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02/22/2004 Archived Entry: "An important interview which is not on the media's radar."
An important interview which is not on the media's radar.
Marc Cooper's interview with retired analyst Karen Kwiatkowski is yet another scathing indictment of the Thug administration - and you can bet she won't be a guest on CNNMSNBCFOX any time soon.
You owe it to yourself to read this it is devastating.
With master’s degrees from Harvard in government and zoology and two books on Saharan Africa to her credit, she found herself transferred in the spring of 2002 to a post as a political/military desk officer at the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia (NESA), a policy arm of the Pentagon.Kwiatkowski got there just as war fever was spreading, or being spread as she would later argue, through the halls of Washington. Indeed, shortly after her arrival, a piece of NESA was broken off, expanded and re-dubbed with the Orwellian name of the Office of Special Plans. The OSP’s task was, ostensibly, to help the Pentagon develop policy around the Iraq crisis.
She would soon conclude that the OSP — a pet project of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld — was more akin to a nerve center for what she now calls a “neoconservative coup, a hijacking of the Pentagon.”
Though a lifelong conservative, Kwiatkowski found herself appalled as the radical wing of the Bush administration, including her superiors in the Pentagon planning department, bulldozed internal dissent, overlooked its own intelligence and relentlessly pushed for confrontation with 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.
As war inevitably approached, and as she neared her 20-year mark in the Air Force, Kwiatkowski concluded the only way she could viably resist what she now terms the “expansionist, imperialist” policies of the neoconservatives who dominated Iraq policy was by retiring and taking up a public fight against them.
She left the military last March, the same week that troops invaded Iraq. Kwiatkowski started putting her real name on her Web reports and began accepting speaking invitations. “I’m now a soldier for the truth...”
Replies: 3 people speak up
Wow...some powerful stuff there. I guess, except for a few cases, it would take nothing short of a miracle to get her out there on the talk circuit. I'm thinking Randi Rhodes would love to talk to this incredibly patriotic woman.
Posted by The Tater @ 02/22/2004 02:53 PM NY
Went on a search for "Kwiatowski" and suspect this is about to hit breakout in the major media. Chicago Sun-Times (okay, the moral equivalent of the NY Daily News but still a ton o' readers) posted it 2 hours ago.
Also found this atAxis of Logic, originally from Mother Jones. Names are named and dates are given; it's going to be hard to brush this off as "oh, it's those conspiracy theorists again, why don't they go take their Prozac and shut up."
As justin would say, I do hope Col. Kwiatkowski stays out of small airplanes for awhile.
Posted by Xan @ 02/22/2004 02:53 PM NY
damn, and i was just about to say that too...
Posted by justin @ 02/24/2004 08:56 PM NY
