How the truth became the first casualty of the Iraq warr

[Woochifer]

Article in Salon written by Lt.Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked at the Pentagon as a communications officer, and got a front row seat on how the Office of Special Plans (OSP) was formed to purposely distort intelligence reports in order to make the case for the Iraq war. Pretty disturbing picture into how administration officials preempted any debate on the case for war by stacking the deck on how information got released.

Here's an exerpt:
"War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the Congress and to the American people for this one were inaccurate and so misleading as to be false. Moreover, they were false by design. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq -- more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupying could have been argued on their merits -- an angry and aggressive U.S. population might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn't get the chance for an honest debate."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp/index.html
(have to view an ad to get the full text of the article)

[woodman]

Article in Salon written by Lt.Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked at the Pentagon as a communications officer, and got a front row seat on how the Office of Special Plans (OSP) was formed to purposely distort intelligence reports in order to make the case for the Iraq war. Pretty disturbing picture into how administration officials preempted any debate on the case for war by stacking the deck on how information got released.

Here's an exerpt:
"War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the Congress and to the American people for this one were inaccurate and so misleading as to be false. Moreover, they were false by design. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq -- more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupying could have been argued on their merits -- an angry and aggressive U.S. population might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn't get the chance for an honest debate."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp/index.html
(have to view an ad to get the full text of the article)

Thanks Wooch for providing us with this backup for the truth that so many of us have been contending all along. I can't wait to see what sort of BS "spin" our right-wing Bush lovers are gonna try to place on this one. Thanks again.

[JSE]

Here's another link straight to the article.

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/kwiatkowski.html

JSE

[JSE]

Interesting article. It seems she definitely has a axe to grind when you read some of her other articles. Also sounds like she is a little upset that she was not a "player" anymore under Bush. Read some of her other articles. They tend to shed a different light on Ms. Kwiatkowski. Here's a link.

"http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski-arch.html"


Typical far left reporting.

JSE

[FLZapped]

Interesting article. It seems she definitely has a axe to grind when you read some of her other articles. Also sounds like she is a little upset that she was not a "player" anymore under Bush. Read some of her other articles. They tend to shed a different light on Ms. Kwiatkowski. Here's a link.

"http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski-arch.html"


Typical far left reporting.

JSE


She was on Fox news the other night. When John Gibson kept askeing her to get specific, she just got more hysterical. One of her retorts started "Look, I'm an American Citizen..." - As if that makes it all better.

Funny, she only has bad things to say about the Bush administration. Yet the Clinton administration had exactly the same intelligence information and yet she doesn't seem to think they were wrong in their assessments, which were exactly the same. Clinton bombed Iraq to destroy suspected weapons factories, yet he didn't "cook" the evidence to support his position?

-Bruce

[tugmcmartin]

Well crap. I had about a 3.5 page write up/review of this article, but it won't let me cut and paste it from a word document and i ain't gonna retype the whole thing.

Basically, i think its a fine article. But the fact that it appears on Salon.com and is correctly placed in the Opinion section of the website should tell you right off that this isn't going to be a non-biased article. Ms. Kwiatowski certainly makes a lot of interesting claims, but not a single one of them is backed up by any sort of proof. Without any proof, the whole thing takes on a certain air of fiction. Her many references to "republican staffers" instead of just "staffers" or the "neoconservative way of thought" instead of just "the administrations way of thought" pointedly illustrates her bias. One does get the distinct impression that perhaps Ms. K just felt "out of the loop" in the decision making.

Some of the most telling quotes:
“I asked John who was feeding the president all the bull about Saddam and the threat he posed us in terms of WMD delivery and his links to terrorists, as none of this was in secret intelligence I had seen in the past years. John insisted that it wasn't an exaggeration, but when pressed to say which actual intelligence reports made these claims, he would only say, "Karen, we have sources that you don't have access to." It was widely felt by those of us in the office not in the neoconservatives' inner circle that these "sources" related to the chummy relationship that Ahmad Chalabi had with both the Office of Special Plans and the office of the vice president.” – Hmmm…. Maybe there really was some info Ms. K didn’t have access too. If she has proof otherwise, she must present it here. Otherwise its pure conjecture and opinion.
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
“Saddam Hussein had gassed his neighbors, abused his people, and was continuing in that mode, becoming an imminently dangerous threat to his neighbors and to us -- except that none of his neighbors or Israel felt this was the case.” – Really? You know this for a fact? Israel was really okay having Hussein in power? And Iran? Really? Where’s the proof to back a statement like that up?

