Karen Kwiatkowski, a genuine Pentagon insider, exposes in
salon.com the inside of the Office of Special Plans, the Orwelian titled office captured by the neo-cons for the sole purpose of shaping Offense (not Defense) policy of the Bush Administration in their own image.
I first heard Karen Kwiatkowski on Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! and she is not in it for book earnings, that's for sure. She is a lifelong Republican who was sickened by the atmosphere in the Pentagon and especially the Officed of Special Plans where policy is shaped by ideology. I know, it's hard to believe...yeah right.
In her own words:
From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it.
I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.
I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.
