Thursday, March 01, 2007

Pentagon Whistle-Blower on Iran

Truthout's James Harris interviews Lt.Col Karen Kwiatkowski, USAF(ret.). If you watched the award-winning documentary, "Why We Fight" you may remember her as the outspoken critic of the pentagon who gave insider information about the 'fluffing' of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Since her retirement, she has become prolific in her writings condemning the war in Iraq and in this interview comments how the same 'cherry-picking' may be going vis-a-vis Iran. Oftentimes I skip over reading pieces regarding the 'intel' coming out of Iran when it comes from BushCo, because I basically assume it's a pack of lies. The Bush that cried "wolf" so to speak. But Lt.Col. Kwiatkowski is someone I've read for a while and I don't agree with all of her positions (she calls herself a Libertarian), but I do think she speaks truth to power. In this short excerpt, Kwiatkowski remembers comments from a General discussing the intentions for Iraq which provides a 'set-up' for attacking Iran
We will be in Iraq, and the American people need to get with this program, we will be in Iraq like we were in the Philippines for anywhere from 20 to 30 more years. That's the time frame that we're looking at. And that is the life span of the bases that we've constructed there. Yeah, we are not leaving these bases, and a Democratic president, I don't care who they are, will keep those basses there. They will justify them and they will use them and we love that. We love it. So it's not about what the American people think is right or wrong, it's not about if we got lied to, what matters is, they did what they wanted to do, and as bush says, and as Cheney says, “it's quite the success.” And this is very frightening. Because none of this has ever been admitted to the American people, it's only been hinted at by people that know. And of course the facts speak for themself. The facts are, we are in Iraq, we have the finest military installations in the world, the newest military installations in the world, and we're not leaving them. We're not turning them over to a Shiite government, we're not turning them over to a Sunni government, we're not turning them over to a Kurdish government. We're not doing that. They are American bases. We've got our flag there. And this is kind of the way they used to do things, I guess back in the Middle Ages. Maybe the Dark Ages. A king decided he wanted to go do something, he went and did it. And this is George Bush. We call him an elected president. I mean, he's operating much as kings have operated in the past.
Read her insightful POV here.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Meanwhile, Hopey . . .

Walter Reed General Loses His Command
The Associated Press
Thursday, March 1, 2007; 2:01 PM

WASHINGTON — The Army said Thursday that the two-star general in charge of Walter Reed Army Medical Center has been relieved of command following disclosures about inadequate treatment of wounded soldiers.

Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, who was commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command as well as Walter Reed hospital, was relieved of command by Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey.

In a brief announcement, the Army said service leaders had “lost trust and confidence” in Weightman’s leadership abilities “to address needed solutions for soldier outpatient care” at Walter Reed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kiley needs to go too, but's this is a start.

Anonymous said...

Can you fix that typo "but's" for me, dollin'? (and delete this comment after?) Thankers.

HopeSpringsATurtle said...

Sorry Lotey blogger doesn't let you edit comments, it's 'delete' or nuffin'... So..I'll leave it unless you want it gone, click the little trash can at the bottom of the comment.

Thank you so much for the WR follow-up. I haven't looked into it today because it upsets me so much.

I will front-page this though so thank you.

Anonymous said...

Uh-huh. This explains just about everything (Kwiatkowski):

However, many in Congress, and certainly in this administration agree, and this is Democrats and Republicans, like the idea that we have gone into Iraq, we have built four mega bases, they are complete. Most of the money we gave to Halliburton was for construction and completion of these bases. We have probably, of the 150,000, 160,000 troops we have in Iraq probably 110,000 of those folks are associated with one of those four mega bases. Safely ensconced behind acres and acres of concrete. To operate there indefinitely, no matter what happens in Baghdad, no matter who takes over, no matter if the country splits into three pieces or it stays one. No matter what happens, we have those mega bases, and there's many in Congress and certainly in this administration, Republican and Democrat alike that really like that. Part of the reason I think that we went into Iraq was to reestablish a stronger foothold than we had in Saudi Arabia, but also a more economical, a more flexible, in terms of who we want to hit. If you want to hit Syria, can you do it from Iraq? Of course you can. And now you can do it from bases that will support any type of airplane you want, any number of troops in barracks. I mean we can do things from Iraq. And this is what they wanted. So, yeah, we don't like being lied to. But quite frankly, many people in the Congress, and certainly this administration, when they call Iraq a success, they mean it, and this is why.

Naj said...

You know, I think the, one of the big reasons that Bush and Cheney think they can do Iran is that they believe, what they're hearing from the Air Force and the Navy, two of the three main branches of our military, the two that have been left out of the glory of Iraq, you see. And those guys want a piece of the action, and so they're advertising to the Administration and publicly, I mean you can read it for yourself, the Air Force and the Navy have targets they believe they can overwhelmingly hit their targets, deep penetration, weapons, possibly nuclear weapons,

Spoooky. this is EXACTLY what I was thinking today!