March 10 2004: Kwiatkowski; "The new Pentagon papers"

[understandinglife]

Thought it might be worthwhile to bring Col Kwiatkowski's in-depth exposition of the deceit of Bush and the neoconsters to everyone's attention now that we have entered the "AfterDowingStreet" era.

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

March 10 2004

By Karen Kwiatkowski

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. I regarded my military vocation as interesting, rewarding and apolitical. 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 we had all sworn to uphold. Ben Franklin's comment that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia had delivered "a republic, madam, if you can keep it" would come to have special meaning.

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.

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Proving that the truth is indeed the first casualty in war, neoconservative member of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle called this February for "heads to roll." Perle, agenda setter par excellence, named George Tenet and Defense Intelligence Agency head Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby as guilty of failing to properly inform the president on Iraq and WMD. No doubt, the intelligence community, susceptible to politicization and outdated paradigms, needs reform. The swiftness of the neoconservative casting of blame on the intelligence community and away from themselves should have been fully expected. Perhaps Perle and others sense the grave and growing danger of political storms unleashed by the exposure of neoconservative lies. Meanwhile, Ahmad Chalabi, extravagantly funded by the neocons in the Pentagon to the tune of millions to provide the disinformation, has boasted with remarkable frankness, "We are heroes in error," and, "What was said before is not important."

Now we are told by our president and neoconservative mouthpieces that our sons and daughters, husbands and wives are in Iraq fighting for freedom, for liberty, for justice and American values. This cost is not borne by the children of Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld and Cheney. Bush's daughters do not pay this price. We are told that intelligence has failed America, and that President Bush is determined to get to the bottom of it. Yet not a single neoconservative appointee has lost his job, and no high official of principle in the administration has formally resigned because of this ill-planned and ill-conceived war and poorly implemented occupation of Iraq.

Will Americans hold U.S. policymakers accountable? Will we return to our roots as a republic, constrained and deliberate, respectful of others? My experience in the Pentagon leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq tells me, as Ben Franklin warned, we may have already failed. But if Americans at home are willing to fight -- tenaciously and courageously -- to preserve our republic, we might be able to keep it.

Link to one of the most remarkable documents published in the past five years:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/index4.html

One must ask, with all the information and all the evidence of illegal actions, how anything but the facts that Bush launched a premeditated, illegal war on Iraq and persisted with an illegal occupation of that country, were not the sole focus in the 2004 National Election.

Col Kwiatkowski and Sibel Edmonds would have been more than adequate spokespersons in mobilizing the Nation to not just reject candidate Bush, but indict him.

Isn't it time for every citizen who has any interest in the Republic to stand with Col Kwiatkowski and Sibel Edmonds and file charges against Bush, Cheney, Rice, Perle, et al?

Isn't it time for Congressman Conyers to begin receiving massive support from the super-stars like Roberts and Aniston and Stone and ..., thereby mobilize a national recall and a nation-wide legal action against these bona fide war criminals. Specifically:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3901952&mesg_id=3902103

We don't need to wait for impeachment.

We should just charge them in a court of law for murdering our sons and daughters, our fathers and mothers, our brothers and sisters in what the entire world recognizes as an premeditated war of aggression, and illegal occupation of another nation.

Isn't it time?

Let us turn to the words of Rev Martin Luther King, Jr. for crystal clear perspective:

"There is a right side and a wrong side in this conflict (civil rights) and the government does not belong in the middle." - Why We Can't Wait 1963

"For years now I have heard the word, 'Wait!' It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never'. . . justice too long delayed is justice denied." -Letter from a Birmingham Jail 1963

"The ultimate tragedy of Birmingham was not the brutality of the bad people, but the silence of the good people." Why We Can't Wait -1963

There is a right side and a wrong side to the destruction of America and the illegal war and atrocities being conducted in its name by Bush and the neoconsters.

WE THE PEOPLE do not belong in the middle.

Let us go to our courts and file charges against the anti-American, international war criminals. Let us prosecute them and let us bring justice to all those who have suffered as a result of their heinous crimes against humanity.

