2026-03-12 -- Ernest Hancock interviews Karen Kwiatkowski (MP3&4)
Hour 1 - 3
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PODCASTS
1 - Karen Kwiatkowski (Retired Lt Colonel U.S. Air Force) on what the heck is going on in Iran with Trump at the helm; Is there a plan? Are we getting the truth anywhere about what is actually going on over there?, what's next?, etc...
Karen's previous interviews HERE
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PODCAST 1
Karen Kwiatkoswki,, PhD
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.
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Recipient of the 2018 Sam Adams Award
https://karenkwiatkowski.substack.com/
https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/karen-kwiatkowski/
Karen's most recent article(s):
1. After Trump's War, the US Military Won't Be Invited Back
https://karenkwiatkowski.substack.com/p/after-trumps-war-the-us-military
The US took billions of military equipment and investment losses last week, most of which were apparently "unexpected" by Pentagon planners. Those losses continue, and they are being compounded by a growing and shared realization among our Arab allies in the Gulf that the US government never intended to defend them. The Arab role in the US-Arab partnership was to spend and invest in American projects and the MIC, overpay for a wide variety of US products and services, and do what they were told.
Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar among others have sought to diversify their economies, and develop friendlier relations with both West and East, including with Iran. Perhaps this is why Israel needed the US to act now, and not a few years from now. Sovereignty, economic resilience and political independence of other countries in the region, from North Africa to Egypt to Iran, is utterly intolerable to Israel, as she seeks her expansion and destiny.
When we consider US "wars," we usually start from an incorrect assumption. The US has engaged in one long continuous war since 1947 with the establishment of the CIA and the national security state – and the US has pursued continuous debasement of the US dollar since 1971. This is why most observers were not celebrating the end of 20 years in Afghanistan, because overnight those resources – and profits – seamlessly shifted to Ukraine, and from Ukraine, to Venezuela, and to Iran, with the same profiteers of the continuous war always well rewarded. The American experience of war is continuous, against minor enemies whose role was to persist, and burn, feeding the machine. This designed destruction for some, with profit creation for others, was conducted under the soothing umbrella of mutually assured destruction that might be executed, but wouldn't dare be, by Russia and China.
These wars have never been about threats or values – they have been about money and resources, driven by the multinational moneymakers, who invest and package everything from consumer goods, weapons, energy and AI, to land, housing, natural resources, food production networks, and water. The Great Taking is ongoing, with monetization, elite extraction and leverage of what we thought was our production, our prosperity, and our peace.
Raging Western debt, never intended to be repaid, is now driving a US need to possess and control human and energy resources, and concentrate that control into ever fewer hands. War, in addition to its profiteering aspect, is historically the great destroyer of debt owed to the losers, by repudiation, or through elimination of note-holders, whether individual or state.
The US war on Iran, beyond a diversion from Epstein accountability, is about US control over the flow of the world's energy to constrain and confront China, and facilitate more US debt. The US intends to be the sole uber-dominant global power, a vision that splashes hilariously in the verbal diarrhea of an ill-informed and angry old man in Florida.
US bases, facilities, and ground-based equipment have been and will continued to be destroyed throughout the region. Some believe this is exactly what Israel and the White House wanted, others will see this as evidence of a poorly planned, unwarranted, unconstitutional, unpopular and unjust war, and consider it a legitimate setback for the warfare state. But when the dust settles, there will be no money and no willing lenders to build back better. When Washington suggests that regional states pay to reinstate the American presence, they will find kind words but no access, renewed treaties, loans or subsidy. Trump has unified the region against us, particularly those who had been tempted by the false promises of the Abraham Accords. Even non-defense investment in the US is already being recognized as risky, unpopular, unaffordable, unwarranted.
Trump's war for Israel, the third Gulf War, is an exclamation point on the long, harsh sentence of continuous US and Israeli war. This should be cause for some hope. It has revealed deep US economic, political, military, and diplomatic weaknesses, while showcasing the sophistication, innovative progress and growing cooperation among our targets around the world. The White House and the Congress are blind to the delicious irony that it's good for the US to provide surveillance, intelligence and targeting data to Ukraine against Russia, but a terrible crime if Russia or China do the same for Iran.
We are dragging aircraft carriers from around the globe to the Arabian Sea and the Eastern Med, and raiding our stockpiles in the Pacific and from Europe. Americans have not been roused to support this war, and the heavy and persistent domestic censorship by the "winning" side in DC and Tel Aviv is undercut by global video and cameras on the ground and in the sky that tell a very different story.
Where this leads is perhaps a new era of peace. Global and domestic pressure on US and Israeli governments in their extremis and ugliness might force them to end their attacks and abandon regional hegemony. Perhaps they could truly reset their economies and attitudes as President Eisenhower recommended in his famous "Cross of Iron" speech on April 16th, 1953:
"The peace we seek, founded upon a decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and timber and rice. These are words that translate into every language on earth. These are the needs that challenge this world in arms."
Yet almost exactly four months after Eisenhower, the US CIA and Great Britain's MI6, would effect an earlier Iranian regime change. Like the current one, it is conducted in the name of oil and profiteering, part of the endless war for elite control of other peoples property and sovereignty.
Or, in their extremis and ugliness, US and Israeli governments might together, or separately, seek to utilize nuclear weapons, overtly or in false flags, to make their point. This concern is widely shared, and should be. Either way, the US military won't be back after this, and despite his best efforts, Trump may accidentally bring the troops home after all. One hopes, not all of them in boxes draped with flags.
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Letters of Marque Paperback
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON NOW BY CLICKING HERE!
Letters of Marque Paperback – September 25, 2018
by Marque dePlume (Author)
"The Crown calls it 'piracy' to explore frontiers beyond its grasp. So the time has come to define the conduct among pirates." Captain Marque
http://pirateswithoutborders.com/
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