Scott Horton Interviews Karen Kwiatkowski
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Karen Kwiatkowski, columnist at lewrockwell.com and retired USAF lieutenant colonel, discusses the Bush administration’s early Iraq War planning – well before they played up the WMD threat and sold the war to Americans; how the Office of Special Plans leaked classified information to cooperative journalists willing to press the case for war; the OSP’s dissolution soon after the war started – since its raison d’être was fulfilled; unpopular neocons who must attain power through appointed, rather than elected, government positions; and the ease-of-victory factor that explains why some wars are fought, and others aren’t.
Background articles on Karen Kwiatkowski’s interaction with Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans:
2006 CSPAN interview by Brian Lamb
“Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon”
MP3 here. (20:26)
Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., is a retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel, who spent her final years in uniform working at the Pentagon’s Near East/South Asia bureau (NESA). Her assignment was to work on policy papers for the Secretary of Defense and other top brass at the Pentagon. Shortly thereafter, she was assigned to a newly-formed bureau inside the Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans, which was created to help the Pentagon deal with issues in Iraq.
Deeply frustrated and alarmed, Kwiatkowski, still on active duty, took the unusual step of penning an anonymous column of internal Pentagon dissent that was posted on the Internet by former Colonel David Hackworth, America’s most decorated veteran. She lives with her freedom-loving family in the Shenandoah Valley, and among other things, writes for lewrockwell.com.
Bruce Richardson
March 24th, 2011 at 5:15 am
Karen Kwiatkowski is a true American patriot. The same hawkish pre-emptive rationale that beset the Bush cabal regards creating a phoney threat to America as a justification for war, also applies to Afghanistan. During the summer of 2001, months prior to 9/11, U.S. officials told Pakistan's Secretary, Niaz Naik, that they would attack Afghanistan "before the snow flies in October." He said that the U.S. was plotting regime change. It has been argued that their motive was failing pipeline negotiations with Taliban who wanted to share any contract with Bridas of Argentina. A State Department official (Christina Rocca) threatened Taliban emissary Sayed Hashemi with "you either accept our carpet of gold or we will bury you in a carpet of bombs."
We now know that no Afghan or Afghanistan played any role in 9/11, and that the Taliban made many overtures to rid themselves of Osama bin Laden but were rebuffed at every attempt.
So that leaves us with the pipeline rationale combined with basing priveledges in Afghanistan as the motive for war, which also serves to deny our competitiors (Russia, China, and Iran) a piece of the action.
VietnamWarVet
March 24th, 2011 at 5:38 am
58,000+ Americans died in the Vietnam War as we killed a milllion Vietnamese – all due to LIES by Johnson with the complicit support of the Congress.
Nothing has changed – we continue to be LIED into illegal and unnecessary wars.
Perhaps that would change IF the sons and daughters of EVERY member of Congress and of EVERY member of the ADMINISTRATION were required to serve in those wars?
smithy100
March 24th, 2011 at 11:04 am
The media is complicit not incompetent
Orville H. Larson
March 24th, 2011 at 11:58 am
Colonel Kwiatkowski is a primary source for anyone who wants to learn about the warmongering machinations of the neocon vermin.
She's right: The U.S. Government only attacks and/or threatens countries with third-rate militaries. (Not that the U.S. should attack or threaten anyone, you understand.)
davy
March 24th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
i learn every day thankyou anti war
Hermes
March 24th, 2011 at 2:02 pm
Smithy100 is absolutely correct. I salute you. The American people will continue to be ignorant of world affairs as long as our media is dominated or controlled by Americans whose primary loyalty is to a foreign country rather than to the U.S.
Hermes Trismegistus
Siesindauchschuldig
March 24th, 2011 at 3:29 pm
If the neocons get their war with Iran, that will be the end of the USA. Remains to be seen if there will be a Kreisau Circle American-style to resist an attack on Persia. Only a handful of notable, high-level people stood up to the Irak Krieg in 2003; maybe next time it will be different.
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