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - "Why We Can't Wait"

[stillcool]

1. nominated...... n/t

[understandinglife]

2. Paul R Loeb on "More Damning Than Downing Street" and a reference link

A DU thread that I am steadily expanding with information on the illegal war and occupation of Iraq can be found here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3885693

And, I am posting one item, here, that I received in an email today from Paul Loeb. It is an excellent summary of several relevant items in the context of the DSM. He gave me permission to reproduce it, in full, at DU.

MORE DAMNING THAN DOWNING STREET

By Paul Rogat Loeb

20 June 2005

It’s bad enough that the Bush administration had so little international support for the Iraqi war that their “coalition of the willing” meant the U.S., Britain, and the equivalent of a child’s imaginary friends. It’s even worse that, as the British Downing Street memo confirms, they had so little evidence of real threats that they knew from the start that they were going to have manufacture excuses to go to war. What’s more damning still is that they effectively began this war even before the congressional vote.

With Congressman John Conyers holding hearings, the media are finally starting to cover the Downing Street memo. This transcript of a July 23, 2002 British Prime Minister's meeting, whose legitimacy the British government confirms, details their response to the Bush administration’s intention to go to war against Iraq, no matter how Saddam Hussein responded, and even while claiming they were still seeking peaceful solutions. “It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided,” states the document. “But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.” As the document states, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

The document is damning, particularly coupled with the testimony of former Bush ghost-writer Mickey Herskowitz that Bush was talking about invading Iraq as early as 1999. But it’s even more disturbing as we start learning that this administration began actively fighting the Iraq war well in advance of the March 2003 official attack--before both the October 2002 US Congressional authorization and the November United Nations resolution requiring that Saddam Hussein open the country up to inspectors.

I follow Iraq pretty closely, but was taken aback when Charlie Clements, now head of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, described driving in Iraq months before the war “and a building would just explode, hit by a missile from 30,000 feet –‘What is that building?’” Clements would ask. “’Oh, that's a telephone exchange.’” Later, at a conference at Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base, Clements heard a U.S. General boast “that he began taking out assets that could help in resisting an invasion at least six months before war was declared.”

Earlier this month, Jeremy Scahill wrote a powerful piece on the website of The Nation, describing a huge air assault in September 2002. “Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace,” Scahill writes. “At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist.”

Why aren’t we talking about this? As Scahill points out, this was a month before the Congressional vote, and two before the UN resolution. Supposedly part of enforcing “no fly zones,” the bombings were actually systematic assaults on Iraq’s capacity to defend itself. The US had never declared war. Bush had no authorization, not even a fig leaf. He was simply attacking another nation because he’d decided to do so. This preemptive war preempted our own Congress, as well as international law.

Most Americans don’t know these prewar attacks ever happened. There was little coverage at the time, and there’s been little since. The bombings that destroyed Iraq’s air defenses were under the radar for both the American media and American citizens.

If coverage of the Downing St memo continues to increase, I suspect the administration will try to dismiss it as mere diplomatic talk, just inside baseball. But they weren’t just manipulating intelligence so they could attack no matter how Saddam Hussein responded. They weren’t only bribing would-be allies into participation. They were fighting a war they’d planned long before. They just didn’t bother to tell the American public.


Paul Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (Basic Books), named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and American Book Association. See http://www.theimpossible.org/ You can read more about the Downing St memo at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - STOP THE ATROCITIES; PROSECUTE BU$H AND ALL THE OTHER WAR CRIMINALS

[hiley]

3. excellent post

as always understandinglife.

[understandinglife]

4. June 16 2005: "dKos interview with Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski"

"The Downing Street Memo confirms what I witnessed and have been writing about... It all fits, and should lead to a deluge of related documents and witnesses."

Link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/16/134133/271

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(I'm just posting a portion of the final exchange in a long interview by kossack 'alysheba')

alysheba: If you had an opportunity to address the families of every soldier killed in Iraq, what would you tell them?

Karen Kwiatkowski: Many deaths in many wars are pointless and in the end serve only as unnecessary sacrifices and individual tragedies in vain pursuit of some misguided government policy. Rudyard Kipling said it a hundred years ago, with his Epitaph: "If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied."

