Why is Cheney 'Cabal' Story Being Buried?

If ever a story exemplified the dereliction of duty by the mainstream media, it is the way they have covered remarks this week by Col. Larry Wilkerson.

In comments made at the New America Foundation, a D.C. think tank, Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief-of-Staff at the State Department, said the following:

"'What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,' Col. Lawrence Wilkerson told a stunned audience at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.

"'We have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita and I could go on back, we haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time,' he said. 'And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.'

"'The Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal flummoxed the process' over going to war in Iraq and the shambles that was made of the nation's reconstruction, Wilkerson said. Cheney and Rumsfeld now preside over 'a concentration of power that is just unparalleled' in U.S. history,' he said."

Have you read this story? The odds are heavily stacked against it.

I have read 2 columnists rightly questioning why this story has not gotten higher priority. In the Huffington Post, Cenk Uyger wrote, "when a top former Bush administration official comes out and says the White House has been taken over by a cabal and that George Bush is overmatched for his position, I would say that qualifies as headline news."

One of the best columnists writing on the web today, Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post has addressed this 2 days in a row.

Froomkin, the day the story was first reported, on October 20th, wrote, "It didn't make the front page this morning, but it seems to me that it's a big deal when a former top administration official declares that a secret cabal led by the vice president has hijacked U.S. foreign policy, inveigled the president, condoned torture and crippled the ability of the government to respond to emergencies."

The following day, Froomkin referred back to the story and writes, "There's virtually no follow-up whatsoever in today's papers."

Which leads me to wonder, why are the American people being shut out from learning about these comments? We are not talking about the extremist fringe here. These comments were made by Colin Powell's right-hand man.

So who is the MSM protecting?