Program Notes for Left Out (April 13, 2004)

Listen

• Track 1: Streaming, Download
• Track 2: Streaming, Download

Guest: Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (USAF, ret.)

Brief biography, from Military Week:

Karen Kwiatkowski recently retired from the active duty USAF as a Lieutenant Colonel. Her final assignment was as a political-military affairs officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy, in the Sub-Saharan Africa and Near East South Asia (NESA) Policy directorates.

During Col. Kwiatkowski's time at NESA, she worked the North Africa desk, in the sister office to the Office of Special Plans. Prior to the Office of Secretary of Defense assignment, she served on the Air Force Staff, Operations Directorate at the Pentagon, the staff of the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade, Maryland, and served tours in Alaska, Massachusetts, Spain and Italy.

Col. Kwiatkowski has an MA in Government from Harvard, and MS in Science Management from the University of Alaska, and has completed both Air Command and Staff College and the Naval War College seminar programs. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Catholic University in World Politics (ABD), pursuing a dissertation on Overt/Covert War In Angola: A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine.

Col. Kwiatkowski has authored two recent books on African issues, African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000) and Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001) and several papers.

She teaches online classes with the University of Maryland University College and American Public University System, and is an adjunct faculty in Political Science with James Madison University.

Col. Kwiatkowski lives on a small farm in western Virginia with the husband and four children, ages 12, 15, 17 and 19. She is a regular contributor to LewRockwell.com, and has had articles about her work with the Department of Defense published recently in the American Conservative.

Recently published books by Ronald Suskind and Richard Clarke have provided first-hand accounts of the Bush administration's handling of the 9/11 attacks, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War. While shocking to many, little of what they report is new, but was simply ignored (or, worse, systematically obscured) by the main-stream news sources in the U.S. Until recently the American press have served primarily as an outlet for the Bush administration's propaganda, neglecting their duty to investigate the truth behind the claims. As a case in point, the writings of career USAF officer Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski from inside the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Policy directorate have been almost completely ignored in the United States --- the main exception being coverage by Knight-Ridder newspapers throughout the Iraq War. We are honored today to have as our guest Lt Col. Kwiatkowski (ret) on Left Out.

Discussion points for Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski:

• Personal: what were your personal goals in becoming a military officer? Were you an Air Force Academy cadet? After twenty years in the military, what would you say that you've learned, both good and bad, in the process?
• Background: the run-up to the Iraq War. What is your view of the situation from inside the Pentagon, and what prompted you to start writing about it (at first anonymously, then publicly).
• What's the real story of the invasion of Iraq? What is your view of the Bush administration's true motives and plans for Iraq? How do you see this developing in the next year, five years, ten years?
• What is your view of the current situation in Iraq? Is the recent violence a sign of what's to come? What can or should the U.S. do to manage a bad situation? What would you do if you were Secretary of Defense?
• What do you think about the use of private contractors (mercenaries) in Iraq, or, more broadly, Rumsfeld's apparent plans to privatize much of the military's operations?

Links to stories by (or featuring) Kwiatkowski.

• 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. By Karen Kwiatkowski, from salon.com.
• The Lie Factory    Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war. By Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, from Mother Jones.
• A collection of Kwiatkowski's columns  from lewrockwell.com
• A collection of Kwiatkowski's columns  from militaryweek.com

Sources

Truth Out
Common Dreams
Information Clearinghouse
Cursor
Tom Paine
The Independent
The Guardian