“Saddam Hussein had harbored al-Qaida operatives and offered and probably provided them with training facilities -- without mentioning that the suspected facilities were in the U.S./Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq.” – So? Come to find out that there were some actual Al-Qaida cells in our own freaking country! The fact that al-Qaida facilities were in areas we “controlled” somehow makes it okay? I think I’m gonna puke.

“Saddam Hussein was pursuing and had WMD of the type that could be used by him, in conjunction with al-Qaida and other terrorists, to attack and damage American interests, Americans and America -- except the intelligence didn't really say that. Saddam Hussein had not been seriously weakened by war and sanctions and weekly bombings over the past 12 years, and in fact was plotting to hurt America and support anti-American activities, in part through his carrying on with terrorists -- although here the intelligence said the opposite.” – Okay Ms. K… what DID the intelligence say???? If you know, you have a burden to tell us.

“That other shoe fell with a thump, as did the regard many of us had held for Colin Powell, on Feb. 5 as the secretary of state capitulated to the neoconservative line in his speech at the United Nations -- a speech not only filled with falsehoods pushed by the neoconservatives but also containing many statements already debunked by intelligence.” - Again, please prove to me that these were falsehoods.

“Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq -- more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupying could have been argued on their merits -- an angry and aggressive U.S. population might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn't get the chance for an honest debate.” – Yet another indicator of where her true intentions lay. If these were indeed the real reasons for the war and she knows this for a fact, she has the responsibility to show us the facts that support this. Anything else is again opinion and conjecture.

T-<o:p></o:p>

[bturk667]

So do you believe what she wrote is false, or just prejudiced?
Also, what if what she wrote was pro Bush, then what would you feel?

[bturk667]

What does it matter if both Clinton and Bush had the same intelligence?
Clinton bombed Iraq while Bush went to war. Two totally different outcomes.
Also, how much trust should any of our leaders put into our intelligence communty. U.S.S. Cole, both WTC bombings, the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy, and let us not forget about 9/11! If that is not a lousy track record, then I do not know what is!

[JSE]

So do you believe what she wrote is false, or just prejudiced?
Also, what if what she wrote was pro Bush, then what would you feel?

I'm saying that people view events differently based on their belief system. What was sinister to her may have been completely logical and innocent to another. The truth is usually somewhere in between. I can tell you this, after reading this article and some of her others, she definitely has an axe to grind and has an agenda. Like I said before, I think she is upset that she is not "vital" anymore. Of course that just my opinion.

Have you read some of the articles I gave a link to earlier. If not, give them a once over. I think you will see her motivation. Here it is again just in case.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski-arch.html


"Also, what if what she wrote was pro Bush, then what would you feel?"

Well, human nature is to not disagree with praise. If I call you an idiot, you would disagree. If I call you a great person, you would probably say, Thanks. I think what your getting at is, I always support Bush. If you will read my past post you will see that is not always the case. I think we had a discussion before about John McCain before? If he runs for President in the future, I would probably vote for him. If he were running for president, not vice president, against Bush right now, I would vote for him. I like the guy. I think he probably one of the "most" honest and respectable people in Washington right now. Unfortunately, that might be his downfall.

JSE

[Woochifer]

Follow up. Salon today had a commentary on the reaction to Lt.Col. Kwiatkowski's article. The stuff about the OSP, and how it distorted U.S. intelligence reports and overly relied on Ahmed Chabali as a primary information source, has been reported before by other sources in the Pentagon, CIA, and military intelligence agencies, but now that Kwaitkowski's retired from the military, she's really the first person who's stepped forward into the open to bring the story out.


Smearing the messenger
The Bush machine aims its poison darts at another military hero -- Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By David Talbot

March 15, 2004 | There they go again. Whenever the Bush machine is put on the defensive, it immediately goes on the offensive, and character assassination is one of its favorite weapons. I'm not talking about the attacks on John Kerry's patriotism. I'm talking about the poison-tipped assault on another military veteran, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, whose damning eyewitness account of how neoconservative zealots in the Defense Department bulldozed the facts and drove the country to war was published in Salon last week ("The New Pentagon Papers").

