Ten questions and answers, with Karen Kwiatkowski

Karen Kwiatkowski [send her email] is a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon. She now lives with her freedom-loving family in the Shenandoah Valley, and writes a bi-weekly column on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for militaryweek.com.

Interviewed by Don Nash, Unknown News

Oct. 25, 2005

Q. You retired from the military at a time that appears to be the height of your professional military career -- why?

I retired generally around the time I had hoped, at around twenty years. But I accelerated my actual retirement date twice in 2002 and 2003 because of the ethical difficulties brought on by witnessing the misuse of intelligence in order to support an agenda for an unnecessary, unwarranted war of choice against Iraq.

In August 2002 I began to publish anonymous essays about what I was seeing for the late Colonel David Hackworth and his website Soldiers for the Truth. My retirement letter, so to speak, was in the form of an op-ed, published by the Knight-Ridder newspapers in July 2003.

Q. How would you describe current military and civilian leadership at Defense for all branches of U.S. service?

Politicized, emasculated, obedient to the bureaucracy and ignorant of the Constitution. There may be exceptions, but I can’t think of any among those still serving.