2019-02-01 Hour 1 Host Ernest Hancock interviews guest Karen Kwiatkowski

Host Ernest Hancock interviews guest Karen Kwiatkowski (Retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel; Recipient of the 2018 Sam Adams Award) talks about Venezuela, Russia, Foreign Policy, Trump, Politics, etc...

Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock Radio Show: https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Program-Page.htm?No=1

Show Archive Page: https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Media/255431-2019-02-01-02-01-19-karen-kwiatkowski-matt-white-bill-ottman-listen.htm

Karen Kwiatkoswki,, PhD

Retired Lt Colonel

(Retired Air Force Lt. Colonel, Former Pentagon Officer, Professor)

Karen Kwiatkowski (ka-tao-skee) was commissioned in 1982 as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force. She served at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, providing logistical support to missions along the Chinese and Russian coasts. After tours in Massachusetts, Spain and Italy, Kwiatkowski was assigned to the National Security Agency, eventually becoming a speech writer for the agency's director.

Col. Kwiatkowski transferred to the Pentagon, first working on the Air Staff as a political military affairs officer, then moving over to the Italy Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy, in the Sub-Saharan Africa Directorate. From May 2002 to February 2003, she served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA). While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles, "Insider Notes from the Pentagon" that appeared on the website of David Hackworth, protesting neoconservatism inside the Pentagon and the pro-war propaganda being put forth by Pentagon appointees. Kwiatkowski was in her office inside the Pentagon when it was tragically attacked on September 11, 2001. She left NESA in February 2003 and after 20 years of service, retired from the Air Force.

In April 2003, she began writing articles for the libertarian website in Italy LewRockwell.com. In June 2003, the Ohio Beacon Journal, published her op-ed "Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon" which attracted international notice. Kwiatkowski became publicly known for criticizing a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Her most comprehensive writings on this subject appeared in a series of articles in The American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article on Salon.com.

Kwiatkowski has become a respected columnist for various international media outlets. She is a regular contributor to Lewrockwell.com and has had articles about her work with the Department of Defense published in the American Conservative. She has hosted the popular call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally on Liberty and Power. Since her retirement, she has taught American government related classes at Lord Fairfax Community College and James Madison University, and teaches information systems related classes for the University of Maryland. She and her husband raise beef cattle in Shenandoah County, Virginia. They have been married

since 1982 and have four children.

Karen's Webpages:

Facebook.Com/Karen.Kwiatkowski.12

Archive.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski-arch

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Karen's previous interviews on the Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock Radio Show:

https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Guest-Page.htm?No=00956

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Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Recipient of the 2018 Sam Adams Award

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Karen's recent article posted on LewRockwell.com...

The Socialist's Burden

By Karen Kwiatkowski

February 1, 2019

…is becoming unbearable. I am moved to pity by what I am seeing, and while this isn't a 2019 prediction, perhaps it is an early obituary. The tweeting AOC is the canary in the social-political coal mine, or perhaps the caged birds of Birdbox, high-pitched, precarious, panicking in the discovery that they are trapped, and that it is only their death or permanent capture that gives their life meaning, if at all.

So sad. Virginia Governor Northam – progressive, pro-state, pro-military, pro-big pharma – by definition anti-life – has stumbled into an over-the-top statement supporting post-birth abortion, aka infanticide. I'm sure the dear man didn't mean a word he said, but shrinking support for progressive lunacy among the core democrats – like these business owners, and this guy, and the shrinking subsets of "reliable" democratic voters, is driving socialists insane.

Why can't people just admit that eliminating private property, living in a sharing society under the heavily equipped and magnificent direction of a great globally-minded bureaucracy is glory indeed? I mean, we have seen so much progress made, and yet, as the years unfold, every gain is diluted or reversed, every intended end subverted by the very people it was designed to benefit.

We see the illegalizing of large size soda and plastic straws, obscene municipal abuses from parking enforcement, property seizures, and local political corruption and ever-increasing regulation, taxes and fees. We see many states – and not just on the liberal coasts — literally taxing their golden geese into a one-way flight. We see the IRS and TSA shutdown greeted with celebration at the public recognition that these agencies are not considered necessary to government function, even as they groaned at how unhappy these bitter grifters and gropers could make us.

The Department of the Interior has a "win" turned into a costly loss in terms of rancher rights, the FBI has become exactly the kind of status-conscious, inbred, incompetent organization that Hannibal Lecter could describe perfectly with just the tone of his voice, and US intelligence agencies and defense leaders come across as chubby, pale-faced whiners seeking to maintain and grow their black budgets as they have done for the past 70 years, wondering why the general population doesn't see them as heroes and whistleblowers.

We also have the neoconservatives – Bolton, Pompeo and Pence – the self-described US Troika of Tyranny demanding that their mini-Saddam Hussein be installed over the oil fields of Venezuela, and that Russia vacate their lending commitments relating to Citgo. My bad — Bolton actually meant the super scary troika of the microscopic socialist economies of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Tragically, the Democrat topliners – just as dependent as the Republicans on military-industrial spending and war as a business — are in a position of supporting Bolton and the neoconservatives in demonizing good old-fashioned overseas socialism wherever it interferes with US oligarchy. I am simply nauseous at seeing these progressive workers being forced to repeatedly swallow such a public betrayal. And on top of that, the whole project has already failed just as they brought in the walking corpse of Elliot Abrams.

The sheer stupidity and desperation of this new neoconservative intervention is domestically matched by a theatrical pre-dawn FBI burlesque show in Florida to bring to justice the odd man accused of lying to a government agent. The American public was greatly underwhelmed, and the raid compliantly recorded by CNN resulted in the 100 million raised brows of 200 million average Americans who live near meth houses, fentanyl distributers, and thieving politicians, and who hear crickets daily from law enforcement about it.

Government is the problem. Too much, too unrestrained, too greedy for war, too self-interested and stupid to be taken seriously. This simple timeless truth is the sad flaw in the progressive and socialist movement. The very government they'd like to be bigger, more involved in just distribution of whatever people deserve, desire and demand, more maternal, paternal and dominant – isn't holding up its end of the bargain. It's not proving itself capable of actually killing and eating the "rich" and it is constantly proving its capability to kill and consume the poor.

The news reporting on all of this – even as it leans 95% towards the socialist and progressive left – still can't avoid all the facts, and reality doesn't bode well for American socialism. Be it pop, plastic, planetary propaganda, prenatal policy or petroleum – our American socialist mouthpieces are like adorable little fluffy puppies – yipping and squealing, digging pointless holes, and chasing their tails.

LewRockwell.com

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