Kwiatkowski's right-wing critics could not challenge her facts, not a single one, so they immediately reached for the tar brush. The Wall Street Journal smeared her as "something of a right-wing crank." Max Boot, a conservative columnist for the Los Angeles Times, trashed her as "flaky." Then Clifford May, a hit man for the Republican National Committee, was given free reign by John Gibson, host of Fox News' "The Big Show," to drag the 20-year Air Force veteran through the mud after Fox turned off her microphone -- one more bold display of the network's commitment to fairness and balance. Once she was silenced, Gibson and May smeared Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski as an "anarchist" with "radical associations" to political weirdoes like Lyndon LaRouche.

The truth -- never an interest of these right-wing hatchet men -- is that the former Air Force intelligence officer comes from a politically conservative family and subscribes to a libertarian philosophy. She once gave an interview to a LaRouche publication -- the full extent of her "association" with this political fringe. By the RNC man's strained logic, the fact that she also spoke to Fox News should make her a Rupert Murdoch acolyte.

If I were part of the Bush reelection team, I would want to cloud reality too. The disturbing reality that Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski presented was of an administration driven by ideologues so determined to rush into an Iraq war that they would not let intelligence or expertise or facts get in their way. We are all now paying for the folly of these men, none more than Kwiatkowski's former colleagues in the military, who are fighting and dying in Iraq. The fact that many of Kwiatkowski's neoconservative opponents have never served their country in uniform makes the Bush machine's personal attacks against her all the more repellent.

Unlike Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski's character assassins, she served her country honorably for 20 years -- and she is serving America again by bravely telling the truth about the policies of deceit that led us to war.

The tens of thousands of readers who have clicked on Kwiatkowski's revealing exposé know this and you have flooded Salon with e-mails in praise of her courage and integrity. We want you to know that Salon will continue to stand by her and will continue to publish eye-opening reports on the Bush administration and its extremist policies...

[Woochifer]

I'm saying that people view events differently based on their belief system. What was sinister to her may have been completely logical and innocent to another. The truth is usually somewhere in between. I can tell you this, after reading this article and some of her others, she definitely has an axe to grind and has an agenda. Like I said before, I think she is upset that she is not "vital" anymore. Of course that just my opinion.

Have you read some of the articles I gave a link to earlier. If not, give them a once over. I think you will see her motivation. Here it is again just in case.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski-arch.html


"Also, what if what she wrote was pro Bush, then what would you feel?"

Well, human nature is to not disagree with praise. If I call you an idiot, you would disagree. If I call you a great person, you would probably say, Thanks. I think what your getting at is, I always support Bush. If you will read my past post you will see that is not always the case. I think we had a discussion before about John McCain before? If he runs for President in the future, I would probably vote for him. If he were running for president, not vice president, against Bush right now, I would vote for him. I like the guy. I think he probably one of the "most" honest and respectable people in Washington right now. Unfortunately, that might be his downfall.

JSE

Well, I disagree with you about her "motivation." What she wrote in her article is nothing that hasn't been reported before (although you'd have to dig pretty far into a newspaper or website to find the information). The only difference is that she's now come forward and put her full version of the story out. To me, she comes across as someone who was a career officer, and saw the function of the intelligence bureaus undermined by political goals. Initially, she was an anonymous source for some of David Hackworth's military columns. And Hackworth is a writer that I respect a lot, and even though I disagree with him on some issues, I appreciate that his columns always put the soldiers on the front lines first, even if that rankles the higher ups.

http://www.hackworth.com

I do agree with you though on John McCain. Even though I disagree with him on policy positions a lot of the time, I am in total agreement with him on the need for reform in the political system and the tone of public discourse in general. The truth of the matter is that political debates nowadays are framed in such thin contexts, that a whole slew of very important issues are going completely by the wayside (e.g. you think anyone's going to substantively talk about the upcoming social security insolvency this year?). McCain at least attempts to look at the big picture, and will go across the aisle to find allies on issues that are he's always come across as a straight shooter with public service as his #1 agenda, rather than looking at politics as a team sport where winning is the only objective. And I appreciate that he's somewhat of a gadfly who's not afraid to speak his own mind, even if it's contrary to Bush Administration policy. (e.g. recent comments that he would probably not support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages)

[JSE]

Follow up. Salon today had a commentary on the reaction to Lt.Col. Kwiatkowski's article. The stuff about the OSP, and how it distorted U.S. intelligence reports and overly relied on Ahmed Chabali as a primary information source, has been reported before by other sources in the Pentagon, CIA, and military intelligence agencies, but now that Kwaitkowski's retired from the military, she's really the first person who's stepped forward into the open to bring the story out.


