Karen Kwiatkowski has won the 2018 Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence award for trying to stop the “shock and awe” attack on Iraq. Kwiatkowski is featured in the film “Shock and Awe” to be shown at an awards ceremony Saturday.
By Ray McGovern
Dishonest (not “mistaken”) intelligence greased the skids for the widespread killing and maiming in the Middle East that began with the Cheney/Bush “Shock and Awe” attack on Iraq. The media reveled in the unconscionable (but lucrative) buzzword “shock-and-awe” for the initial attack. In retrospect, the real shock lies in the awe-some complicity of virtually all “mainstream media” in the leading false predicate for this war of aggression — weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Only one major media group, Knight Ridder, avoided the presstitution, so to speak. It faced into the headwinds blowing from the “acceptable” narrative, did the investigative spadework, and found patriotic insiders who told them the truth. Karen Kwiatkowski, who had a front-row seat at the Pentagon, was one key source for the intrepid Knight Ridder journalists. Karen tells us that her actual role is accurately portrayed by the professional actress in the Rob Reiner’s film “Shock and Awe.”
Other members of the Sam Adams Associates were involved as well, but we will leave it to them to share on Saturday evening how they helped Knight Ridder accurately depict the pre-war administration/intelligence/media fraud.
Kwiatkowski.
Intelligence Fraud
More recently, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper added a coda to pre-Iraq-War intelligence performance. Clapper was put in charge of imagery analysis before the Iraq war and was able to conceal the fact that there were were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In his memoir, Clapper writes that Vice President Cheney “was pushing” for imagery analysis “to find (emphasis in original) the WMD sites.”
For the record, none were found because there were none, although Clapper — “eager to help” — gave it the old college try. Clapper proceeds, in a matter-of-fact way, to blame not only pressure from the Cheney/Bush administration, but also “the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there.”
Regarding those Clapper-produced “artist renderings” of “mobile production facilities for biological agents”? Those trucks “were in fact used to pasteurize and transport milk,” Clapper admits nonchalantly. When challenged on all this while promoting his memoir at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, Clapper gave not the slightest hint that it occurred to him his performance was somewhat lacking.
Media: Consequential Malfeasance
As for the self-licking ice cream cone that “mainstream media” have become, and how they overlook little peccadillos like feeding at the government PR trough and helping Cheney and Bush attack Iraq, well — now, now — let’s not be nasty. Here’s how Jill Abramson, The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief from 2000 to 2003, while the Times acted as drum major for the war, lets Bob Woodward off the hook for his own abysmal investigative performance.
Reviewing Woodward’s recent book on the Trump White House, Abramson praises his “dogged investigative reporting,” noting that he has won two Pulitzer Prizes, and adds: “His work has been factually unassailable.” Then she (or perhaps an editor) adds in parenthesis: “(His judgment is certainly not perfect, and he has been self-critical about his belief, based on reporting before the Iraq War, that there were weapons of mass destruction.)”
Are we to believe that the Abramsons, Woodwards, et al. of the media elite simply missed the WMD deception? (Hundreds of insiders knew of it, and some were willing to share the truth with Knight Ridder and some other reporters.) Or did the media moguls simply hunker down and let themselves be co-opted into helping Cheney/Bush start a major war? The latter seems much more likely: and transparent attempts to cover up for one another, still, is particularly sad — and consequential. Having suffered no consequences (for example, in 2003 Abramson was promoted to Managing Editor of the NYT), the “mainstream media” appear just as likely to do a redux on Iran.
This is why there will be a premium on honest insider patriots, like Karen Kwiatkowski, to rise to the occasion and try to prevent the next war. Bring along your insider friends on Saturday; they need to know about Karen and about Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.
Please do come and join us in congratulating Karen Kwiatkowski and the other SAAII members who also helped Knight Ridder get the story right. (Those others shall remain unnamed until Saturday.) And let insiders know this: they are not likely to hear about all this otherwise.
Samuel Alexander Adams (June 14, 1934 – October 10, 1988), known as Sam Adams, was an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He is best known for his role in discovering that during the mid-1960s American military intelligence had underestimated the number of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers.
