Pentagon
Whistle-Blower on
the
Coming War With Iran
Transcript:
James
Harris:
This is TruthDig. James Harris sitting down with Josh Scheer, and on the phone
we have a special guest. She is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, formerly
working for the Pentagon, The National Security Agency. Needless to say, she
knows a lot about intel and a lot about what took place and what went on before
we went into Iraq and what went on with that
intel. Many questions have been asked in recent weeks, obviously in recent years
about what we knew, what was fabricated, what was made up. On the phone we have
somebody who has been vociferous in her effort to out the wrongdoings of people
like Douglas Feith and people like Donald Rumsfeld. So, Karen Kwiatkowski,
welcome to TruthDig.
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Thanks for having me.
James
Harris:
It's our pleasure. I want to start, not talking about Douglas Feith, but I want
to get your opinion about Iraq. We know that British troops and
Tony Blair have decided that they're out. We've seen the commitment of other
nations drop by 17 countries and our biggest partner, England, is now
out. Why do you think they're out and Bush is still in? Well we know why Bush is
still in. Why now?
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
It is towards the end of Tony Blair's long, long term of duty there as the Prime
Minister. And the other thing is, the British very much oppose, in spite of the
fact that there are some Murdoch newspapers in Great Britain,
some conservative papers, pseudo conservative I should say, not truly
conservative. Truly conservatives, true conservatives have opposed this venture
form the beginning. But in spite of the small, loud pro-war faction in London, most people in Britain
recognize this for what it is. They have some experience in this kind of thing
with, both in Middle East, particularly in Iraq years ago
when they left in dishonor. LAUGHS Another time when they tried to occupy
Baghdad, years and years ago, and also their
experience with terrorism and movements of independents or what have you with
Ireland, much more recent
memory for many of the people in Great Britain. I don't think
Britain's economy can afford it.
Certainly they see the writing on the all, why get, why not get out now while
George Bush is still there than be stuck with, stuck holding the bag when a
Democratic president takes over and pulls the troops out abruptly in 2008, 2009.
So I think there's many reasons why they're doing it. Some people say it is, it
is because of Tony Blair's concern over his legacy. If he doesn't bring the
troops home, his legacy will be that he left Britain in a
quagmire. They are in a quagmire now and maybe he doesn't want to leave office
with that being on his record. Mainly it's the right thing to do, the people of
Britain want those troops home. And I
guess their government is listening. Unlike ours.
James
Harris:
The highly speculative people have said they're out because we're going into
Iran. You might've read the
news…
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Well yeah, I don't… I had not seen that connection made, but I certainly am
alarmed at the daily signs that indeed this country is getting ready to
instigate an attack on Iran. All the signs are there, the
suggestions that Iranian bombs are killing American soldiers, that's not true,
but it's certainly been made in, I think every American newspaper, the
suggestion that Iran is somehow killing Americans.
The suggestion that Iran has nuclear weapons, is
imminently close to nuclear weapons. That is not true but that's been, those
claims are made, even by this Administration. The idea that we have two carrier
battle groups currently in the region and in fact I just saw today, Admiral
Walsh, one of the big guys in the Navy said that we're very concerned about what
Iran is doing even more so than Al Qaeda. So there, all the signs are there that
we are being, we're going to wake up one morning soon, very soon, and we will be
at war with Iran. We will have bombed them in some sort of shock and awe
campaign destroying many lives and setting back US relations even further than
we've already done it with Iraq.
Josh
I want to continue on Iran. You spent obviously many years
in the military and you talk in those kind of terms that many people maybe not
know about. Can we not just politically, and not just in the region, but can we
support another war in another country? Right now we're in Afghanistan, we're in Iraq. Can we
feasibly actually go into Iran, or is this going to be a shock
and awe campaign?
