Karen Kwiatkowski

i am indebted to the Dark Wraith for mentioning the name Karen Kwiatkowski. i read daily several newspapers and quite a few blogs that cover politics, news, and especially the perfidy of the present administration. i had not heard this name before. a google search turned up two repositories of her commentaries, one in MilitaryWeek.com and one in Lewrockwell.com, an article in Salon, an article in LA Weekly, a piece in The American Conservative and many other links. she describes herself as conservative. she offers yet further confirmation that the administration of dear leader "fixed" the intelligence information about iraq to present a false picture.


this brief bio is at MilitaryWeek.com and the quotes are from her biweekly column there.

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

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.


What would Jesus do? 23 dec '04

"The American invasion of Iraq was based on lies, as has been the continued American occupation of her major cities. The lies put forth by the administration ought to remind Christians of those lies the Devil told Jesus up on that mountain in the wilderness. Promises of peace, whispers of wealth, visions of total control of the earth."

Of Mice and Men 05 may '05

"The modern era offers three legal rationales for war. These include self-defense, aversion of a humanitarian catastrophe, and the authorization of war under the United Nations, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The justification for invading Iraq was never self-defense or prevention of a humanitarian catastrophe. Instead, it was a strained legal interpretation of preexisting UN resolutions, combined with a persistent, but ultimately false, Bush administration insistence that Iraq was already – permanently, irrevocably, impossibly – in material breach of UN resolutions."

Just Say No ... to Empire 31 march '05

"What we really need to cast away is an unseemly fear of "enemies" that leads to our own criminal lawlessness, at home and abroad. We need to drop wrongheaded ideas of terror as only conducted by evil people, and pay more attention to that conducted by the state – ours and theirs (our torture-buddy allies comes to mind)."

Eliot Cohen, Confused Again 24 may '05

"General Myers graduated from Kansas State University and earned a Master's Degree in Business Administration from Auburn University in southern Alabama.

General Pace graduated from the Naval Academy and holds a Master's Degree in Business Administration from George Washington University.

General Abizaid graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and is distinguished by having earned a Master of Arts degree in Area Studies at Harvard University, and completing a tour as an Olmstead Scholar.

General Franks, Abizaid's predecessor was initially commissioned in 1967 without a college degree. Several years later he attended the University of Texas at Arlington and studied Business Administration. He also earned a Master's Degree in Public Administration from Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania."

I particularly like Master Degree in Business Administration as proper education for military leaders. good enough for the prez, good enough for the generals. she goes on to point out that the study of history is probably a better backround for military leadership.

the following article may be the most chilling, particularly in hindsight of fallujah.

The Iraq Solution--Coming Sooner Than You Think 16 Nov '04

"One solution is based on a Syrian case. In 1982, Asad put down a revolt in the city of Hama. The Syrian army killed 20,000 citizens and flattened the city. The Hama solution was a "demonstration" intended to deter other cities from getting similar ideas."

[snip]

"The Shia political leadership is ready, able and willing to govern their share of Iraq. Kurdish Iraq insists on at least the same self-government it had under American sponsorship since 1991, and it dreams of more. These emergent states will both grant American military basing rights, and welcome American political help as a hedge against undue neighborly influence in their formative years. Their silence at the American destruction of the heart of Sunni resistance is both deafening and educational.

The neoconservatives – ever Machiavellian – envision two Iraqs, both incredibly weak and inwardly focused, both politically vulnerable, both owing their existence to American policymakers, both agreeing to long-term American military bases and economic investment and arms sales, both bound by friendly treaties with each other and Washington, both helping mop up the Sunni Triangle in years to come."

from jon carroll at the san francisco chronicle today:

"Why are the Democrats such weenies? Howard Dean makes the unremarkable statement that the GOP is the party of white Christians, and other Democrats run and flee and say, "Oh no, oh no!" And a Republican yahoo accuses Dean of "political hate speech." Neither "white" nor "Christian" is an epithet. A glance at the videotape from last year's Republican convention indicates that both characterizations are entirely fair."

there is more. check it out. brother carroll is right on.