Date: Saturday, December 8, 2018
Time: 6:30 PM Showing of film, “Shock and Awe”
8:00 PM Presentation 17th annual Sam Adams Award
Ceremony will include remarks by Larry Wilkerson, 7th SAAII awardee (in 2009)
Place: The Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Road, NW, Washington, DC 20009
FREE: But RSVP, if you can, to give us an idea of how many to expect; email: [email protected]
ALL WELCOME: Lots of space in main conference room
Col. Kwiatkowski is a true patriot . I have never met anyone else as straight forward and honest .Congratulations Karen !
Stay at home mom Kelly Richards from New York after resigning from her full time job managed to average from $6000-$8000 a month from freelancing at home… This is how she done it
……. ghjg
???USA~JOB-START
R-E-S-P-E-C-T!
I am a big fan of documentary filmmaking, and I own practically every American doc made in the run-up and in Baby Bush’s first term, and Karen Kwiatkowski is a talking head in several of them. She came across as thoughtful and courageous. And back then, any American who had media exposure, military and civilian, had to be courageous. Rummy made sure that officers who refused to parrot the Cheney-Bush propaganda line were replaced, and media CEOs fired people like Phil Donahue and Bill Maher, whose show “Politically Incorrect” was cancelled. One way to get the truth out was via documentary films, and KK was generous with her time when filmmakers called.
I have had a copy of “Shock and Awe” for several weeks and haven’t got round to watching it yet—there’s too much important news to be caught up with at the moment. With the great American empire in slow-mo decline-and-fall, how could there not be.
Congratulations to Karen Kwiatkowski, who’s most deserving of the Sam Adams Award.
So why is it that Americans are not put down just on the know? Because of people like this women, that saw the truth. I do believe that many more Americans are like her, I can simply not come to terms with that the complete populace has been dumbed down.
Please sort it out over there, because the rest of the world has you in our sights, we are getting tired of you. When we hang our own politicians and enablers, you will know next stop is Washington.
Quite a few years ago there was an excellent film online called (I think) “Superpower” featuring a number of interviews with Karen which were very informative. The movie disappeared but is probably still available to buy.
Thank you, Mr. McGovern,
for this vitally important information regarding real reporting.
Congratulations to Ms. Kwiatkowski. Citizens must see what horrors inaccuracies in MSM produces.
Thank you, Mr. McGovern,
for this vitally important information regarding real reporting.
Congratulations to Ms. Kwiatkowski. Citizens must see what horrors inaccuracies in MSM can instigate.
Agree completely on award for Karen Kwiatkowski! I have read her articles for some time-she is a voice for critical thinking. She did stand up against the dishonesty and fraud for the lead up to the invasion for which no one has been held accountable.
We are now treated with the same dishonesty and fraud from the goons at state, nsc, prob defense (in many cases, the same actors as the Iraqi fraud, this time yemen and Iran.
But, hey, nothing succeeds in the DC pit as does total failure for past endeavors!
I believe there is problem with the discourse on the US invasion of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. That is, at the bottom of this talk seems to lie the assumption that, had Iraq actually possessed WMDs, the United States invasion would have been legally justified.
It would not have been.
The real crime at the heart of this action was the crime of aggression: the invasion of a country that, WMDs or no WMDs, was not posing an imminent threat of war against the United States, nor against any other country.
“Operation Iraqi Freedom” was a crime against the peace: a crime for which several high-placed Germans paid with their lives in 1946 at Nuremberg.
Crimes against the peace, as defined at Nuremberg, consisted of “planning, preparation, initiation or waging a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances….”
Soon after the Nuremberg Trial the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 95(1) affirming “the principles of International Law recognised by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the judgment of the Tribunal.”
“Operation Iraqi Freedom” violated the UN Charter as well as UN Security Council Resolution 1441.
As Justice Jackson said, “(L)et me make it clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn, aggression by any other nations, including those which now sit here in judgment….This trial represents mankind’s desperate effort to apply the discipline of law to statesmen who have used their powers of state to attack the foundations of the world’s peace and to commit aggression against the rights of their neighbors.”
