i so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy foundation, let it be an arms race is on often very dramatic development. only personally, i'm going to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful, very political time. time to sit down and talk. 2 the. 2 analysts, especially a national security agencies, are generally acknowledged to be among the leading experts in their fields. in a perfect world, they provide informed analysis to policy makers to allow those policy makers to make the best informed decisions. that's the way the system is supposed to work. but what happens when policy makers ignore the analysis even worse? what happens when policy makers discount the analysis and then seek out false

analysis to support their preconceived policies? i'll tell you what happens. it leads to war. i'm john, curiosity. you're watching the whistleblowers. the news. welcome to the whistleblowers. i'm john kerry. aku, it's no secret that the american government during the george w bush administration, made up its mind to go to war with iraq on false pretenses. the white house accused saddam hussein of building and deploying weapons of mass destruction that just simply wasn't true. the white house accused saddam hussein of being in league with some a bin laden and al qaeda. that also wasn't true. george w bush and vice president dick cheney wanted to overthrow saddam. they didn't care what the truth was. we're going to talk about how that cynical decision led to war with the was public in home and you freely entered into public service. as soon as you officer, you eventually,

and you retired after 21 years of service in the u. s. air force and at the national, secure the agency. like all national security whistleblowers, you took your oath to the constitution soon to the iraq war. you spoke out about the corruption of political iraq, tell us what that was like, what was it that led you to speak out? well, it actually started at the end of the cold war. i was in the military course and i'm at my expectations were of course that as the were so packed, had done collapsed. and the soviet union was in a soviet union anymore, that nato would actually shrink and become a much smaller um organization. and instead it was the opposite, so that surprised me. i didn't, i didn't really, i didn't really understand why that was. and then of course they launched into us and nato wars was the, was the balcony. so i was a little bit like that kind of woke me up a little bit like i expected one thing and something else happened. and i then, of course,

worked in an essay. and so the things that an essay was doing were unconstitutional, even when i was there. and, and i, in, i didn't, you know, i'm not a techie, but just some of the things that we talked about us doing. i'm, we're problem constitutional problem. and yet nobody seemed to care that that, that was an issue. we just, you know, we wouldn't talk about that, but it wasn't really an issue. and then of course, so my last tour of course was at the office, the secretary defense enough policy. and we will look, i was working north africa so we were sharing office space was the people doing the iraq and iran desks in that kind of thing. so i guess i had become a little more tired of just using the government to play your games. i mean, this is what people seem to be doing these, these public servants, these bureaucrats. i'm not so much the guys in uniform. i guess i was allied with

them and many of us would talk about, you know, none of this makes any sense. but you know, that's what they're doing. so what we're doing didn't have anything to do with national defense. increasingly i came to understand that. and then especially what i saw in those final years are as though to run up to the invasion of iraq. i saw actual because i had access to the intelligence and the information. i could look at something on my desk classified secret and top secret. and the next day i would see the exact same thing in the new york times, and i knew i didn't share it. so who was, you know, doing it and, and who was celebrating it? and, you know, we, i think it was, it had nothing to do with defense. it had to do is we have a military, let's play with it to make our own personal, which does come through and who, who these people will neocons, which had been around for a while. been around since reagan. certainly, if not sooner and on before then. and they were certainly populating the pentagon

when i worked there. and, and they stayed throughout the bush administration, they stating at the obama administration. and they are, they stayed in the trumping station of john bolton, sir, to special security advisor and, and they're in there in the biden administration. so these people who manipulate the defense institutions that are supposed to be constitutionally bound and they're supposed to serve the country. and serve the people, the people that pay for them. they don't, they don't do any that they just use those institutions. and so i guess i was, you know, when you've been in the military, you know, you've been in service for awhile. you pretty much lose patience with it. and so i, i really had overtime begun to trust my own gut and my own judgment. and it was not a problem for me to seek out ways to, to share the information that i had. it didn't even, it didn't bother me and i was eager to do it. you and i both worked with people from the defense department's office of special plans or o s p,

in the run up to the iraq war. this was an unusual and highly politicized group. in the defense department, that was led by a close former aid to vice president dick cheney by the name of bill ludy. i found ludy to be a dangerous ideologue and i think you did too. it was ludy and his cohorts in the office of special plans who pushed the idea of admit chelsea and iraqi dissident and one of the most corrupt people i have ever met in my life as a possible replacement for saddam hussein. when chela be fell apart under the weight of his own corruption, the c i dropped him. but bill ludy and o s p continued to support shelby. and the notion that chelsea could lead men into battle in iraq. that of course was a pipe dream. tell us what things were like in o. s p at that time, tell us about how the intelligence community analysis on iraq was politicized. in order to support a war agenda. they took little bits and pieces of intel,

