Inside the neo-con Pentagon (Ted Kennedy's Wacko Foreign Policy Expert)

The Toronto Star ^ | Apr. 18, 2004 | KAREN KWIATKOWSKI

[Spotsy]

Inside the neo-con Pentagon

Officer reveals how Bush appointees suppressed facts and twisted truth to drive America to war with Iraq

.

In July of last year, after just over 20 years of service, I retired as a lieutenant-colonel in the U.S. Air Force.

My career started in 1978 with the smooth seduction of a full four-year ROTC scholarship. It ended with 10 months of duty in a strange new country, observing up close and personal a process of decision-making for war not sanctioned by the Constitution.

~snip~

The education I would receive there was intense, fascinating and frightening.

While the people were very much alive, I saw a dead philosophy — Cold War anti-communism and neo-imperialism — walking the corridors of the Pentagon. It wore the clothing of counterterrorism and spoke the language of a holy war between good and evil.

The evil was recognized by the leadership to be resident mainly in the Middle East and articulated by Islamic clerics and radicals. But there were other enemies within: anyone who dared voice any skepticism about their grand plans, including Secretary of State Colin Powell.

From May, 2002, until February, 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (OSP) and watched the latter stages of the neo-conservative capture of the policy/intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1082239810772&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724

[Spotsy]

From the Weekly Standard Scrapbook March 22, 2004

Teddy Kennedy's New Expert

The hottest foreign policy authority on the left is Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who worked for several months in the Pentagon's Near East-South Asia office during the run-up to the war in Iraq. She was prominently cited by Senator Ted Kennedy in a March 5 address to the Council on Foreign Relations questioning the president's use of prewar intelligence on Iraq. Her work is getting the full promotional treatment from Salon and its new Washington Bureau chief Sidney Blumenthal, the former head conspiratorialist of the Clinton White House. Salon celebrated the opening of the new bureau by publishing a heavily hyped Kwiatkowski opus headlined "The new Pentagon papers."

Kwiatkowski claims she witnessed "neoconservative agenda bearers within [the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans] usurp measured and carefully considered assessment, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president."

Whether she's a reliable witness is something her new patrons may or may not have inquired into. But Kennedy staffers may want to Google her work for the antiwar libertarians at lewrockwell.com as well as the pseudonymous pieces she's acknowledged publishing on hackworth.com and Soldiers for the Truth when she was still in uniform and working at the Department of Defense. They will find no evidence of Kwiatkowski's reliability as a judge of "measured and carefully considered assessment." They will find plenty of evidence that their boss could use a new speechwriter.

Consider: In her writings for Soldiers for the Truth, which ran under the heading "Deep Throat Returns," Kwiatkowski accused the Pentagon of planning to "build greater Zion" in the Middle East and decried the "Zionist political cult that has lassoed the E-Ring"--a reference to the Secretary of Defense and other high-ranking Pentagon officials.

In a later article on lewrockwell.com, written after she'd retired, Kwiatkowski conceded that these anonymous articles barely did justice to the frustration she'd experienced at the Pentagon: "Hard core anarchists and other purists might criticize me for not just throwing a few hand grenades over the office dividers and letting the chips fall where they may. But by this time I had already submitted my retirement request, and selfishly after my twenty [years of service], I wanted to spend the money, not time in Leavenworth."

Other gems from Kwiatkowski's oeuvre:

* "We went to war in Afghanistan--planned of course before 9/11/2001 due to some Taliban non-cooperation regarding a certain trans-Afghanistan oil pipeline, and the requisite security for said pipeline."

* "We once had something like a free market Republic, but all evidence now points to a maturing fascist state flexing its muscles."

* "Bush and his neoconservative foreign policy implementers believe they are today's men of destiny. But the claim of destiny for a whole nation or a constructed state has long been the ultimate tool of the fascist, the super-nationalist, the propagandist worthy of a Lenin or a Hitler or a Pol Pot."

* "Two invasions and occupations in two years to reshape the Islamic world in preparation for World War IV is anything but conservative. Fascist imperialism touched by Sparta revived can never, even with pretty please and sugar on top, be conservatism."

[MindBender26]

WW IV?

You mean they had WW III and I missed it?

Darn.

[Pox]

"We went to war in Afghanistan--planned of course before 9/11/2001 due to some Taliban non-cooperation regarding a certain trans-Afghanistan oil pipeline, and the requisite security for said pipeline."

Heh, this "quote" was all I needed to see to understand the author. :)

[MJY1288]

"You mean they had WW III and I missed it?"

It's probably just something else they're crediting the Clinton Administration for. Maybe the left thinks Wesley Clark is who really won the Cold War when he bombed Yugoslavia from 30,000 feet :-)

[MindBender26]

She writes for LewRockwell. Big time Bush=hating dyke.

[MindBender26]

Bush-hating

[MJY1288]

She is a regular on Lew Rockwell.....shall I say anything more

[quidnunc]

The author isn't a leftist, she's paleocon who's associated with Lew Rockwell.