The invasion and ongoing occupation of Afghanistan was/is a war crime as well.
As was Operation Cyclone, which began in the summer of 1979 (under Carter) and has led to nearly forty years of U.S. sponsored misery for Afghanistan.
Be well.
Indeed.
Spot on, Peter Dyer! A good reminder. Have we now become a nation of war, instead of a nation of law? Have the lawyers all been cowed?
The conclusion is inescapable: it is up to us; there is no other. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
The question? Are there enough us who take our heritage and our Constitution seriously? We’ll never know the answer UNLESS we conclude — winter-soldier-like — that, indeed, these are the times to try the souls of men and women. Karen Kwiatkowski is one woman who recognized this and proved up to the task. What does that say to the rest of us?
s a time tick their necks out and honor our oath to support and defend that Constitution. T
Thanks for all your good work, Ray–for walking the walk. Please keep it up.
For a short period of time, Operation Iraqi Freedom was actually named Operation Iraqi Liberation.
But that created a quite unfortunate, although absolutely apt, acronym. Hence ‘Liberation’ became
‘Freedom’.
I was at the dealership having the check engine light reset on my car when Fox News aired the ‘shock
and awe’ attack. (Never would have seen it otherwise). I was appalled at the rah-rah-whoopee-
look at the fireworks over Baghdad approach to the whole sad spectacle.
For a truly sobering experience, look up Dick Cheney’s interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press
yesterday (Dec. 2nd). He is looking very well. Impossible but true.
I favor a constitutional amendment requiring that any member of Congress voting for war — including any appropriation therefore — be immediately executed. Those who command others to sacrifice their lives should be willing to sacrifice their own.
Congratulations Karen!! And thank you Ray!
One of the top shelf documentaries I had on a multi-DVD set shortly after the war began was the Lt. Col.’s own work, “Hijacking Catastrophe”, which included a long, most informative dissertation on the guru of Neocons, Leo Strauss, by the recognized expert, Prof. Shadia Drury of University of Regina (capital of Saskatchewan). Kwiatkowski is a scholar as well as a stalwart, recognizing the doctrinal poison at the heart of the war criminal epidemic.
Shadia Drury is a scholar in her own right, but I agree, Kwiatkowski is as well.
Please provide a transcript of this event. Karen Kwiatkowski’s story is so important because she was right in the middle of observing the truly evil cabal in the Pentagon and foreign policy staff that destroyed Iraq. If they will never be actually punished as they deserve, let their names live in infamy as Class A War Criminals.
When democracy is lacking, as it is in the US, deceptions can be as obvious as the nose on one’s face and nobody can do anything about it. In fact deceptions are a natural product of a lack of democracy, and so we have had countless numbers of them contributing to the war racket.
They recently include (besides the Iraq WMD), 9/11 requiring a war on Afghanistan which had nothing to do with it, the protection of demonstrators in Libya leading to Libya’s destruction, the phony Syria gas attacks, the “unassisted” rise of ISIS, the Iran nuclear “ambitions,” the “freedom” of sending warships and bombers in and over the South China Sea, the “Russia threat,” etc.
The good news is that some Senators in Washington, the ones not influenced by Saudi dollars, are actually doing something besides slumbering, on Yemen.
Lt Col Kwiatkowski is proof that reasonably sane political conservatives do indeed exist.
Thank you, Mr. McGovern!
I’ve always thought that Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski would make a great first female president, perhaps on a ticket with Cynthia McKinney ….
May ALL the truth prevail !
I hope that you and yours are well.
All the best!
John W. Wright
Yes! Either Karen should run as a Republican and announce from the beginning that Cynthia will be her VP or Cynthia should run as a Democrat with Karen as her pre-announced VP. 3rd Party is not an option as Ron Paul proved because the only way to get sufficient attention on national TV is the guerrilla warfare tactic of sneaking onto major party debates and using the tiny amount of time that’s given to incite a Gulianni to demand they take back words that he and national TV have never heard before. They would have to let either Karen or Cynthia on the stage (albeit on the far end of the stage) because they are both Made-Men in the Government Mafia (ex-Lt. Colonel and ex-Congresswoman). This is our only chance to revive the Ron Paul Love-o-lution.