some approved and, and validated until in some just ra ra, information you know, we would think of it is stuff. we read the newspaper, unconfirmed things, and they, they promoted a storyline. they created a back story included a storyline that um you know, would, would help them do what they wanted to do. which of course was to install a puppet, to get rid of sodomy, st who really was standing, your rumsfeld was buddies with him only forever. you know, saddam hussein was, was a nationalist in many ways he was standing up for a, a strong, a racking. why did he, you know, he's fighting years ago before with kuwait because of oil because he said this is a national resource. and so he's doing things that, um oh and of course decided to go off the petro dollar. that's really dangerous. but dumb. so saddam hussein is behaving as a independent nationalist person who isn't going to take orders from the united states. that isn't pleasing i the states not now. not then,

not 40 years before that. so this hot, you know, charlie b i, they said, well, we'll go, he'll do what we say will. we'll sponsor him. you know, it's funny, i hate to say the split job. it is, it shall be or you know, kolinski which, why am i talking about? i don't, i don't even know but this pattern that the new kinds of people like you know, john bolton, again, i mentioned him because he says what's hard to do cruise yours are a lot of hard work to conduct these coos cuz we've done it before. well, course that's, that's what they do. they figure out how they can control another country and specifically on other countries resources. and of course with iraq, those resources are primarily oil, but also geography. and they wanted it, and he would, they couldn't work with some, with the who same they could work with chalabi. they didn't have any other guy. so they nurture up this image. the storyline, hey, here's this guy. he's

a freedom fighter. he's, you know, he's didn't, he's a democrat, he's all these people. he's all these so, you know, the people love him in a wreck, which of course, i mean the stuff was even the until that we had was obviously false. but it didn't matter because if you could put it on the front page of the new york times in the washington post, you could influence congress. you could influence think thanks. you could, you could shape a fantasy. and then, and then try to make that happen. and again, you know, i think that's pretty serious to use the military. i don't think it's, i think if you got to kill people, if you're gonna have a war, be for a serious reason. it ought to be for a valid national defense justification. i mean, i'm still, i'm old fashioned. i think if, if this country goes to war, the congress should declare war, you know, that's what the constitution says. these folks don't believe any of that. in fact, they are not even familiar with the constitution that is a dead letter to them. they are, they play a game of self enrichment, of course,

an advocacy of, of philosophy, of a. i hate to say world domination, but certainly at the time of middle east domination. and you know, it's the effort that they put into promoting their fantasies and the things that they use and the people that they kill in the money that they spend to promote their fantasies. again, none of it is constitution. we're speaking with former us air force, colonel and pentagon intelligence analyst, karen koski. when we get back from a short break, we'll ask her about the fallout from that faithful decision to go to war with iraq . stay tuned. will be right back. 2 2 ah

march, the 112011. the largest earthquake ever recorded in japan is registered. a 14 meter tsunami devastates the fukushima ichi nuclear power plant. a backup remote of appeal to the nuclear reactors of flooded sparking and horrific disaster with killed in the middle, honey. hi, your i old political belief actually via an italian jonah is living in japan, decided to go to the area of the nuclear meltdown from fukushima immediately about the shore. a georgia tech over. so i'd love to talk to somebody about the voted on line gym data sheet

with a 4 year investigation starts to watch on r t o . well, never be a victory for russia wait solution. see when you're still waiting for you, a new modem, but look at 8 me. crane war is a proxy war. this is a war between russia and the united states. milan are made, it comes to not shoot, kept them in carbon dioxide. america forces are and you're not in europe to gauge in conflict of russia for use. the american forces are here and defend nato allies. what happens if nato escalates even more than discussion? military operations become a war when you, but they'll set of rules that don't are showing that all the 1000 is my story. i

see it. i see it. you are to us implicitly. shenika yourself with almost them once you miss. only the still foolish the ruin your sewage. never speak of the girl whose ah, welcome back to the whistle blows. i'm john curiosity were speaking to former u. s. air force lieutenant colonel and pentagon intelligence analyst, karen, quite koski. about the decision to go to war in iraq based on false and politicized intelligence. karen, thanks again for being with us. karen in 2015 upon i've had shelby's death. you wrote a piece for lew rockwell dot com saying that in retrospect, the period just before the iraq war was something of an age of innocence. you wrote, quote, as painful as it was to watch the u. s. government plunge into the iraq war based