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
You know, I think the, one of the big reasons that Bush and Cheney think they
can do Iran is that they believe, what they're hearing from the Air Force and
the Navy, two of the three main branches of our military, the two that have been
left out of the glory of Iraq, you see. And those guys want a piece of the
action, and so they're advertising to the Administration and publicly, I mean
you can read it for yourself, the Air Force and the Navy have targets they
believe they can overwhelmingly hit their targets, deep penetration, weapons,
possibly nuclear weapons, I mean, nothing is off the table as Dick Cheney is off
the table, Dick Cheney says “nothing is off the table.” And the delivery of
these weapons, whether they're conventional or nuclear will be naval and Air
Force. They'll be Navy from the sea and Air Force form long range bombers and
some of the bases that we have around the… so I don't think, certainly, I don't
know, I'm not in the Army, wasn't in the Army, I was in the Air Force, I don't
think the Army could support any type of invasion of Iran and they wouldn't'
want to. I'm sure that they've, they've had enough with Iraq and our
reserves are in terrible condition. We've got huge problems in the Army and in
the Reserve system. So I don't think there's any intention to go into
Iran, but simply to destroy it and to
create havoc and disruption and humanitarian crisis and topple perhaps the
government of [Ahmadinejad]. We want to topple that government. Yeah, we'll do
it with bombs from a distance. I don't know if you call that shock and awe,
we've been advertising it for a long, long time. It will not be a surprise to
the Iranians if we do it.
James
Harris:
That was your former boss, the shock and awe campaign. I'm still shocked and I'm
awed.
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
[laughs] He shocked and awed all of us.
James
Harris:
As a means of understanding the level of deceit that you claim took place and I
agree took place before the war. Because it, the things that are going on in and
around Iran sound a lot like the things that went on in
2002…
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Sure do.
James
Harris:
And I always note Scott Ritter, because I spoke to him, and I couldn't believe
that we didn't take the advice of people like him that were saying that there's
nothing there, there's nothing. Can you describe for us a typical day, if we
went in around March, we're approaching that anniversary, we went in around
March of ‘03. What was it like in The Pentagon?
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Well, I worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and up until mid
February I was in Near East South Asia, which is the office that owns the Office
of Special Plans, they were our sister office. And so Iraq is one of
the areas. And there's a great degree of excitement, there's a, we didn't know
when we would invade Iraq, and many people thought it would be in February, late
February, early March and it actually was like I think march 23 is when we
actually conducted that attack on Baghdad and that kind of thing. Most people in
the Pentagon, there's 23,000 people worked in the Pentagon. Most of those people
were as in the dark as any of the Americans. They believed what they read in the
papers, and what they read in the papers, particularly The New York Times and
The Washington Post had been, for the most part, planted by The Administration.
We know this now, the whole Congress knows this now, they've had a number of
hearings publicly faltered, I think even the DODIG just recently faltered, Doug
Feith and his whole organization for planting and mis-, providing misleading
stories, many of which were later leaked on purpose to the press. A friendly
press, of course, Judith Miller was not, was not hostile to the intentions of
this administration. They wanted to go into Iraq, and they intended to go into
Iraq. We did go into
Iraq, and all that was really needed
was to bring onboard the American people, and to bring onboard the Congress. But
not necessarily to declare war. Congress has never been asked to declare war on
Iraq. And they won't be asked to
declare war on Iran even though we will conduct that
war. These guys had an agenda. In fact, one of the things that I did learn as a
result of having my eyes opened in that final tour in the Pentagon is that
neo-conservatives, their foreign policy is very activist, you could say that's a
nice way to say it, very activist, it's very oriented towards the Untied States
as a benevolent dictator, a benevolent guiding hand for the world, particularly
the Middle East. And it's very much a pro-Israel policy, and it's a policy that
says, we should be able to do whatever we want to do, if we see it in our
interest. Now, Americans don't see any value, most Americans, 75 percent of
Americans want the troops home now. They don't see any value to having our
troops in Iraq. They didn't see any value in
that in 2002. But, they had a story sold to them, which was of course that
Saddam Hussein somehow was involved with 9/11, had WMDs, and was a serious
threat, an imminent threat, a grave threat to the United
States.
James
Harris:
For those people that think somehow that government officials, even though you
work for the government, were complicit in this effort to move into
Iraq. I want you to be clear, as a
worker there, you were doing what you thought was right at the time. Is that a
safe thing to say?