Sincere thanks to this woman for trying to prevent the horrific crime that was perpetrated on the world by the U.S. ruling class. I remember seeing the stories full of lies on the front pages of the Arizona Republic but then finding the truth from Knight-Ridder buried in the back pages. I’m surprised they even printed it.
Karen Kwiatkowski well deserves the award, and I wish that I could attend the ceremony in DC.
Woodward has done some good work, more recently exposing the Obama shift to warmongering, and I am glad that he has been “self-critical about his belief” in Iraq WMD. Many liberals went along with the elaborate MSM propaganda and neocon groupthink operations. But even before the fraud was exposed, there was simply no decent evidence, no case for war, and no constitutional basis for war. That was enough for any educated moral citizen.
For details see Bamford’s Pretext for War exposing how the zionist DefSec Wolfowitz appointed known Israeli agents Perle, Wurmser, and Feith to run the offices at CIA, DIA, and NSA that “stove-piped” known-bad WMD “intelligence” to Cheney et al to start a war for Israel.
Thank You Ray McGovern for the invitation, I would love to attend but I live on the left coast and the cost is prohibitive. I will however be pleased to offer my very best wishes to a true hero, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski.
One wishes that our country was smart enough to highly recognize the value of “counter point”, and that our own political class had the courage to recognize, even in retrospect, proper intelligence, both of individuals and philosophy. In a better world, the Military would acknowledge the alternative, and reward it rather than rejecting it.
Until that time, it will have to be enough to thank you Ray for showing the way and exposing severe incompetence.
As always, many thanks to Consortiumnews…
Thank You Ray McGovern for the invitation, I would love to attend but I live on the left coast and the cost is prohibitive. I will however be pleased to offer my very best wishes to a true hero, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski. One only wishes that our country was smart enough to highly recognize the value of “counter point”, that our own political class had the courage to recognize, even in retrospect, proper intelligence, both of individuals and philosophy. In a better world the Military would recognize the alternative and reward it rather than rejecting it.
Until that time it will have to be enough to thank you Ray for showing the way and exposing severe incompetence.
As always, many thanks to Consortiumnews…
Well, having read this I still don’t know what Karen Kwiatkowski did to earn the award, and since I can’t make it to Washington for the ceremony I suppose I’ll have to wait for Ray McGovern’s write-up of it, which I expect we’ll see in a few days.
I won’t, however, be going to see the Rob Reiner film to find out more. I’m saving my leisure pennies for his inevitable next project: the feature-length expansion of his short subject on how Vladimir Putin took over the U.S. without firing a shot, starring Morgan Freeman. https://investigaterussia.org/video/morgan-freeman-warns-russia-waging-war-us
(Thus we see the vital importance of determining whether the politicians trying to whip us into a xenophobic, bellicose frenzy have a D or an R after their name before we decide on a response, especially if we live in Beverly Hills.)
Just for the record, though: one didn’t have to be among the “hundreds of insiders” to know of “the WMD deception”. While I admire Kwiatkowski (I assume) and the Knight-Ridder journalists for their integrity, in terms of the basic substance their efforts were superfluous: the phoniness of what Bush and the Beltway blob were pushing was glaringly, overwhelmingly obvious in real time to *anybody* willing to give it any independent, critical attention whatsoever – even if (as with me) they never read, or even knew of, the Knight-Ridder reporting until the post-invasion hangover set in.
I try to make that point whenever I can despite – or because of – the fact that I know it will be (doubtless already is being) excluded from the textbook histories and will die with this generation.
DavidG-
I too am disgusted with Rob Reiner, Morgan Freeman, and the rest of the latte sippers of Hollywood who bought into RussiaGate, the White Helmets, and all the rest. Susan Sarandon seems to be the only one of that crowd with a brain.