Smearing the messenger
The Bush machine aims its poison darts at another military hero -- Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By David Talbot

March 15, 2004 | There they go again. Whenever the Bush machine is put on the defensive, it immediately goes on the offensive, and character assassination is one of its favorite weapons. I'm not talking about the attacks on John Kerry's patriotism. I'm talking about the poison-tipped assault on another military veteran, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, whose damning eyewitness account of how neoconservative zealots in the Defense Department bulldozed the facts and drove the country to war was published in Salon last week ("The New Pentagon Papers").

Kwiatkowski's right-wing critics could not challenge her facts, not a single one, so they immediately reached for the tar brush. The Wall Street Journal smeared her as "something of a right-wing crank." Max Boot, a conservative columnist for the Los Angeles Times, trashed her as "flaky." Then Clifford May, a hit man for the Republican National Committee, was given free reign by John Gibson, host of Fox News' "The Big Show," to drag the 20-year Air Force veteran through the mud after Fox turned off her microphone -- one more bold display of the network's commitment to fairness and balance. Once she was silenced, Gibson and May smeared Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski as an "anarchist" with "radical associations" to political weirdoes like Lyndon LaRouche.

The truth -- never an interest of these right-wing hatchet men -- is that the former Air Force intelligence officer comes from a politically conservative family and subscribes to a libertarian philosophy. She once gave an interview to a LaRouche publication -- the full extent of her "association" with this political fringe. By the RNC man's strained logic, the fact that she also spoke to Fox News should make her a Rupert Murdoch acolyte.

If I were part of the Bush reelection team, I would want to cloud reality too. The disturbing reality that Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski presented was of an administration driven by ideologues so determined to rush into an Iraq war that they would not let intelligence or expertise or facts get in their way. We are all now paying for the folly of these men, none more than Kwiatkowski's former colleagues in the military, who are fighting and dying in Iraq. The fact that many of Kwiatkowski's neoconservative opponents have never served their country in uniform makes the Bush machine's personal attacks against her all the more repellent.

Unlike Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski's character assassins, she served her country honorably for 20 years -- and she is serving America again by bravely telling the truth about the policies of deceit that led us to war.

The tens of thousands of readers who have clicked on Kwiatkowski's revealing exposé know this and you have flooded Salon with e-mails in praise of her courage and integrity. We want you to know that Salon will continue to stand by her and will continue to publish eye-opening reports on the Bush administration and its extremist policies...

Wooch,

"Unlike Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski's character assassins, she served her country honorably for 20 years -- and she is serving America again by bravely telling the truth about the policies of deceit that led us to war."

How do you know she is telling the truth? It is clear that she is a bit of a extremist in her views and her writing. You guys ae grilling Bush for proof on WMDs but you will accept this person's version as the Gospel? Where's the proof? Any proof? And just because she served our country does not mean she is credible.

I think I mentioned this before. There is the extreme right and the extreme left. The truth is usually somewhere in between.

JSE

[JSE]

"I do agree with you though on John McCain. Even though I disagree with him on policy positions a lot of the time, I am in total agreement with him on the need for reform in the political system and the tone of public discourse in general. The truth of the matter is that political debates nowadays are framed in such thin contexts, that a whole slew of very important issues are going completely by the wayside (e.g. you think anyone's going to substantively talk about the upcoming social security insolvency this year?). McCain at least attempts to look at the big picture, and will go across the aisle to find allies on issues that are he's always come across as a straight shooter with public service as his #1 agenda, rather than looking at politics as a team sport where winning is the only objective. And I appreciate that he's somewhat of a gadfly who's not afraid to speak his own mind, even if it's contrary to Bush Administration policy. (e.g. recent comments that he would probably not support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages)"

Could you imagine if McCain broke off and was running as an Independent in this election?
I think he would have a great chance of winning, if the money was there. That's a whole other issue though. Fun to think about though. I would vote for him.

