So, where does 9-11 fit in?
The Lies for War Unravel By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 12 January 2004
Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski wore the uniform of the United States military for most of her adult life. In the last few years, until her retirement last April after 20 years of service, she has watched the infrastructure of American foreign policy creation rot from the inside out. Her view was not from the cheap seats, from some faraway vantage point, but from the hallways where the cancer walked and talked. Lt. Colonel Kwiatkowski worked in the same Defense Department offices where the cadre of hawkish neoconservatives that came in with George W. Bush trashed America's reputation, denigrated her fellow soldiers, and recreated the processes of government into a contra-constitutional laughingstock.
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Back in August of 2003, Kwiatkowski wrote, "What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline. 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 (in 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." She described the work of the OSP in particular as, "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress". Kwiatkowski claims, in short, that a decision to go to war had been made long before, and that these men at the OSP were fashioning justifications for that decision on the fly, and despite overwhelming evidence to suggest that war was not necessary.
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(Likewise, former Treasury Sec Paul) O'Neill describes the process of decision-making between Bush and his people as being "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people." This is not a comforting image when one imagines the deliberations of the most powerful people in the world. Yet the blind and the deaf, according to O'Neill and the 19,000 pages of memos, documents and private National Security briefings he has in his possession, were also adept liars.
Pulitzer prizewinning journalist Ron Suskind has captured O'Neill's views in a new book titled 'The Price of Loyalty.' "From the very first instance, it was about Iraq," says Suskind about his interviews with O'Neill and his review of the documentary evidence. "It was about what we can do to change this regime. Day one, these things were laid and sealed." Suskind got his hands on one Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001. The document was titled 'Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts,' and included a map of potential areas for exploration. "It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries," says Suskind, "and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq."
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http://truthout.org/docs_04/011204A.shtml
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