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Insider Exposes Rumsfeld's Treachery
(Jim Lobe, Asia Times, August 7, 2003)
Pentagon Middle East specialist, Air Force Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith until her retirement in April. . . . "What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline," Kwiatkowski wrote. "If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam [Hussein] occupation [of Iraq] has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense [OSD]." . . . Kwiatkowski went on to charge that the operations she witnessed during her tenure in Feith's office, and particularly those of an ad hoc group known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP), constituted "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-option through deceit of a large segment of the Congress". . . . Kwiatkowski's charges are likely to make her a prime witness when Congress reconvenes in September for hearings on the manipulation of intelligence to justify war against Iraq. . . . have placed 150,000 US troops in "the world's nastiest rat's nest, without a nation-building plan, without significant international support and without an exit plan". . . . Kwiatkowski's comments echo the worst fears of some lawmakers, who have begun looking into the OSP's role in the administration's mistaken assumptions in Iraq. Some are even comparing it to the off-the-books operation run from the National Security Council (NSC) during the Ronald Reagan administration that later resulted in the Iran-Contra scandal. . . . Little is known about OSP, which was originally created by Rumsfeld and his top deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, to investigate possible links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist group. While only a dozen people officially worked in the office at its largest, scores of "consultants" were brought in on contract, many of them closely identified with the neo-conservative and pro-Likud views held by the Pentagon leadership.

posted by Lorenzo 3:37 PM