JSE

[Woochifer]

Could you imagine if McCain broke off and was running as an Independent in this election?
I think he would have a great chance of winning, if the money was there. That's a whole other issue though. Fun to think about though. I would vote for him.

JSE

On some other message boards, I've read people talking about trying to draft McCain onto the Democratic ticket of all things. While it's just a pie-in-the-sky delusion, it does say something about the respect that he commands on both side of the aisle. But, wouldn't a Kerry-McCain ticket just turn the whole election upside down? That would be absolutely epic political theater. Bush might have to dump Cheney and draft Giuliani if that ever happened!

Also, on a personal level, it just seems that McCain respects Kerry more than Bush. I read somewhere that McCain was somewhat wary of Kerry until they worked together on the MIA issue in the mid-90s and they've been good friends since then. I also think that McCain hasn't forgotten about the smear job that Bush's operatives mounted against him in the 2000 campaign, and sort of enjoys it when he takes on a position contrary to Bush Administration policy. (i.e. environmental issues, campaign finance reform)

[Woochifer]

How do you know she is telling the truth? It is clear that she is a bit of a extremist in her views and her writing. You guys ae grilling Bush for proof on WMDs but you will accept this person's version as the Gospel? Where's the proof? Any proof? And just because she served our country does not mean she is credible.

I think I mentioned this before. There is the extreme right and the extreme left. The truth is usually somewhere in between.

JSE

First off, I don't think that her positions are all that extremist, and you can't neatly pin it down on the left-right spectrum either because some of her other writings are somewhat libertarian. I've heard and read other libertarians that hold similar views about the Iraq war. As I said, this is not the first time that this story has been reported. Several other sources have pointed similar stuff about the OSP's role with distorting the prewar intelligence and their overreliance on the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmed Chabali (who now openly admits that he fed questionable intelligence reports to the Pentagon -- he had a vested interest in getting Saddam out, and if that meant planting questionable information, so be it). If anything, British newspapers have been following this story a lot more closely than the U.S. media has.

If the story is indeed true, then it doesn't matter what end of the political spectrum the messenger's coming from -- it would flatout stink to high heaven because it would mark a deliberate attempt to use misinformation in order to stop meaningful debate on a vitally important issue. IMO, in a democracy, it should not be easy for the executive branch of government to wage war without a strong and vigorous debate from the legislative branch. (and in that respect, I also blame congressional Democrats for failing in their obligation to provide a meaningful debate and opposition viewpoint) That just happens to also be a very libertarian view, so I don't know whether to call it far right or far left, but either way I think it's correct.

I mean, when the Watergate scandal first broke, a lot of the mainstream pundits were attacking the Washington Post as communist propaganda. But, the truth ultimately saw the light of day, and even principled conservatives like Howard Baker had to put the interests of the country ahead of partisan politics.

[FLZapped]

What does it matter if both Clinton and Bush had the same intelligence?
Clinton bombed Iraq while Bush went to war. Two totally different outcomes.
Also, how much trust should any of our leaders put into our intelligence communty. U.S.S. Cole, both WTC bombings, the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy, and let us not forget about 9/11! If that is not a lousy track record, then I do not know what is!

So bombing a country isn't an act of war? Seems we felt the use of commercial airliners as bombs were on 9/11.

As usual, you skirted the point. I didn't see anyone complaining that Clinton "cooked" the intellegence to justify his UNILATERAL use of force - especially considering he had the same info at his fingertips.


-Bruce

[FLZapped]

Smearing the messenger
The Bush machine aims its poison darts at another military hero -- Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By David Talbot

March 15, 2004 | There they go again. Whenever the Bush machine is put on the defensive, it immediately goes on the offensive, and character assassination is one of its favorite weapons. I'm not talking about the attacks on John Kerry's patriotism.

Welp, this article loses all credibility here. Kerry's patriotism has never been questioned.



Then Clifford May, a hit man for the Republican National Committee, was given free reign by John Gibson, host of Fox News' "The Big Show," to drag the 20-year Air Force veteran through the mud after Fox turned off her microphone

What BS. Her segment was OVER, she had her say and couldn't answer one serious question put to her. I thought it was fair to find out what she had been involved in and supported. Made it pretty obvious what her motivation was.

-Bruce