[clintonh8r]

I saw this, uh, woman on FNC's The Big Story a few weekks ago. Obviously John Gibson's producer hadn't vetted her and it was left to another guest to out her whacky theories. This woman is NUTS!

[MNJohnnie]

Hmm, let's see. A gofer working on the staff concerned with Sub-saharra Africa? Oh YEAH, she REALLY is going to have access to intellegence and facts on the War of Terror. She is really a credibile information source on the inner working of the Pentagon. A Lt Col (equivilent to a glorified administrative assistant in the Pentagon world) working on the Sub Sahara African team really is going to be have all sorts of access to important movers and shakers in the Pentagon's War on Terror.

Spare me. What the Matter Col? Get caught up in a don't ask don't tell scandel and forced out? Passed over because you are clearly unfit to wear the uniform? What is your REAL beef here? Got a book deal coming hmmmm?

[MNJohnnie]

The author isn't a leftist, she's paleocon who's associated with Lew Rockwell

You mean she is a wacko Hard Right Isolationist. There is nothing "conservative" about her. She is a reactionary throw back to the "America Firsters" of the 1930s

[af_vet_1981]

How did that antiSemite traitor ever make rank ?

What was her promotion record during the Clinton Administration ?

[Howlin]

She is a regular on Lew Rockwell.....shall I say anything more

Absolutely not.

Plus we've heard something else about her, I just cannot remember what.

[MJY1288]

The only other thing I know is that she worked on the anti-Bush MoveOn.org advertisements

[MJY1288]

I read somewhere that she claimed to have worked in the office of "Special Plans" in the Pentagon, and I read that she never did, she actually worked in the next room and had a friend that worked there. But don't hold me to that, I need to check my facts, it's been a while since I looked into this Lew Rockwell conspiracy theorist

[Ole Okie]

Just did a Google on Karen Whatshernameski.

My Lord!

[Burkeman1]

ANd? She posts on Lew Rockwell? So? Do enemies of your opinion usually post on this site? Of course she is at Lew's site. Address what she says. Like you just told me to do.

[u-89]

>You mean they had WW III and I missed it?

-----------------------

>It's probably just something else they're crediting the Clinton Administration for.

_____________________________________________

W.W.IV is a neocon coined term. They call the cold war W.W.III and the war on terror W.W.IV.

[deport]

A very interesting read of Ms. Kwiatkowski

Busting the liars:
Karen Kwiatkowski
(Photo by Jack Gould)

[Mo1]

The evil was recognized by the leadership to be resident mainly in the Middle East and articulated by Islamic clerics and radicals. But there were other enemies within: anyone who dared voice any skepticism about their grand plans, including Secretary of State Colin Powell

Gee .. any comments from Powell about this?

[cynicom]

I am sure that a Lt. Col. was privy to all the information available at the top.

[meenie]

It is unusual how many anti-Bush writings are coming out by former administration officials. I think a large part of it is due to the Iraq situation becoming so unpredictable.

[u-89]

>It is unusual how many anti-Bush writings are coming out by former administration officials. I think a large part of it is due to the Iraq situation becoming so unpredictable.

There were a lot of people who predicted a mess in Iraq and they were denigrated and ignored. Unfortunately everything they warned against is coming true and all the rosey painted scenarios dreamed up by the civilian warriors haven't panned out. If things continue on this course there will most likely be more people coming forward with unflattering behind the scenes stories.

[Spotsy]

I don't anything about Lew Rockwell - how would describe him?

[MJY1288]

Lew Rockwell is a Libertarian and a isolationist, IMHO he is a whacko who subscribes to every anti-american conspiracy theory out there

[kcvl]

Kwiatkowski's judgment doesn't look so disinterested when you examine her views more closely.

Since her retirement in March 2003, she has become a prolific contributor to isolationist publications like the American Conservative, Pat Buchanan's magazine, and lewrockwell.com, an ultra-libertarian website. Pretty much all her work is devoted to uncovering "neoconservative warmongers" who have supposedly taken over U.S. foreign policy.

She is not subtle in denouncing "Dickie Cheney, Richie Perle and Dougie Feith" (as well as, occasionally, "my pal, Max Boot"), whose "neoconservative philosophy is hateful to humanity, anti-American, statist and anti-free trade." (Anti-free trade?) She thinks the United States is a "maturing fascist state." And she predicts a dire fate for those who led us into the Iraq war: "Some folks on the Pentagon's E-ring may be sitting beside Hussein in the war crimes tribunals."


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.


In her writings for Soldiers for the Truth, which ran under the heading "Deep Throat Returns," Kwiatkowski accused the Pentagon of planning to "build greater Zion" in the Middle East and decried the "Zionist political cult that has lassoed the E-Ring"--a reference to the Secretary of Defense and other high-ranking Pentagon officials.

In a later article on lewrockwell.com, written after she'd retired, Kwiatkowski conceded that these anonymous articles barely did justice to the frustration she'd experienced at the Pentagon: "Hard core anarchists and other purists might criticize me for not just throwing a few hand grenades over the office dividers and letting the chips fall where they may. But by this time I had already submitted my retirement request, and selfishly after my twenty [years of service], I wanted to spend the money, not time in Leavenworth."


