The New Pentagon Papers

Posted on March 10, 2004 by glasscastle

Probably
more detail than you want to know about the exact coercive mechanisms
and petty deceptions used by the American Empire clique (empiristas?)
running the government these days to get control of power centers in
the Pentagon and push America into the war in Iraq. These are the guys
who think Colin Powell is a wimp.

However, the article is long and logwinded, and bereft of tart turn
of phrase or punchy prose, so that we lost interest on page 3 (of 5).
But then again, we
didn’t
make it through the original Pentagon Papers, either...

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

The author is Karen Kwiatkowski, who seems to know her subject:

In July of last year, after just over 20 years of service, I retired
as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. I had served as a communications
officer in the field and in acquisition programs, as a speechwriter
for the National Security Agency director, and on the Headquarters Air
Force
and the office of the secretary of defense staffs covering African
affairs. I had completed Air Command and Staff College and Navy War College
seminar
programs, two master’s degrees, and everything but my Ph.D. dissertation
in world politics at Catholic University.

Here is her dilemna in a nutshell.

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.

So she wrote about it in Salon.
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15 Responses to The New Pentagon Papers

  1. Ben M. Schorr says:
    March 11, 2004 at 1:11 am

    It is truly a disturbing article. Ms. Kwiatkowski clearly has a dislike for the Bush administration, however as you observe she cetainly seems to know her subject and I see nothing obviously implausible in her story.

    If her story is true, it paints a very disturbing picture of how the administration rushed us to a war of choice.

    -B-

  2. Mike Walsh says:
    March 11, 2004 at 9:21 am

    Hey Michael,

    There are a lot of active military guys over at KSG getting either their masters or PhD’s. I sat next to a full bird colonel yesterday at one of the IOP workshops. His most recent day job for the military was staffer for the National Security Council.

    Real mellow guy for a Jar Head. He had some interesting stories about his inability to keep his sidearm in Cambridge even though he could be scambled any time on a terror alert.

  3. Mike Walsh says:
    March 11, 2004 at 9:26 am

    Michael

    I was shocked not to find a cadaver story in the Dowbrigade this morning.

    What gives!!

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