congress. It‘s been three days since that allegation that the CIA was hiding that program at the direction of former Vice President Dick Cheney—in what would appear to be a direct violation of federal law.

Since the story broke, there has been lots of speculation about what the secret program was that Cheney didn‘t want Congress to know about. And while all the speculation is really titillating and makes for great headlines, it does seem—when you start to look more closely at it—that there‘s something not quite right here, at least something is yet unexplained.

Here‘s what we‘ve seen: “Newsweek” says, “CIA squads to track and kill al Qaeda terrorists.” “The Wall Street Journal” says, the program “was looking for ways to capture or kill al Qaeda chieftains.” “New York Times” says, “CIA Had Planned to Assassinate al Qaeda Leaders.” Liz Cheney, her own very special voice of America, described the program as “ways that we could capture or kill al Qaeda leaders.”

The reason that doesn‘t make sense is because this strategy of capturing and killing top leaders of al Qaeda, it‘s not exactly classified. It‘s not exactly a secret plan. That‘s the war on terror. That‘s the war on terror strategy we heard articulated again and again and again by the Bush administration.

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Lawrence Wilkerson tells CNN's Rick Sanchez just who he thinks was running the show in the Bush administration, why the Cheney family is out in full force defending torture and suggests that a number of members of the Bush administration should avoid travelling.

Sanchez: You know the idea...I was struck by that because I heard the term "lawyer up" and I was trying to figure out what she meant, because it seems there's an implication with the quote lawyer up implying that these suspects shouldn't be allowed any kind of representation. And it makes me as an American then wonder, given the legal system that I know that we have in this country, if they don't have lawyers and there aren't any courts, then who decides that they're guilty or innocent? Did anybody ever ask that question?

Wilkerson: This is absolutely Orwellian. His speech yesterday was Orwellian too and George Orwell when he was with the BBC talked about this a lot--when lying drives out truth telling. And Mark Twain of course said a lie will make it around the world before the truth can pull its socks up. That's what they're involved in. That's what Karl Rove taught them. That's what they've been involved in for some time. And her bona fides scream at me that what in the world is America's media doing listening to this woman? This woman has absolutely no bona fides to talk about this.

Sanchez: She has made eleven appearances in nine days, so she certainly has been getting...um...a lot of us....

Wilkerson: They're scared. I think they're frightened. And I don't blame them for being frightened.

Sanchez: Why? Why would Dick Cheney be frightened?

Wilkerson: Well we've got the possibility, I realize the political will doesn't exist, but we've got the possibility of domestic problems for him, and we've certainly got the possibility of international problems. Judge Baltasar Garzon in Spain has started a case and if I were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jim Haynes and a host of other lawyers in the administration, I wouldn't travel. I wouldn't travel anywhere.

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May 20, 2009 CNN's American Morning.

CHETRY: Well, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still under fire this morning for her words that the CIA misled her about enhanced interrogation tactics. Many responded with surprise and some outrage at the claim, but should we really expect America's chief spy agency, known for its covert operations and layers of secrecy, to tell Congress everything?

Our next guest says not necessarily. Joining me now from Washington is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. He was the chief of staff for former secretary of state Colin Powell. Thanks for being with us this morning. Good to see you.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF FOR COLIN POWELL: Thank you for having me.

CHETRY: So, let's listen again to what Speaker Pelosi said about the information that the CIA provided her and other members of Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: I am saying that they are misleading, that the CIA was misleading the Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: So, you say it's a common practice for the CIA not to tell Congress everything they're doing. It might not be policy, but you say it happens all the time. Give us some example.

WILKERSON: Well, it does happen, and let me say right off the bat -- let me just say something about my bona fides, as opposed to Michael Gerson's, for example, writing on the op ed page of "The Washington Post" this morning. "The Post" continues to stun me with what they allow to appear on their op ed pages, lambasting the Democrats and others who might as he calls it "attack the CIA." Well, Michael Gerson has no bona fidas. I got 35 years of bona fidas. I have used tactical operational, strategic and intelligence from the agency for 35 years in Vietnam all the way forward to Iraq.

