Cheney's hawks 'hijacking policy'

You're not getting the truth from the spineless American media or the 
press. Here's a reality check from the Sydney Morning Herald via the 
"T R U T H O U T " blog.

Tim Jones

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/29/1067233251576.html
Cheney's hawks 'hijacking policy'
By Ritt Goldstein
October 30, 2003


A former Pentagon officer turned whistleblower  says a  group of 
hawks in the Bush Administration, including the Vice-President, Dick 
Cheney, is running a shadow foreign policy, contravening Washington's 
official line.

"What these people are doing now makes Iran-Contra [a Reagan 
administration national security  scandal] look like amateur hour. . 
. it's worse than Iran-Contra, worse than what happened in Vietnam," 
said Karen Kwiatkowski, a former air force lieutenant-colonel.

"[President] George Bush isn't in control . . . the country's been 
hijacked," she said, describing how "key [governmental] areas of 
neoconservative concern were politically staffed".

Ms Kwiatkowski, who retired this year after 20 years service, was a 
Middle East specialist  in the office of the Undersecretary of 
Defence for Policy, headed by Douglas Feith.

She described "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive 
power and a co-optation through deceit of  a large segment of the 
Congress", adding that "in order to take that first step - Iraq - 
lies had to be told to Congress to bring them on board".

Ms Kwiatkowski said the pursuit of  national security decisions often 
bypassed "civil service and active-duty military professionals",  and 
was handled instead by political  appointees who shared common 
ideological ties.

There was speculation earlier this year that such an ideologue group 
had emerged, and that it was behind the US attack on an Iraqi convoy 
in Syria in June.

The New York Times quoted Patrick Lang, a former senior Defence 
Intelligence  Agency (DIA) official, as saying that many in the 
Government  believed the incursion was an effort by ideologues to 
disrupt co-operation between the US and Syria.

Ms Kwiatkowski said there was an extra-governmental network operating 
outside normal structures and practices, "a network of political 
appointees in key positions who felt they needed to take some action, 
to make things happen in a foreign affairs, national security way". 
She said Pentagon personnel and the  DIA were pressured to favourably 
alter assessments and reports.

In a separate interview, Chalmers Johnson, an authority on US policy, 
said that  the Administration's neo-conservatives had in effect 
seized power from Mr Bush.

Dr Johnson said the neo-conservatives had pursued an agenda outlined 
in the controversial 1992 Defence Planning Guidance. That document, 
drawn up at the direction of Mr Cheney when he was defence secretary, 
said the world's only superpower should not be cautious about 
asserting its power.