on false w. m. d. warnings raced in part by chelsea and his iraqi national congress. there was still a sense of hope back then that the truth could be told and the culprits could be held accountable. that seems now to have been a naive dream in 2003 shelby was on track to become the new leader of iraq. just as soon as paul wolfowitz, his projected cakewalk. that was what he called the war was finished. towards this end, he was using and being used by the neoconservative cabal of bush cheney appointees . and the pentagon, the national security council, and the state department, unquote. and then you said something that strikes me as critically important even today. you said that many of the people who dragged us into war in 2003 continued to advise the obama administration as late as 2015. and some of those people are still in government today. is it even possible to save ourselves from warmongers

and war criminals when they're practically embedded, permanently in the government? no. as long as they are embedded permanently, which we have seen and it's not just victorian england, it's lots of are there in permanently embedded in the government and it is impossible to on it as long as they are there to have a different foreign policy. so if you want to different foreign policy, these individuals not just their philosophy because you know, it's a free country use free speech. you can think what you want to think. but neoconservatism is not what the american people want. that's not what they believe in. that's not the foreign policy they wish to pursue. and yet we have non elected bureaucrats appointees who persist in his revolving door between government service think tank, government service, think take sometimes of a position in congress back to the government service. can't be fired. keep getting appointed, keep getting confirmed in some cases. i mean there are confirming,

i mean, this is a different subject. you remember when they confirmed a gene, a hassle? what is the process? what is the purpose of this process? if they can confirm that one on a wire confirmation, just just pick the people you want, put them in there. why? why rubber stamp it's? it's humiliating. but yeah, these folks have to go and are foreign policy. in particular, military policy, this is a foreign policy. i am talking about military policy, it seems like everything is aggressive, militaristic, policy, state department contributes to it. some of the other agencies contribute to the d, o, d, intel c i. they all contribute to a foreign slash military slash security policy. they take trillions of dollars a year. they cost trillions of dollars a year and they don't do any good. so i'm ready for radical change. and i think really that, that they have to go and the budgets have to be shrunk to the levels that the

populace in this country believe we should have. and also what the constitution envision, which didn't envision a standing army. it didn't vision. if we went to war, it would be a people for congress would declare that were, you know, we didn't have that vietnam either in declared war since we're, we're to, so you take vietnam, very unpopular war and popular. and that unpopularity was memorialized in music and poetry and books and, and movie. they would have to justify it a little like that. so they don't. but we've got to do something about washington because washington does not abide by that in any way, shape or form. they don't respect it and they basically pay lip service to the people's wishes. and i'm it, when i say cut their budget. so you know, just and they may end up cutting it. but if the country goes bankrupt, what are they going to do? pay them 1st, it probably will, but i don't think that the, the expense that the united states has and, you know, this multi polar world that is already here. but let's say we're,

we don't want to admit that it's coming. okay, it's, it's either it's already here which it is, or you can say it's coming. but in any case, united states won't be the global policeman. that may be an opportunity to have a more defensive and peaceful and pro trade foreign policy where we can share the good things that make america great. but we're not trying to control everybody else's resources, which again, is totally what these towards her pell. you know, we're not fighting for democracy. it, we've never, i can't think of any, maybe we have and you may know, but i can't think of any time we fight for democracy. we have fought for other people's resources. karen, you were inside the pentagon on 911. you later wrote that following the attack, and as the u. s. approached, were the rock you quote, witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within o. s p u circ 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. on quote, later you went on to become a source for knight ridder, the news agency that broke many of the stories related to the iraq war, knight ridder was always skeptical of the information being released by the bush administration and the pentagon. you also appeared in the award winning documentary film, why we fight? how did you make that transition from making your revelations within the chain of command to going public? well, i mean, it was the incredible amount of frustration. i, you know, seeing how information was being miss used and manipulated in order to get us into a war. i mean, an actual, you know, not just like when we say, oh, you cranes fighting a war and we're giving them billions and billions of dollars. this was a war where americans were going to go over there and fight, you know,

something that, that should be a serious matter. and it should be based on fact. and yet it, all this was created, you know, stories were told to different chain. so that one guy would call the other guy and say, well, can you confirm this? oh, sure, i saw the same thing, must be true. it was a severe amount of frustration. and again, you know, if you have to be in the military for, you know, 15 or 16 years, you kind of have seen things, you kind of at least i had grown into my own. i again, i trusted my assessment of things where i might not of if i had been younger, but i'd seen enough that i did. i said this, this makes no sense. and plus, of course it was just me. i had lots of friends who would tell me their end of the story from other office is what was happening. and no, none of none of them know most people felt like they couldn't speak out, but i didn't feel that way. i was going to retire was playing to retires at my