Other gems from Kwiatkowski...


* "We went to war in Afghanistan--planned of course before 9/11/2001 due to some Taliban non-cooperation regarding a certain trans-Afghanistan oil pipeline, and the requisite security for said pipeline."

* "We once had something like a free market Republic, but all evidence now points to a maturing fascist state flexing its muscles."

* "Bush and his neoconservative foreign policy implementers believe they are today's men of destiny. But the claim of destiny for a whole nation or a constructed state has long been the ultimate tool of the fascist, the super-nationalist, the propagandist worthy of a Lenin or a Hitler or a Pol Pot."

* "Two invasions and occupations in two years to reshape the Islamic world in preparation for World War IV is anything but conservative. Fascist imperialism touched by Sparta revived can never, even with pretty please and sugar on top, be conservatism."


******


The "No Oil Bidness Left Behind" Act

25 October 2002

U.S. intentions in Iraq have been criticized for a lot of reasons. Chickenhawks fit to be deep-fried, a Zionist political cult that has lassoed the E-Ring and parts of Washington, general disrespect for Texan traditions of leading by example instead of by force, constitutional concerns and using war to resolve years of piss-poor U.S. energy policies.

Let's take a moment to clear something up about Iraq and the oil bidness, as they say in Texas.

Even though we bomb Iraq just about every day, and would like to hit Baghdad like a Texas tornado, we love Iraqi oil as much as chili, BBQ and pecan pie! Five percent of our oil imports come from Saddam, 566,000 barrels a day for the first half of this year. At $30 a barrel, that is about $17 million a day, $510 million a month, and close to $5 billion worth so far in 2002.

We buy up about 18% of every drop of oil Iraq exports, and most of it is sanction-clean, not smuggled product from resellers, meaning we pay full market prices, plus the odd surcharge.

Prior to Desert Storm, Iraq sent 2.8 million barrels a day (of 3 million produced) through pipelines in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Back in 1990, 93% of Iraqi oil flowed to market directly through the back forty of folks who later supported the U.S. in the first Gulf War.

But Saddam's mama didn't raise no stupid cowboys. By 1995, Iraq started transforming its energy sector. It offered energy development contracts for 25 new oilfields, and started fixing up alternates to the Turkey and Saudi Arabian pipelines. China, Russia, France, Italy, Ireland, Malaysia, Australia, Canada, Brazil and South Korea sprinted faster than quarter horses heading for the barn at the end of the day.

In 1996, the sanctions against Iraq had weakened, and oil field capacity grew and grew, like a tall tale out of Amarillo, with technical support from many of the countries named above.

By 2001, Iraq was back to producing 3million barrels a day - with sanctions. I guess it's true! What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!

By 2005, Deutchebank forecasts OPEC will expand 2001 oil production capacity by 5.1 million barrels a day. 33% of this increase is from Iraqi fields. And that's with continued sanctions.

Sanctions keep crumbling, like armadillo carcasses in the hot Texas sun. U.S. companies have been shut out of sanction-era growth. They are sure to be left at the altar in the post-sanctions energy sector surge in Iraq, as sure as Texas has yellow roses.

When you add the $5 million a day we spend to watch the Northern and Southern no-fly zone to the $17 million a day we pay for every 500,000 barrels of oil - we're spending $22 million every day on Iraq!

$22 million a day just means we are paying over $40 a barrel or 135-140% of market prices for Iraqi oil. And Iraqis aren't buying a heck of a lot of products from us. Especially since Halliburton ended their sales in 2000. Now any Texan'll tell you that just ain't good bidness!!

Nobody likes a Texas-sized trade deficit. But we must be OK with it, a good friend even, to pay such a premium to buy almost one-fifth of Saddam's sole cash export. If I didn't know better, I'd say we kinda like old boy. Maybe we didn't really break up with him after all back in 1991! Maybe that's why we needed him to stay in Baghdad, but you'll have to ask Pops about that.

Now - we could lift sanctions, allow free trade and free movement of people to change the regime the old fashioned way (from within) plus get our boys in on oil deals immediately and save at least $3 million on the daily bombing bill.

Some of you non-Texans might want to put your money down on a plan like that.

But that's too laissez-faire and uncontrollable. Rodeo clown stuff. Instead, a far better solution is get this war going, spend between $100 and $200 billion plus rebuilding fees (Afghanistan monthly bill times 10) - and then we can get to the same exact place, a few thousand dead bodies later. But the important difference is, in this preferred scenario, we can be absolutely sure no U.S. oil bidness is left behind! Sounds good, huh?

A true son of Texas, also named George, sings a song about wanting something you can't stand to admit so bad you can't stand it, so all you can do is lie about it. A great song, and timeless too.

Sing with me now…..I've got some oceanfront property in Arizona. From the front porch you can see the sea…or is that Baghdad?


ksusiek@aol.com

ksusiek@shentel.net

karen@militaryweek.com

[meema]

The neocon attack mode doesn't hack it with Regular Conservatives. I'd like to know what they object to, also.