That's not very comforting.

My heart goes out to these families, and they have a right to expect accountability and honesty from the President and the Congress. They should insist that the President go ahead and for the very first time, honestly explain why we are in Iraq.

It is about nationally directed economics (not the free market), guaranteed noncompetitive American contracts, puppet governments, .... It is about changing our military footprint out of Saudi Arabia into a more central and convenient, operationally cost-effective Iraq. It's about how Bush feels in being a "War President" - a big change from his alcohol-drenched and cocaine-satiated days in the Air National Guard. It's about never having to read an intelligence report that challenges your preconceptions or disrupts your agenda.

I cannot imagine their pain, and it breaks my heart.

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - WE THE PEOPLE .... MUST DISRUPT THE AGENDA OF THE WAR CRIMINAL BUSH AND HIS NEOCONSTER BUDDIES

[Daphne08]

5. I've been following the writings of Karen Kwiatkowski,

and they've helped me understand the dynamics of our present military situation in the Middle East.

As my husband stated, "These are not Reagan Republicans."

[understandinglife]

6. June 15 2005: "Unleashing the Resistance" by K Kwiatkowski

Unleashing the Resistance

by Karen Kwiatkowski

The Downing Street Memo explains in brisk understated English what I didn’t fully understand when I worked for Secretary Rumsfeld and Dough Feith in the Pentagon in 2002 and early 2003.

Like a morning cup of tea in a friendly chair with nothing to do but gaze out a window at birds around a feeder, the memo is pleasantly comforting.

I saw accurately what was happening.

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French-born composer and musician Nadia Boulanger, a major influence on American music in the 20th century, once said:

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

The way ahead is clear. We should promote our Great Leader’s love of liberty and resist, resist, resist!

Full essay at the link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski113.html

Col Kwiatkowski, in this particular essay, views the 'mass state' of early-totalitarian America accurately and, indeed, if the only remedy is 'impeachment' then that remains remote until after a successful purge in the 2006 Congressional elections.

However, another avenue exists. The avenue of the law and the potential that at least the 59+ million Americans who voted for Kerry might be willing to exert every legal mechanism available to charge Bush and the neoconsters with what are their obvious crimes: premeditated illegal war of aggression, illegal occupation, massive human suffering including torture, destruction of property and extensive injury and death.

I'd add to the chant 'resist, resist, resist' a much more proactive 'indict, indict, indict, ..., prosecute, prosecute, prosecute.'

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - IT'S THE LAW, STUPID

[kimchi]

7. Wow.

Thomas Paine would be so proud.

[Karenina]

8. Kick!

:kick:

[understandinglife]

9. Mary Wright: "...one of three US diplomats who resigned in 2003 ..."

THE "WRIGHT STUFF" -- Downing Street Hearings
by Apian

Fri Jun 17th, 2005 at 13:28:42 PDT

WRITTEN TESTIMONY BY FORMER US DIPLOMAT AND US ARMY COLONEL MARY A. (ANN) WRIGHT ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DOWNING STREET MEMOS, JUNE 16, 2005, WASHINGTON, DC

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Two years after I resigned, the Downing Street memos have surfaced and provide a strong written basis for my concerns about the Bush policies on the war in Iraq. The July 23, 2002 Downing Street memo records the steady legal advice from the UK's Attorney General and from the Foreign Office that a desire for regime change was not a legal base of military action. The UK Attorney General said there were three possible legal bases for military action: self-defense, humanitarian intervention or United Nations Security Council authorization. But in March, 2003, the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, succumbed to political pressure and changed his legal opinion to agree with Tony Blair and the Bush administration that war could proceed without meeting any of the three criteria.

Just two days ago, I returned from a short visit in London. While I was there I met with Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the former Deputy Legal Advisor of the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Ms. Wilmshurst also resigned from her senior position in March, 2003, also in opposition to going to war in Iraq without a second Security Council resolution. She too had served over thirty years for her government. As the Deputy Legal Advisor to the Foreign Office, she led the UK delegation to set up the International Criminal Court, had been the legal advisor for the UK mission to the UN and had been a specialist on sanctions.