earliest opportunity even before this. so and, and i wasn't going to work for these folks afterwards. and i think that makes a difference. and you know, another thing, i don't know if we've talked about it. if it's been observed, but it's kind of a, i was the breadwinner for my family for many, many years. but they say that women, this is maybe it's a stereotype, maybe it's changed, but i'm born in 1960. so i came up to the eighty's, you know, that women don't define their worse as much through their employment through their jobs as maybe men do. so for me, i didn't see this as this is really going to ruin my career. i mean, it would of, if i stay because there is no doubt i, i couldn't state in but them, but i didn't see that as a huge issue wasn't to me, it was far more important to to really share the information with somebody that

could see if it was worth anything and maybe combat some of the lies. it just that that felt important to me. but also i didn't, i wasn't totally, you know, i wasn't so worried about my reputation as a, as an officer. push it because and again, because i believed in the constitution, and i do think, and this is, you know, we see this, i'm not a big time whistleblower. like who's, who's really suffered from it. like you have and also snowden, you know, but all of us had some good. we put value in the constitution. we thought it was a serious document. we thought it was a document that our country would works would, would live by. it's particularly our leaders. and so on it, you know, really, i mean, it makes you angry when you see that it's being ignored, that they don't care that there are countries going down a track that is lawless. and based on purposeful and fantastical

lies and a manipulation of the media and a manipulation of congress, it is very upsetting. but i think it was upsetting to a lot of people. but again, i didn't see this is oh, this is going to run my career and then people will be talking about me and they'll say, oh, what you know, she, she had a great group of the she just threw it away. i didn't even that didn't even cross my mind. it had nothing to do with anything. and i, i wish we had more people who really would care more about their principles and what they know to be right and wrong. even if i don't agree with them, i don't care. i wish they would with people to, than, than what their boss is. tell them because my boss is deluding was my direct boss. so what, you know, what does that say? yeah, you should, i should, i have listened him and, and looked up to him in such a way. oh, he knows better than me. i don't think so. and i hope, i hope i hope the generations behind us,

younger people than us have embraced that added. you know, you want to be crazy. was it? you know, if you're ignorant and you think i'm crazy, think crazy things and you believe him. ok fine. but really take the risk because our country has had paths and it's not just been recently. i mean it's been over the past really this past century. but my whole life time woman in 1960 started military life. when i was in my early twenties, really my whole life time, i have witnessed terrible delegation of the constitution and terrible, a terrible future, a terrible presence of our country, bad behavior by united states of america. and it's, it's in, it's not right. i can't be proud of it and i should be able to be proud of my country. we should all we have the right to be proud of our country. and the fact that we shan't mean social is still work digit one can only hope that governments

and the policy makers who lead them can learn from the mistakes of the past. but that may be too much to ask. we will probably never find ourselves in a position where people in positions of authority or power do something simply because it's the right thing to do. and sometimes when they make their decisions, especially when those decisions are based on cynical and false information. we find ourselves at war. we can't forget to that those wars, no matter how short or how righteous they may seem, maintain a cost in human lives. always remember that integrity is telling myself the truth. honesty is telling the truth to others and no legacy is so rich as honesty. thank you again to our guest, karen, quite cowski and thanks to you for joining us for another episode of the whistleblowers until next time. 2 2 2

ah for a good door. yep. let me see. i think mike, if i mean should but so i shrieked, why did it say you did it? did you? i don't know a because you guys are more giving it away. yeah, for sure. i do the brother from nice or yeah, it was a shed. so when he's here,

we are for interior, so he's suddenly coaching you up with a woodson chim i put in your to the, to the woods. that'd be actually just look at both ways to look at the invoice. so why so coupled with a 0, what is some number on your smith? are you on the one come up? maybe it wasn't, it was a little skeptical. was it? so please let me ask a question, was just fish review and each of them rich a lot, but i should not the post office that was all the way to to see maybe sharon with

with help headline for nazi international at the emerging multi polar world brings long time reach, reopened our embassies. it is a move with enormous g o. typical implications with a run on the bank and the u. s. leaves scores of companies and individuals holding the back is the country's largest lender to collapse since the 2008 financial crisis is shut down by federal regulations and that south africa deals with rolling blackouts. it's now faced with a shortage of water as reservoir levels continue to decline just adding to the list of problems in that country. our correspondent report is from bassy.