Karen Kwiatkowski well deserves the award, and I wish that I could attend the ceremony in DC.
Woodward has done some good work, more recently exposing the Obama shift to warmongering, and I am glad that he has been “self-critical about his belief” in Iraq WMD. Many liberals went along with the elaborate MSM propaganda and neocon groupthink operations. But even before the fraud was exposed, there was simply no decent evidence, no case for war, and no constitutional basis for war. That was enough for any educated moral citizen.
For details see Bamford’s Pretext for War exposing how the z*****t DefSec Wolfowitz appointed known Is****i agents Perle, Wurmser, and Feith to run the offices at CIA, DIA, and NSA that “stove-piped” known-bad WMD “intelligence” to Cheney et al to start a war for Is***l.
Good point. Any thinking person could have seen through the web of deceit we were given. Critical thinking skills are not really encouraged in our decaying world though.
She won for being a source for Knight-Ridder inside the Pentagon opposing the invasion and trying to stop it, as the article says.
Ah, silly of me to express an interest in learning more.
I beg your pardon, sir!
Yeah, it’s eye-rolling when people today (or even years ago) went “well everyone thought they had WMD”. No, no, no. It was obviously a work-up, as the administration went from justification to justification (Atta in Prague, WMD, inspections violations…) in a cycle, rehashing ones that had been debunked hoping something would stick or it would be forgotten.
And the UN thing was a joke–from Bush wanting sanction for war, via in part Powell’s unconscionable BS, to then going ahead anyway. From wanting inspections to ignoring them when they found compliance, etc.
And IIRC the largest protests in the history of the planet were against the war, in no small part because we protesters recognized that a) it was entirely a war of choice, b) it’s justifications were BS, c) it was illegal, d) it would lead to utter catastrophe.
So yeah, revisionists with “well, everyone thought it would be over in a year” and “no one was lying, they truly believed this, that, the other” are infuriating.
Rumsfeld: “We know where [the WMDs] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
Would have been churlish to demand any greater detail than that. Our media are just too darn nice!
I had not seen those horrifying two minutes before. This absolute refusal to look at any facts and consider any possibility that “our” iron-clad decision that Russia is an enemy may be wrong is what is now getting even worse. The Skripal “assassins”, the “CWs of Assad” in Syria (the witnesses were not even listened to), the Ukraine provocations (no chance of even looking at a few photos to see the obvious) means that international law, the right of reply, any chance of fairness is excluded. I notice the vicious attacks on a possible Interpol chief from Russia were publicised by Bill Browder and his fellow fraudster Khodorkosky. Russia is probably now the only nation to think international law is followed!! It meticulously tries to keep to it!
David G – You’re right, of course. At the time, even someone with a single digit I.Q. (like a bush or a trump), knew that WMD was bullshite, and I was less than impressed when fellow war criminal, ‘little johnny howard’, pulled his tongue from bush’s sphincter long enough to say “how high”.
As for the morgan freeman stunt, for the most part it sounds like he’s speaking about U.$. imperialism. What an ignorant and arrogant wanker he comes across as.
Bring back a Universal Draft! The chicken hawks views will change when THEIR kids go to War.
I think even better would be to make any representative’s kid go straight to the front line infantry unless that representative voted against the war d’jour. That plus free college education for anyone who wants it would deplete the military of cannon fodder in no time.
Michael:
> Bring back a Universal Draft! The chicken hawks views will change when THEIR kids go to War.
Apart from the fact that there was never completely universal conscription in the US, let me remind you that there was a draft during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Almost the entire chicken-hawk gang of the Bush Jr. regime were all for the war on Vietnam and of conscription and combat age, at the time, but somehow none of them ever fought there… (McCaine was a special case)
What makes you think things would be different if the draft were re-instated?
“Unless warmongers are more exposed to dying than others it’s the equivalent of reckless drivers being isolated from the risks of reckless driving… [neocons] should have kept their mouths shut.” @nntaleb http://bit.ly/2DR28Cj
You are 100 percent correct! The chickenhawks should be required to be on the front line when their war commences.