"An individual can't fix a failed policy."
Carlos Pascual
[Former State Department coordinator of Iraq reconstruction and now a vice-president at the Brookings Institution.]
Why Does The Decider
Require A War Czar
For His Bloody Iraq War
That Has Become So Bizarre?
Is It To Save His Goose
From A Fateful Noose?
Is It Just One More Excuse
To Prolong A Vile Ruse?
Is It A Guileful Plan
To Prepare Us For
Is It More Lies For A Muddy Flood
To Make Waters More Crimson That Are Already Full of Blood?
JAMES HARRIS: We’re there to stay in the sense that even, let’s say somebody takes office in ‘o8, do you think that we’re gonna be occupying those bases still?
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Absolutely! And we don’t even have status of forces agreements with any legitimate government in Iraq to support those bases. They are illegal bases, okay. But yes, they’re gonna stay, absolutely, they’re gonna stay. And I’ll tell you, there are guys that have been with this administration for awhile, people, in fact one of the guys was an Air Force General that was involved with the Kurds ten years ago, he’s retired now, but he was actually the guy, his name escapes me for the moment, but he [Jay Garner] was [Paul] Bremer’s predecessor for a short period of time. And he was fired, and Bremer came in and took over in Baghdad as part of the reconstruction phase. This is in the Spring of 2003. And this guy gave an interview in Government Exec Magazine, February 2004, he said “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 bases 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 themselves. 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.
JAMES HARRIS: You called him “the war pimp” in your essay. “He’s behaving,” as you put it, “a lot like a pimp would treat a prostitute, ‘you do like I tell you to do.’”
[Note: Karen Kwiatkowski retired from the active duty USAF as a Lieutenant Colonel in early 2003. Her final assignment was in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy Near East South Asia (NESA) Policy directorate.]
[From Pentagon Whistle-Blower on the Coming War With Iran
www.truthdig.com
Feb 27, 2007]
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