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
We were doing, I'll tell ya, there's two parts of how the story is sold, how the
propaganda was put forth on the American people, and how it's been put forth on
them today in terms of Iran. You have political appointees
in every government agency, and they switch out every time you get a new
president, and that's totally normal. Usually those, the numbers increase after
every president, they always get a few more. So Bush was no different. He
brought in a number of political appointees: Doug Feith, certainly Rumsfeld and
Wolfowitz. But also a number of political appointees at what you would call a
lower level, like my level - Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel level. And they're
not military officers, they're civilians. And they're brought in, and this is
where the propaganda was kind of put together, this is where the so-called
alternative intelligence assessments were put together by the civilian
appointees of the Bush Administration. Most of which, in fact, probably all of
the Pentagon shared a neo-conservative world vision, which has a particular role
for us, and that included the topping of Saddam Hussein, and it includes the
toppling of the leadership in Tehran. These guys are the ones doing it, they're
doing it. They're putting all the propaganda, they're spreading stories,
planting stuff in the media. They're doing that to people in The Pentagon, the
civil, the Civil Service core in The Pentagon, which is about half of them, and
the other half which are uniformed military officers serving anywhere from three
to four, five years, sometimes tours in The Pentagon. We're looking at regular
intel, we're looking at the stuff the CIA and the DIA, Defense Intelligence
Agency produces. And that stuff never said, that stuff never said Saddam Hussein
had WMDs, had a delivery system, was a threat to the United States.
It never said that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11 or that Saddam
Hussein worked with Al Qaeda. That intelligence never said
that.
James
Harris:
Did they tell you to shut up?
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Absolutely! [Laughs] That's a funny thing, and of course, here's how it worked.
Once the Office of Special Plans was set u formally, now they were informally
set up prior to the fall of 2002, but formally they became an office with office
space and that whole bit. And the first act to follow that setup of the Office
of Special Plans, we had a staff meeting, and our boss, Bill Ludy, who was the
boss of Special Plans technically, not in reality but on paper. And he announced
to us that from now on, action officers, staff officers such as myself and all
my peers, at least in that office, and I presume this went all the way through
the rest of policy, but we were told that when we needed to fill in data,
putting it in papers that we would send up, doing our job, as we did our daily
job, we were no longer to look at CIA and DIA intelligence, we were simply to
call the Office of Special Plans and they would send down to us talking points,
which we would incorporate verbatim no deletions, no additions, no modifications
into every paper that we did. And of course, that was very unusual and all the
action officers are looking at each other like, well that's interesting. We're
not to look at the intelligence any more, we're simply to go to this group of
political appointees and they will provide to us word for word what we should
say about Iraq, about WMD and about terrorism.
And this is exactly what our orders were. And there were people [Laughs] a
couple of people, and I have to say, I was not one of these people who said,
“you know, I'm not gonna do that, I'm not gonna do that because there's
something I don't like about it, it's incorrect in some way.” And they
experimented with sending up papers that did not follow those instructions, and
those papers were 100 percent of the time returned back for correction. So we
weren't allowed to put out anything except what Office of Special Plans was
producing for us. And that was only partially based on intelligence, and
partially based on a political agenda. So this is how they did it. And I'll tell
you what, civil servants and military people, we follow orders, okay. And we buy
into it. And we don't suspect that our leaders are nefarious, we don't suspect
that. They, they quite frankly have to go a long way to prove to us that they
are nefarious. That's how it worked, and I imagine it's working much the same
way there in terms of Iran.
James
Harris:
Obviously you've been in the military for quite a while. Has this every happened
to your knowledge in any other Pentagon, where a political appointees have the
power to just control the…
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Sure, well sure, Vietnam is filled with examples. And
Daniel Ellsberg's information and his Pentagon paper that he released factual
information that contradicted what political appointees at the top of the
Pentagon were saying to Congress and saying to the American people. Yeah, this
is typical of how it works. Now, having said that, most people who serve and
wear the uniform or give a career of service to the military, whether civilian,
civil service or military, we don't think that our bosses will do that. We don't
think that our military will do that. But in fact history is full of examples of
bald-faced lies being told to sell particular agendas. Often times those agendas
include war making, certainly in Vietnam they did, under LBJ and a few
other presidents. Look at the thing that Reagan did. I mean, I actually don't
dislike Reagan, he deployed very few troops overseas, but when he went in to
that little island down there… what is the name of that island that he invaded,
Grenada. [Laughs] Remember that?
