Antiwar.com Blog

In an interview with CNN this morning, former UN ambassador John Bolton slammed today’s deal with North Korea as a “sham,” comparing it to the agreement reached in the 1990s by the Clinton Administration.

In response to a quote from Condoleezza Rice praising the agreement, Bolton said:

“The best thing you can say about this deal is that it’s so incomplete, and that the North Koreans may yet save us from ourselves by overreaching. They violated the 1994 agreed framework because they want to have it both ways. They want to keep the nuclear program and get these economic benefits. So I’m hoping the North Koreans will come to our rescue and show they’re not really serious here about denuclearization, because I don’t think they are.” (emphasis added)

I am assuming when Bolton says “come to our rescue” he is referring to the Neocons, not humanity.

Antiwar Radio: Karen Kwiatkowski

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Ph.D. tells how she witnessed Douglas Feith and his WINEP/JINSA/AEI buddies deliberately lie the people of this country into war in Iraq.

MP3 here. (30:13)

Her best articles on the subject are here, here, here, here, and here. See also this, this and this.

My previous interviews of her here.

Karen Kwiatkowski retired from the active duty USAF as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2003. Her final assignment was as a political-military affairs officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy, in the Sub-Saharan Africa and Near East South Asia (NESA) Policy directorates.

During Col. Kwiatkowski’s time at NESA, she worked the North Africa desk, in the sister office to the Office of Special Plans. Prior to the Office of Secretary of Defense assignment, she served on the Air Force Staff, Operations Directorate at the Pentagon, the staff of the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade, Maryland, and served tours in Alaska, Massachusetts, Spain and Italy.

Col. Kwiatkowski has an MA in Government from Harvard, and MS in Science Management from the University of Alaska, and has completed both Air Command and Staff College and the Naval War College seminar programs. She also holds a Ph.D. in World Politics from Catholic University of America, with a dissertation on Overt/Covert War in Angola: A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine.

Col. Kwiatkowski has authored two recent books on African issues, African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000) and Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001) and several papers.

On a break from James Madison University, Karen teaches science to high school kids and political science at her local community college.

Col. Kwiatkowski lives on a small farm in western Virginia with the husband and four children, ages 12, 15, 17 and 19. She is a regular contributor to LewRockwell.com, and has had articles about her work with the Department of Defense published recently in the American Conservative.

Conservative Republican Congressman Walter B. Jones of North Carolina’s 3rd district has stepped forward with a solution to Bush/Cheney’s intention to start another war – this time with Iran.

Click here to listen to the mp3 of my Antiwar Radio interview of Rep. Jones from Monday, February 12, 2007.

Jones has introduced House Joint Resolution 14: Concerning the use of military force by the United States against Iran, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has so far been non-committal about supporting or letting reach the House floor for a vote.

Contact your congressman! Tell them they had better begin supporting Representative Walter B. Jones’s resolution immediately!

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES January 12, 2007

Mr. JONES of North Carolina introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

JOINT RESOLUTION

Concerning the use of military force by the United States against Iran.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. REQUIREMENTS CONCERNING THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAN.

(a) Rule of Construction- No provision of law enacted before the date of the enactment of this joint resolution shall be construed to authorize the use of military force by the United States against Iran.

(b) Requirements- Absent a national emergency created by attack by Iran, or a demonstrably imminent attack by Iran, upon the United States, its territories or possessions or its armed forces, the President shall consult with Congress, and receive specific authorization pursuant to law from Congress, prior to initiating any use of military force against Iran.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/jones_02_12_07.mp3]

Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina’s 3rd district discusses his House Joint Resolution 14, which would make it clear to the President that he may not initiate a war against Iran without a Congressional declaration of war.

MP3 here. (11:09)

In Alex Cockburn’s Counterpunch, John Walsh complains that United for Justice and Peace, the old-line leftie antiwar umbrella organization, excluded anyone hostile to the Democratic party from the platform of its latest (and smallest) Washington demonstration. Ralph Nader, who was in town, was pointedly not invited to speak, and I was surprised to learn that I was also snubbed:

There was not a single Libertarian speaker even though the Libertarians and Old Right have been far more outspoken in opposing the war than the liberal “Left.” Compare the pages of The American Conservative or Antiwar.com with the editorials of The Nation, which endorsed the pro-war Kerry candidacy in 2004. This writer tried for months to get Ron Paul, the Libertarian/Republican Congressman from Texas, now a Republican presidential candidate, invited to speak at the rally and did so also in 2005. Several of us made an appeal to get Justin Raimondo, the Libertarian editor of Antiwar.com invited to speak. We got no response from UFPJ, and still have received none. In contrast, Raimondo advertised the UFPJ demonstration in a prominent place on his web site, and he even offered to pay his own air fare to D.C. to speak. But no response was forthcoming from whatever committee decides on the speakers, a committee which is none too visible. UFPJ was just plain rude to Raimondo. In general it appears that the liberal “Left” has scant knowledge about the Libertarians and less desire to acquire it. Libertarians are just “a bunch of selfish people,” according to the PC liberals. But there are more things in heaven and earth than the very PC have dreamed of.

I actually didn’t know much about this: I’d only heard vaguely that there was some kind of effort to get me and other non-leftists on the speakers’ platform. But it wasn’t me who offered to pay the plane fare: in the face of such attitude, I say screw ’em. I know these people all too well ….

When I was an organizer for Students for a Libertarian Society, back in the 1970s, I had to sit through innumerable endless meetings of antiwar “coalitions” representing every left-wing sect and tendency on the block. And, in San Francisco, we’re talking each and every grouplet. These guys invariably use the coalition as a kind of alternate universe, in which their minuscule numbers and political significance are artificially magnified. The Revolution may not be happening in the real world, but within the confines of these innumberable conclaves of the converted, a kind of Pyrhhic “victory” can be achieved. It is this playpen atmosphere that keeps the “official” organized antiwar movement almost comically irrelevant.

I have to say that I find the style and methods of the UFJP-commie crowd uninspiring. These people are stuck in a time warp. Do they really believe demonstrations, no matter how massive, are going to stop this rotten war? This is an old paradigm that never really worked to begin with. In an age of mass communications, when it is possible to educate the American people relatively quickly, it would behoove us to come up with a manifestation of mass protest that fits both the times and this particular war. The whole model of the UFPJ protest — a single big centralized action, controlled by a near-invisible “central committee” — is an outmoded template. After all, why should we go all the way to Washington, slog about in the cold and rain (or whatever), and carry something as old-fashioned as a placard? It’s like looking at someone with an antique Model-T tootling down a superhighway. It seems to me that utilizing the information superhighway — and the apparently massive antiwar sentiment out there that the “official” movement never even thinks to reach — is the key to developing new paradigms of protest.

So, no, I don’t care about not being invited to the not-so-big antiwar demonstration: I have no interest in becoming an unofficial adjunct of the Democratic party, nor in building any organization that pursues such a stupidly sectarian strategy. All I know is that I reach more people with a single edition of “Behind the Headilnes” than they managed to drag to Washington, and, in that, believe me, I take absolutely no satisfaction whatsoever.

Ever notice how many of those who are the keenest to torture and kill can’t take the slightest criticism? Doug Bandow highlights a Japan Today article on how Dick “F*ck Yourself” Cheney deals with the sting of fairly obvious observations.