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August 08, 2003

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The Pentagon has some explaining to do.

One of its former employees recently published an article saying: "I suggested to my boss that if this was as good as it got, some folks on the Pentagon’s E-ring may be sitting beside Saddam Hussein in the war crimes tribunals."

Air Force Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski is a former a senior Pentagon Middle East specialist who worked in the office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith until her retirement in April of this year.

This is what she has to say: "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 occupation has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense."

Kwiatkowski’s also charges that groupthink, characterized by uncritical acceptance of prevailing points of view, is the hallmark of the Bush administration’s Middle East policy development.

In a lengthy defense published in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, the associate editor of the editorial page described the Office of the Secretary of Defense as "the world’s most effective think tank".

• Karen Kwiatkowski, recently retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who spent most of her final three years of military service in the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Under Secretariat for Policy. Her articles can be found at LewRockwell.com.