Remember the Invasion of Grenada.
JOSHUA
SCHEER:Joshua
Scheer:
All eight hours?
James
Harris:
It was a short one.
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
I mean, God, shortly thereafter, come to find out, well actually, some of the
stuff they said about the threat and the Cubans and all that wasn't really true.
So politicians and their politically appointed military leaders will lie,
historically do lie when it has to do with making war, particularly making a war
that they want. And what has happened in the Bush Administration is the war that
they want was Iraq. And the war that they want is
Iran, and the war that they
want is Syria, okay? That's the war they
want. They don't want Vietnam. I don't know why, they don't
want Vietnam, they want these places, this
is what the neo-conservatives are particularly interested in. So we have war.
And they make up stories and we're seeing the exact same thing in terms of
Iran, which is quite alarming because
it seems as if we can't stop this, we can't prevent this.
Josh:
You were talking about these political appointees and pushing us into war. Why
haven't people like Paul Wolfowitz, I mean these guys seem to feather their own
nests.
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
[Laughs] That's an understatement.
Josh:
They lead us into war, Mark Zell, Doug Feith's partner was in bed with Chalabi.
It falls apart and then it seems that these guys disappear into the woodwork.
What happens?
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Well, a big part of what happens is these guys have top cover, the names of the
top cover are Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. These guys like what Wolfowitz has
done. And here's the other thing. While we as American citizens do not like
being lied to, particularly being lied to into a stupid quagmire that makes no
sense. We don't' like being lied to. Congress doesn't like being lied to.
However, many in Congress, and certainly in this administration agree, and this
is Democrats and Republicans, like the idea that we have gone into
Iraq, we have built four mega bases,
they are complete. Most of the money we gave to Halliburton was for construction
and completion of these bases. We have probably, of the 150,000, 160,000 troops
we have in Iraq probably 110,000 of those folks
are associated with one of those four mega bases. Safely ensconced behind acres
and acres of concrete. To operate there indefinitely, no matter what happens in
Baghdad, no
matter who takes over, no matter if the country splits into three pieces or it
stays one. No matter what happens, we have those mega bases, and there's many in
Congress and certainly in this administration, Republican and Democrat alike
that really like that. Part of the reason I think that we went into
Iraq was to reestablish a
stronger foothold than we had in Saudi Arabia, but also a more
economical, a more flexible, in terms of who we want to hit. If you want to hit
Syria, can you do it from
Iraq? Of course you can. And now you
can do it from bases that will support any type of airplane you want, any number
of troops in barracks. I mean we can do things from Iraq. And this
is what they wanted. So, yeah, we don't like being lied to. But quite frankly,
many people in the Congress, and certainly this administration, when they call
Iraq a success, they mean it, and
this is why.
We're
in Iraq to stay. And can we strike
Iran from Iraq? Well, I
don't know if we'll do that next week, but we can.
James
Harris:
We're there to stay in the sense that even, let's say somebody takes office in
await, do you think that we're gonna be occupying those bases
still?
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Absolutely! And we don't even have status of forcive 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 was Jerry Bremer's predecessor
(Jay Garner?) 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 basses 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 themself. 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.'”
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
that's right, and over the money. “Get back to work.” We're using these, we use
these bases, we use these people, the country, it matters not one whit to
us.
James
Harris:
With all we see in the news on a daily basis, is there any reason to hope? Every
day I lose more and more sleep, about soldiers who are dying. You're talking
about being there another 30 years. How many more soldiers are going to be
injured and killed? How much more money is this war going to
cost?