I've studied this as an academic. I know about its origins in the OSS during World War II. I know about its installation in the 1947 National Security Act, and I know the crimes and ravages that have been perpetrated in the name of the American people, the blood and treasure that's being expended by the CIA over that half century. Plus, I also know the successes that it's achieved. So, it's a mixed bag.

But to answer your question directly, the CIA does not have the leadership, not the good people in the ranks of the CIA, but the leadership of the CIA does not have a stellar record about telling the full and unequivocal truth about its covert operations.

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Lawrence Wilkerson responds to Liz Cheney's personal attack on him for about "making a cottage industry out of fantasies...about the Vice President since he left office". That Vice President being her father.

MADDOW: Joining us now is Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief-of-staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Col. Wilkerson, it is great to have you back on the show. Thanks for joining us.

WILKERSON: Good to be here.

MADDOW: I have to ask your reaction, first of all, to Liz Cheney attacking you in the way that she did yesterday morning on ABC.

WILKERSON: Rachel, I don‘t pay a lot of attention to Liz Cheney. Her bona fides are that she‘s the vice president‘s daughter just as her bona fide is when she was PDASS and DASS in the Secretary of State‘s Office for Middle Eastern Affairs, or that she was the daughter of the Vice President, meaning that for Dick Cheney, nepotism was alive and well in his government.

MADDOW: Well, you - as you‘ve gotten this pushback from Liz Cheney and from others, let‘s get specific about your accusation and the way that it‘s being taken apart. You wrote, quote, the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002.”

“Its principle priority,” you said, “for intelligence was not aimed at the preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.”

So you‘re saying the number one priority of those interrogations of the intelligence direction of those investigations was to get an Iraq and al-Qaeda link?

WILKERSON: I‘m saying that by that time, we had done some things that had severely limited al-Qaeda‘s operational reach. Not the least of which was to tear them a new rear end in Afghanistan. But we‘d done some other very sophisticated things, too, that had put al-Qaeda very much on the defensive.

At that point, even though the chatter might have gone up at times, I think those of us who were really in the business of looking at this knew that the possibility of another attack had receded somewhat.

So at that point, as we were building up a march to war with Iraq, it‘s come to my attention in a number of ways, independently corroborating one another, that our priorities at least were equal if not exceeding the priority to thwart another attack to find out intelligence that would link al-Qaeda with Baghdad with the Mukhabarat and give the administration a lot more weight in its marketing of the war with Iraq when that marketing commenced.

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Sheldon Whitehouse while being asked about the torture bombshell that Lawrence Wilkerson dropped on Dick Cheney says that if what Wilkerson asserts is true and the Bush administration went outside of the OLC's legal justification for the torture, it raises the prospect for criminal prosecutions.

Sanchez: We're hearing from ex-Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson and he's making the argument that he believes that what the Bush administration was doing with enhanced interrogations was trying to make a case for the invasion of Iraq and trying to justify what happened in Iraq. So you believe that is actually what enhanced interrogation, "so called" torture was being used for?

Whitehouse: I've heard that to be true. There is some further evidence of that in Chairman Levin's Armed Services Committee report. There is not a great deal of evidence that came out in our hearing one way or the other about that. The one thing I will say about that is that if that is true, then it takes the application of these techniques out of the protected scope of the Office of Legal Counsel opinion.

Sanchez: And it makes this them political. It's not about we were scared, we wanted to defend the country any more. Now it's about we needed to have some political justification or something we wanted to do. (crosstalk)

Whitehouse: And that raises the prospect of there being a criminal prosecution that could justifiably emerge from these facts if that were in fact the motivation.

Sanchez: One quick thing before I let you go...Am I hearing you say that if there was evidence, enough evidence on this particular subject, that it was being used to try and get or boost the reason for the war in Iraq, that you would be more likely to push for criminal prosecution?

Whitehouse: Torture is criminal. If it's not justified by the OLC opinion. If there aren't any defenses that that raises because you've gone outside of it then it exposes people to that. That's a decision that should be made by the Attorney General, by an appropriate prosecutor or official...

Sanchez: But will you say on the record that if you find evidence of that you're more apt to want to push for a prosecution? Yes or no.

Whitehouse: One is more apt to do that--correct.