From The Sydney Morning Herald, 10/30/03:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/29/1067233251576.html

Cheney's hawks 'hijacking policy'

By Ritt Goldstein


A former Pentagon officer turned whistleblower says a group of hawks
in the Bush Administration, including the Vice-President, ***** Cheney,
is running a shadow foreign policy, contravening Washington's official
line.

"What these people are doing now makes Iran-Contra [a Reagan
administration national security scandal] look like amateur hour. . .
it's worse than Iran-Contra, worse than what happened in Vietnam,"
said Karen Kwiatkowski, a former air force lieutenant-colonel.

"[President] George Bush isn't in control . . . the country's been
hijacked," she said, describing how "key [governmental] areas of
neoconservative concern were politically staffed".

Ms Kwiatkowski, who retired this year after 20 years service, was a
Middle East specialist in the office of the Undersecretary of Defence
for Policy, headed by Douglas Feith.

She described "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive
power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the
Congress", adding that "in order to take that first step - Iraq - lies
had to be told to Congress to bring them on board".

Ms Kwiatkowski said the pursuit of national security decisions often
bypassed "civil service and active-duty military professionals", and
was handled instead by political appointees who shared common
ideological ties.

There was speculation earlier this year that such an ideologue group
had emerged, and that it was behind the US attack on an Iraqi convoy
in Syria in June.

The New York Times quoted Patrick Lang, a former senior Defence
Intelligence Agency (DIA) official, as saying that many in the
Government believed the incursion was an effort by ideologues to
disrupt co-operation between the US and Syria.

Ms Kwiatkowski said there was an extra-governmental network operating
outside normal structures and practices, "a network of political
appointees in key positions who felt they needed to take some action,
to make things happen in a foreign affairs, national security way".

She said Pentagon personnel and the DIA were pressured to favourably
alter assessments and reports.

In a separate interview, Chalmers Johnson, an authority on US policy,
said that the Administration's neo-conservatives had in effect seized
power from Mr Bush.

Dr Johnson said the neo-conservatives had pursued an agenda outlined
in the controversial 1992 Defence Planning Guidance.

That document, drawn up at the direction of Mr Cheney when he was
defence secretary, said the world's only superpower should not be
cautious about asserting its power.

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A coup is apparently in progress.

Harry