Karen Kwiatkowski is a former air force lieutenant-colonel who retired in 2003 after 20 years service. In her last year, she was a Middle East specialist in the office of the Undersecretary of Defence for Policy, headed by Douglas Feith.

In May 2002, Karen was transferred to the Pentagon's Near East South Asia directorate (NESA).

"From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq."

The cast of characters at OSP included:

1. Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA, former Cheney aide. He had also been a military aide to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. In close contact with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

2. David Schenker, political appointee from the Washington Institute [Washington Institute for Middle East Studies - a right-wing think tank connected to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)] and the proud author of a book on the chances for Palestinian democracy.. He was the replacement of the civilian head of the Israel, Lebanon and Syria desk office: "Word was that the former experienced civilian desk officer tended to be evenhanded toward the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, but there were complaints and he was gone.

3. Bill Bruner served as the Iraq desk officer and was also a former military aide to Speaker Gingrich. He was Ahmed Chalabi's handler. "Gingrich himself was now conveniently an active member of Bush's Defense Policy Board, which had space immediately below ours on the third floor."

4. Michael Makovsky, a recent MIT graduate who was going to work on "Iraqi oil issues." He was David Makovsky's younger brother. David was at the time a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and had formerly been an editor of the Jerusalem Post, a pro-Likud newspaper.

5. Michael Rubin, another Washington Institute [Washington Institute for Middle East Studies - a right-wing think tank connected to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)] fellow working on Iraq policy.

6. John Trigilio, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst and member of the neoconservatives' inner circlewas assigned to handle Iraq intelligence for Luti.

7. Abram Shulsky, director of the OSP. Altough ostensibly under Luti, it seemed like Shulsky's real boss was somebody like Douglas Feith or higher. This crafting and approval of the exact words to use when discussing Iraq, WMD, and terrorism [in policy papers that prepare officers for meetings, speeches, or events where they will need to communicate U.S. security policy] were, for most of us, the only known functions of OSP and Mr. Shulsky.

8. Doug Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy. Feith's inattention to most policy detail, except that relating to Israel and Iraq, earned him a reputation most foul throughout Policy.

9. Lt. Cmdr.) Youssef Aboul-Enein. [H]e would research bits of data in which Bill Luti was interested and peruse Arabic-language media for quotations or events that could be used to demonize Saddam Hussein or link him to nastiness beyond his own borders and with unsavory characters.

I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.

..[T]he public story line was a fear-peddling and confusing set of messages, designed to take Congress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war based on false pretenses, and a war one year later Americans do not really understand. That is why I have gone public with my account."

"At the time, I didn't realize that the expertise on Middle East policy was not only being removed, but was also being exchanged for that from various agenda-bearing think tanks, including the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs."

I learned that there was indeed a preferred ideology for NESA. My first day in the office, a GS-15 career civil servant rather unhappily advised me that if I wanted to be successful here, I'd better remember not to say anything positive about the Palestinians. This belied official U.S. policy of serving as an honest broker for resolution of Israeli and Palestinian security concerns. At that time, there was a great deal of talk about Bush's possible support for a Palestinian state. That the Pentagon could have implemented and, worse, was implementing its own foreign policy had not yet occurred to me.

In early winter, an incident occurred that was seared into my memory. A coworker and I were suddenly directed to go down to the Mall entrance to pick up some Israeli generals. Post-9/11 rules required one escort for every three visitors, and there were six or seven of them waiting. The Navy lieutenant commander and I hustled down. Before we could apologize for the delay, the leader of the pack surged ahead, his colleagues in close formation, leaving us to double-time behind the group as they sped to Undersecretary Feith's office on the fourth floor. Two thoughts crossed our minds: are we following close enough to get credit for escorting them, and do they really know where they are going? We did get credit, and they did know. Once in Feith's waiting room, the leader continued at speed to Feith's closed door. An alert secretary saw this coming and had leapt from her desk to block the door. "Mr. Feith has a visitor. It will only be a few more minutes." The leader craned his neck to look around the secretary's head as he demanded, "Who is in there with him?"

This minor crisis of curiosity past, I noticed the security sign-in roster. Our habit, up until a few weeks before this incident, was not to sign in senior visitors like ambassadors. But about once a year, the security inspectors send out a warning letter that they were coming to inspect records. As a result, sign-in rosters were laid out, visible and used. I knew this because in the previous two weeks I watched this explanation being awkwardly presented to several North African ambassadors as they signed in for the first time and wondered why and why now. Given all this and seeing the sign-in roster, I asked the secretary, "Do you want these guys to sign in?" She raised her hands, both palms toward me, and waved frantically as she shook her head. "No, no, no, it is not necessary, not at all." Her body language told me I had committed a faux pas for even asking the question. My fellow escort and I chatted on the way back to our office about how the generals knew where they were going (most foreign visitors to the five-sided asylum don't) and how the generals didn't have to sign in. I felt a bit dirtied by the whole thing and couldn't stop comparing that experience to the grace and gentility of the Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian ambassadors with whom I worked.

Neoconservatives march as one phalanx in parallel opposition to those they hate...I was present at a staff meeting when Bill Luti called Marine Gen. and former Chief of Central Command Anthony Zinni a "traitor," because Zinni had publicly expressed reservations about the rush to war. When General Zinni was removed as Bush's Middle East envoy and Elliot Abrams joined the National Security Council (NSC) to lead the Mideast division, whoops and high-fives had erupted from the neocon cubicles.

Instead of developing defense policy alternatives and advice, OSP was used to manufacture propaganda for internal and external use, and pseudo war planning.

War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the Congress and to the American people for this one were inaccurate and so misleading as to be false. Moreover, they were false by design.

Now we are told by our president and neoconservative mouthpieces that our sons and daughters, husbands and wives are in Iraq fighting for freedom, for liberty, for justice and American values. This cost is not borne by the children of Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld and Cheney. Bush's daughters do not pay this price. We are told that intelligence has failed America, and that President Bush is determined to get to the bottom of it. Yet not a single neoconservative appointee has lost his job, and no high official of principle in the administration has formally resigned because of this ill-planned and ill-conceived war and poorly implemented occupation of Iraq.

Will Americans hold U.S. policymakers accountable? Will we return to our roots as a republic, constrained and deliberate, respectful of others? My experience in the Pentagon leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq tells me, as Ben Franklin warned, we may have already failed. But if Americans at home are willing to fight -- tenaciously and courageously -- to preserve our republic, we might be able to keep it.