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Well the money, yeah, sure, the money's a problem. The number of soldiers being
killed will probably actually reduce in many ways because we will withdraw to
our bases and we will not interface with Iraqis who hate us. This idea of what
they're doing right now, this so called three-block program, let's meet more
Iraqis so they'll like us, that's totally for show. The more Iraqis meet us, the
more they hate us. So I actually do think though, over time, fewer Americans
will die, and look how easily, look how easily this country has accepted the
loss of those 3,200 soldiers that have died. I think something like 90 women,
maybe more have died, mothers [Laughs] mothers of children. They've died, and
America has eaten it up, we have not
complained one bit. They're spread out over 50 states, hey, it's no big deal. So
I think we can certainly, as a country, accommodate future deaths and I think
the death rate will drop. The problem is, it's immoral, it's illegal, it
engenders hatred for Americans, contempt for Americans. It makes every American
in the world a target for terrorism. It's just plain wrong, it's
unconstitutional. I mean, there's a lot of problems with it. Dead Americans,
unfortunately doesn't seem to be the problem for most of us, which is a shame.
We don't like looking at ugly people, I will say that. And we're seeing a lot of
folks come back pretty deformed, mentally and even more obviously physically,
deformed from their experiences in Iraq. And I think that could, that
might give, I hate to say give hope, but realize the real moral price that we're
paying for this, that that can help. But quite frankly, I have no hope of us
leaving Iraq. I think the intention was for
us to put bases there, to stay there, operate militarily from there. And I think
that's what we're going to do, Democrat, Republican, Independent, I can't
imagine anybody but Ron Paul, if you elect Ron Paul as president, those bases
will be closed down. Otherwise…
James
Harris:
Or Dennis Kucinich.
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Or Kucinich, there you go, Kucinich would do it too. So these are the guys we
are able to elect, but chances are, I hate to say, the machine is not behind
these men. So yeah, we got a problem. Now is there anything optimistic? Yeah.
I'm a God fearing Christian. God has the power. How He might express that, I
don't know. But yeah, can the average American do anything about it? I'm just
not, I'm pretty not very, I'm not optimistic, I'm pessimistic that any single
American can do much to prevent what seems to be going to happen here, attacking
Iran and also this terrible thing we've done to Iraq which I think will continue
to go on for many years. It will fester, fester for many
years.
James
Harris:
I'm one that believes the price of terrorism, I'm interested to get your
perspective on this as one who watched us engage on this terrorist enemy, an
enemy like we'd never seen before, at least from a military standpoint. I look
at terrorism, and I see it tearing us apart. And in a lot of ways I look at it
and say, we've already lost this war because we now have a president who's
bending the Constitution. We're looking over our shoulders. We question our
whereabouts. This whole thing that went on in Boston with the advertisement, “is it a bomb?”
There's always that question. Perhaps the goal of Osama, perhaps the goal of
these people was to make us afraid, and they've succeeded at that. My question
to you is, in your mind, what is the true price of terrorism been for
you?
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
The military has been broken in most respects into the extent that it worked, it
worked because it's a mercenary force. We were so contracted out, we hired
people that are beyond the law, that are not accountable to rules of war. And
that's how we function. So the whole military system, the idea of a defensive
force, forget it, that's done with. Constitution has been hurt by many
presidents, but this president has done huge damage to understanding of the
Constitution, its idea that it should restrain presidential power, that we
should be conservative, small “c” conservative when we go out and engage in
these adventures, the Congress has the right to declare war, we've ignored that
for many decades. Just continued down that path. Te idea that the Bill of Rights
is an option, the Bill of Rights is a set of suggestions has become almost
mainstream belief. And this is terrible, this is a terrible thing. But I don't
think Osama Bin Laden did that. Terrorism is, obviously it has a political
intent, but terrorism almost always, in fact I think in every case, when the
political solutions are offered, when the politics change, when the people
themselves change, terrorism stops. Terrorism to the extent that it is a crime,
should've been treated like a crime, but instead we made it a war. Well there is
no war with terror, terrorism is a tactic, you don't make war against a tactic.
