Salon: The New Pentagon Papers (Kwiatkowski)

A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war.

(snip)

In the spring of 2002, I was a cynical but willing staff officer, almost two years into my three-year tour at the office of the secretary of defense, undersecretary for policy, sub-Saharan Africa. In April, a call for volunteers went out for the Near East South Asia directorate (NESA). None materialized. By May, the call transmogrified into a posthaste demand for any staff officer, and I was "volunteered" to enter what would be a well-appointed den of iniquity.

The education I would receive there was like an M. Night Shyamalan movie -- 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 and Gen. Anthony Zinni.

From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it.

I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.

I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.

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http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp/index.html

world, except for most of our congressmen. Why does it take so long for investigations and trials and punishments? Why is Bush not in jail? Why do the republicans have any respect in this country?

because of 5 letters....M E D I A

I agree Bush must stand trial for war crimes. Where do we start?

We would start with the executions and work backwards.

Anybody who believes that the intelligence community just made errors and that the war in Iraq was planned based on honest mistakes needs to read Lt. Kwiatkowski's story.

The raw intelligence was no worse than usual and the Bushies cooked it in order to deliberately build a false case for war. The lies were deliberate and malicious.

Even if you've read Karen Kwiatkowski's writings before, you have to read this whole article.

It's not enough to have them removed by election. This has to be made known. We have suffered a coup in more ways than one.

I don't understand why the military has been so quiet about this. They must have understoond what was happening.


(Sorry I kicked the other thread before realizing it was a dupe.)

Ms. Kwiatkowski is not invited to appear on the Cable TV shows. They know she will expose their masters in the Bush WH for what they really are....evil and criminal.