She said in her letter of resignation: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution. I can not in good conscience go along with the advice which asserts the legitimacy of military action without such a resolution, particularly when the unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances which are so detrimental to international order and the rule of law. My views accord with the views that have been given consistently in this office before and after the adoption of UNSC 1441 and with what the Attorney General gave us to understand were his view prior to his letter of 7 March. (The view expressed in that letter has of course changed again into what is now the official line.) Therefore, I need to leave the Office; my views on the legitimacy of a war in Iraq would not make it possible to continue my role as the Deputy Legal Advisor or my work more generally. In context with the International Criminal Court, negotiations on the crime of aggression begin again this year."

The Downing Street memos are very important as they provide evidence that solid, consistent legal judgments on the illegality of the war were overturned for political expediency. Additionally, the Downing Street memos provide information on actions the Bush administration took to provoke the Iraqi regime to respond in ways the administration would use to justify a war. According to the Downing Street memos, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld called the provocations "spikes in activity." These "spikes" were the resumption in bombing of targets in Iraq. In March 2002 no bombs were dropped on the south of Iraq but in April ten tons were dropped and increased to 54.6 tons in September, 2002, alone. But the Iraqis did not respond to the dramatic increase in bombing. No one knows how many innocent Iraqi civilians were killed by the resumption in bombing-a resumption for the sole purpose of inciting retaliation that could be used to justify an otherwise unjustifiable war. (www.hansard.org is the UK website where answers to Parliamentary questions are found, including the information on tons of bombs dropped in 2002.)

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/17/162842/918

Obviously, we all know why the US to support the International Criminal Court. It is time WE THE PEOPLE insist on the rule of law and demand that not only our elected officials and military be subject to that rule of law but that those who have clearly violated numerous laws in the illegal war on Iraq and the illegal occupation of Iraq be prosecuted.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/icc/usindex.htm

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - IT'S THE LAW, STUPID

[understandinglife]

10. Michael Smith: "key element of the minutes is ... to use the UN ...."

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When asked whether or not the efforts by the US and UK to seek UN support for the war, subsequent to the events of the DSM, are indeed a debunking of the information contained in the memo/minutes - Michael Smith pointed out twice that the key element of the minutes is the apparent plot to use the UN as a pretext to create a legal justification for the war when none currently existed. The expectation was the Saddam would resist the re-insertion of weapons inspectors - as he had prior to the passage of resolution #1205, But how after going to the UN and getting the passage of resolution #1441, the weapons inpectors were indeed allowed back into Iraq, and contrary to UK and US expectations - as outlined by the DSM's - Saddam submitted completely to their intrusion, and thereby completely abrogated the hoped for justification for military intervention.

Inspectors did not find WMD's, but they did find and destroy hundreds of Iraqi missles which were in violation of UN Resolutions. Saddam did not resist. At this point Saddam was in complete and total compliance with resolution #1205 and #1441 as well as all relevent resolutions.

What then, was the continued justification for War? The fact is, there wasn't one. Saddam and Iraq was in compliance and had provided thousands of pages of documentation to that effect. Weapon's inspectors were back in place and doing their job.

Yet we still went to war? Why? Apparently because President Bush decided he didn't trust Saddam, and decided to forgo further diplomacy in direct violation of the October 2002 Resolution (H.J. 141) authorizing War in Iraq as a last resort.

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From: MSNBC: Taking the DSM to the next level
by Vyan
Tue Jun 21st, 2005 at 00:29:28 PDT

Link to full report:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/21/32928/8471

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - INDICT AND PROSECUTE BUSH AND HIS FELLOW WAR CRIMINALS; WE THE PEOPLE ... MUST DO JUST THAT

[cthrumatrix]

11. using the UN and then running when they say no --- brilliant

[LightningFlash]

12. Great article. Nominated!

:thumbsup:

[savannahana]

13. kick for each courageous person who speaks out relentlessly

no matter what they personally may have to lose

:kick: