Extraordinary. Her name is already on the John O'Neil
Wall of Heroes (you can find some stories on her in
the LNS searchable database). But this piece,
published originally in the American Conservative, is
very important...
Karen Kwiatowski, American Conservative: "I was present at a staff meeting when Deputy Undersecretary Bill Luti called General Zinni a traitor. At another time, I discussed with a political appointee the service being rendered by Colin Powell in the early winter and was told the best service he could offer would be to quit. I heard in another staff meeting a derogatory story about a little Tommy Fargo who was acting up. Little Tommy was, of course, Commander, Pacific Forces, Admiral Fargo. This was shared with the rest of us as a Bill Luti lesson in civilian control of the military. It was certainly not civil or controlled, but the message was crystal. "
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://truthout.org/docs_04/011204C.shtml
Former Pentagon Insider: 'Neoconservative Propaganda Campaign Led to Iraq War'
By Karen Kwiatkowski
The American Conservative
January 19th Issue
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon insider,
concludes her observations on the run-up to the Iraq
war in this last of a three-part series.
As the winter of 2002 approached, I was
increasingly amazed at the success of the propaganda
campaign being waged by President Bush, Vice President
Cheney, and neoconservative mouthpieces at the
Washington Times and Wall Street Journal. I speculated
about the necessity but unlikelihood of a
Phil-Dick-style minority report on the grandiose
Feith-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney vision of some future
Middle East where peace, love, and democracy are
brought about by pre-emptive war and military
occupation.
In December, I requested an acceleration of my
retirement after just over 20 years on duty and
exactly the required three years of time-in-grade as a
lieutenant colonel. I felt fortunate not to have being
fired or court-martialed due to my politically
incorrect ways in the previous two years as a real
conservative in a neoconservative Office of Secretary
of Defense. But in fact, my outspokenness was probably
never noticed because civilian professionals and
military officers were largely invisible. We were
easily replaceable and dispensable, not part of the
team brought in from the American Enterprise
Institute, the Center for Security Policy, and the
Washington Institute for Near East Affairs.
There were exceptions. When military officers
conspicuously crossed the neoconservative party line,
the results were predictable—get back in line or get
out. One friend, an Army colonel who exemplified the
qualities carved in stone at West Point, refused to
maneuver into a small neoconservative box, and he was
moved into another position, where truth-telling would
be viewed as an asset instead of a handicap. Among the
civilians, I observed the stereotypical perspective
that this too would pass, with policy analysts
apparently willing to wait out the neocon phase. In
early winter, an incident occurred that was seared
into my memory. A coworker and I were suddenly
directed to go down to the Mall entrance to pick up
some Israeli generals. Post-9/11 rules required one
escort for every three visitors, and there were six or
seven of them waiting. The Navy lieutenant commander
and I hustled down. Before we could apologize for the
delay, the leader of the pack surged ahead, his
colleagues in close formation, leaving us to
double-time behind the group as they sped to
Undersecretary Feith’s office on the fourth floor. Two
thoughts crossed our minds: are we following close
enough to get credit for escorting them, and do they
really know where they are going? We did get credit,
and they did know. Once in Feith’s waiting room, the
leader continued at speed to Feith’s closed door. An
alert secretary saw this coming and had leapt from her
desk to block the door. “Mr. Feith has a visitor. It
will only be a few more minutes.” The leader craned
his neck to look around the secretary’s head as he
demanded, “Who is in there with him?”
This minor crisis of curiosity past, I noticed
the security sign-in roster. Our habit, up until a few
weeks before this incident, was not to sign in senior
visitors like ambassadors. But about once a year, the
security inspectors send out a warning letter that
they were coming to inspect records. As a result,
sign-in rosters were laid out, visible and used. I
knew this because in the previous two weeks I watched
this explanation being awkwardly presented to several
North African ambassadors as they signed in for the
first time and wondered why and why now. Given all
this and seeing the sign-in roster, I asked the
secretary, “Do you want these guys to sign in?” She
raised her hands, both palms toward me, and waved
frantically as she shook her head. “No, no, no, it is
not necessary, not at all.” Her body language told me
I had committed a faux pas for even asking the
question. My fellow escort and I chatted on the way
back to our office about how the generals knew where
they were going (most foreign visitors to the
five-sided asylum don’t) and how the generals didn’t
have to sign in. I felt a bit dirtied by the whole
thing and couldn’t stop comparing that experience to
the grace and gentility of the Moroccan, Tunisian, and
Algerian ambassadors with whom I worked.
In my study of the neoconservatives, it was easy
to find out whom in Washington they liked and whom
they didn’t. They liked most of the Heritage
Foundation and all of the American Enterprise
Institute. They liked writers Charles Krauthammer and
Bill Kristol. To find out whom they didn’t like, no
research was required. All I had to do was walk the
corridors and attend staff meetings. There were
several shared prerequisites to get on the
Neoconservative List of Major Despicable People, and
in spite of the rhetoric hurled against these enemies
of the state, most really weren’t Rodents of Unusual
Size. Most, in fact, were retired from a branch of the
military with a star or two or four on their
shoulders. All could and did rationally argue the many
illogical points in the neoconservative strategy of
offensive democracy—guys like Brent Scowcroft, Barry
McCaffrey, Anthony Zinni, and Colin Powell.
I was present at a staff meeting when Deputy
Undersecretary Bill Luti called General Zinni a
traitor. At another time, I discussed with a political
appointee the service being rendered by Colin Powell
in the early winter and was told the best service he
could offer would be to quit. I heard in another staff
meeting a derogatory story about a little Tommy Fargo
who was acting up. Little Tommy was, of course,
Commander, Pacific Forces, Admiral Fargo. This was
shared with the rest of us as a Bill Luti lesson in
civilian control of the military. It was certainly not
civil or controlled, but the message was crystal.
When President Bush gave his State of the Union
address, there was a small furor over the reference to
the yellowcake in Niger that Saddam was supposedly
seeking. After this speech, everyone was discussing
this as either new intelligence saved up for just such
a speech or, more cynically, just one more flamboyant
fabrication that those watching the propaganda
campaign had come to expect. I had not heard about
yellowcake from Niger or seen it mentioned on the
Office of Special Plans talking points. When I went
over to my old shop, sub-Saharan Africa, to
congratulate them for making it into the president’s
speech, they said the information hadn’t come from
them or through them. They were as surprised and
embarrassed as everyone else that such a blatant
falsehood would make it into a presidential speech.
When General Zinni was removed as Bush’s Middle
East envoy and Elliot Abrams joined the National
Security Council (NSC) to lead the Mideast division,
whoops and high-fives had erupted from the neocon
cubicles. By midwinter, echoes of those celebrations
seemed to mutate into a kind of anxious anticipation,
shared by most of the Pentagon. The military was
anxiously waiting under the bed for the other shoe to
drop amidst concerns over troop availability,
readiness for an ill-defined mission, and lack of
day-after clarity. The neocons were anxiously
struggling to get that damn shoe off, gleefully
anticipating the martinis to be drunk and the fun to
be had. The other shoe fell with a thump on Feb. 5 as
Colin Powell delivered his United Nations
presentation.
It was a sad day for me and many others with whom
I worked when we watched Powell’s public capitulation.
The era when Powell had been considered a political
general, back when he was Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, had in many ways been erased for those of us
who greatly admired his coup of the Pentagon neocons
when he persuaded the president to pursue UN support
for his invasion of Iraq. Now it was as if Powell had
again rolled military interests—and national interests
as well.
Around that same time, our deputy director
forwarded a State Department cable that had gone out
to our embassy in Turkey. The cable contained answers
to 51 questions that had been asked of our ambassador
by the Turkish government. The questions addressed
things like after-war security arrangements, refugees,
border control, stability in the Kurdish north, and
occupation plans. But every third answer was either
“To be determined” or “We’re working on that” or “This
scenario is unlikely.” At one point, an answer
included the “fact” that the United States military
would physically secure the geographic border of Iraq.
Curious, I checked the length of the physical border
of Iraq. Then I checked out the length of our own
border with Mexico. Given our exceptional success in
securing our own desert borders, I found this
statement interesting.
Soon after, I was out-processed for retirement
and couldn’t have been more relieved to be away from
daily exposure to practices I had come to believe were
unconstitutional. War is generally crafted and pursued
for political reasons, but the reasons given to
Congress and the American people for this one were so
inaccurate and misleading as to be false. 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, better positioning for the inevitable
fall of the regional sheikdoms, maintaining OPEC on a
dollar track, and fulfilling a half-baked imperial
vision. These more accurate reasons could have been
argued on their merits, and the American people might
indeed have supported the war. But we never got a
chance to debate it.
My personal experience leaning precariously
toward the neoconservative maw showed me that their
philosophy remains remarkably untouched by respect for
real liberty, justice, and American values. My years
of military service taught me that values and ideas
matter, but these most important aspects of our great
nation cannot be defended adequately by those in
uniform. This time, salvaging our honor will require a
conscious, thoughtful, and stubborn commitment from
each and every one of us, and though I no longer wear
the uniform, I have not given up the fight.
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Posted by richard at January 13, 2004 05:57 PM