So yeah, a lot of things have happened, I don't think Osama had much to do with
it, quite frankly, I think this administration, many of the people in Washington
are quite comfortable with reduced freedoms for America and this is a good way
to get those reduced freedoms, to basically break down and deconstruct the Bill
of Rights and say, “well we didn't mean that, we didn't mean this.” It's a
problem. Our country has changed, and I think what people have to do now is kind
of stand up and separate themselves from a government to the extent that they
don't agree with it and prepare themselves for real battle. Because we are gonna
need to stand up very, I can use the word “vociferously,” I think that's what we
have to do, cause our own country is at risk, but not from terror, not from
buildings being knocked down, that's not what our country is at risk from, it's
at risk from our politics, from our abandonment of the Constitution, our
devaluing of the Bill of Rights. We've lost our freedom. Osama probably couldn't
have dreamed that George Bush would help him out so much. I don't think even
that was his intention, I don't think Osama could care less about our freedom,
Osama's issues have to do with Islam and the Holy land, Saudi Arabia, his issues
are much more narrow than anything that he's so called achieved. And I think
George Bush has achieved this in a very weak and LAUGHS debased Congress has
achieved this for this country. And so, it's a big problem. I'm quite depressed
about it. I don't really have a solution or a remedy. I think we just need to
wake up and see what's being done, and then we need to decide if we want to be a
part of it. It's like that old thing, I'm not a child of the 60s, but you're
either working to fix the problem or you are the problem.
James
Harris:
Why have the neo-cons been allowed, they're not, to me, they don't seem like the
Republicans that I grew up with.
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
No, no, they're not. And if you look at the history of neo-conservatism, it
really traces its roots, well back to Trotsky, but if you go more recent, back
to who was the guy, Senator from Boeing (Henry Jackson) they used to call him…
big Democratic, 30 year Senator out of Washington State. And Richard Perle was
on his staff, Wolfowitz I think was inspired by him. And he was a Democrat
during the Cold War. And he was a pro, or I should say strongly anti-Communist
democrat, kind of a strong defense democrat. And these guys migrated,
particularly after Jimmy Carter, because Jimmy Carter, remember, what was he
doing, he was trying to make peace. Remember that, somebody got a Peace Prize
out of it, I don't know what it was, some kind of approach between Arabs and
Israelis, and Carter was part of that. And that alienated a great many of these
folks who now we know as neo-conservatives because they have two things that
they care about, one is strong defense, for whatever reason they like that, an
activist foreign policy, and pro-Israel, no questions asked policy. So many of
these conservative, pro-defense democrats, anti-Communist democrats abandoned
the democratic party at the time of Jimmy Carter, particularly after the time of
Jimmy Carter and his summit working on Middle
East peace. And they came over to eth Republican party, and of
course they came over with a great deal of money and a great deal of political
influence and a great deal of voters. So now they're in the Republican party,
and absolutely, this happened, late 1970s. so it is not, these are not the
Republicans that we grew up thinking about, but they are in the Republican party
now. Of course the Republican party now isn't anything like what I thought it
was, it's certainly no Goldwater party, it's a party of big spending, it's a
party of corruption. What do you want me to say? They love big government, they
haven't seen a big government plan they didn't write.
James
Harris:
Henry “Scoop” Jackson was the guy you were looking for. As we
continue to search for the truth, and that's pretty much the motto of TruthDig,
we don't believe we have the answer, but we believe that we should at least be
looking for the answers. So as we approach that truth around the issues that
take place in Iraq and
perhaps Iran, we think you might be a good
friend to have close to the TruthDig family so we'd like to check in from time
to time.
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Sure, I'd be delighted, it's great fun talking. And hopefully maybe in a couple
of months some of these negative things I think are going to happen, maybe they
won't happen.
James
Harris:
Maybe we'll all be proven wrong… whatever the case…
Josh:
I'm praying for it.
James
Harris:
We're both praying, even though Josh is not a religious
man.
Josh:
Excuse me, I am a religious man.
Karen
Kwiatkowski:
Maybe we're in a foxhole together. You know what they say, there are no atheists
in a foxhole, and I think in political sense, many true conservatives and
classical liberals, people that love freedom, unlike George Bush, people that
really love freedom, we are in a foxhole. We are threatened. And so we gotta
call on every possible help we can get.
Josh:
I believe in God, I don't believe in big religion, just like I don't believe in
big government.
James
Harris:
There you go, we're in a foxhole, so we're on the same
team.
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