Buried in a Post article about the Bush Aviator Doll...

[onehandle]

Nice to see this in "mainstream news". Rove can't be a happy camper.
_________________________________

One person unlikely to order a Bush action figure is Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who retired in March after working as a Middle East and North Africa specialist at the Pentagon before the Iraq war.

In an op-ed attacking the decision-making leading to war in Iraq, Kwiatkowski said the Bush administration will be found "to have caused a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress."

Based on her nine months working under the Pentagon's undersecretary for policy, Douglas J. Feith, Kwiatkowski concludes that civil servants and active-duty military personnel were "noticeably uninvolved" in Middle East issues, shut out by "cross-agency cliques" of hawks from the Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and vice president's office who engaged in "uncritical acceptance" of isolated opinions.

"What I saw was aberrant, pervasive, and contrary to good order and discipline," she wrote in the op-ed, distributed by the Knight Ridder service.

Since her retirement after 20 years in the Air Force, Kwiatkowski has become a self-described "gnat," pestering the administration about Iraq in more than 30 articles she has written for a libertarian, antiwar Web site.

Is she merely grinding an axe? "It is true that I don't like those guys," she allows, but "I initially supported Bush."

The Post Article:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46252-2003Aug11.html

Kwiatkowski's Articles:http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski-arch.html

[Loonman]

1. She's using the right terminology

I've been referring to Iraq as "a serious mis-allocation of military resources".

[Brotherjohn]

2. What I like is: it's ostensibly a fluff piece on the doll, yet the Post...

... makes sure to work in Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski's published critiques of the Bush administration.

Entirely unrelated? Yes. A shameless bit of Bush-bashing? Perhaps.

But I for one congratulate the Post for taking any opportunity to bring out the TRUTH in an environment that is openly hostile to it!

[Cocoa]

3. I see it as totallly related

The flight stunt and the doll are in a way an implied endorsement of Bush by the military. The press is obligated to see that, and to make clear that no such endorsement has been given, that military people could very well loathe Bush's policies.

[The Night Owl]

4. The WP article sucked...

In the WP article, Milbank makes no mention of the fact that Bush spent a year AWOL between 1972 and 1973 ( http://users.cis.net/coldfeet ). The irony of putting a Bush doll in military garb is obviously lost on Milbank.

[Brotherjohn]

5. I disagree. Though he did not mention the AWOL issue, he DID...

... take the opportunty to throw in some criticism of Bush in what began as merely a puff piece about the doll.

In response to Cocoa above, yes, i think it really is related as well. but Milbank approached the article as a light piece on the doll, and then abruptly switched gears to include some harsh criticism that perhaps had not received much press to date. He flew "under the radar" as it were.

Yes, the AWOL thing would perhaps have been the MOST relevant Bush criticism to air in the piece, but the Post did not have to include any criticism in it at all. It was simply an article on the doll, not an opinion piece. Most newspapers would have written a glowing account of the "heroic presidential collectible".

[NewYorkerfromMass]

6. Kerry is calling the whole thing openly

I have noticed Kerry is (not subtly either) throwing the flight stunt back in Bush/Rove's faces. Rove tried to get away with something, and Kerry is not letting him get away with it. Kerry is not letting this curveball by without taking a good hack at it.
Kerry is playing this REAL SMART.

[grasswire]

7. write to milbank

...and let him know that the hypocrisy is nauseating.

[e-mail]

[grasswire]

8. at least our complaints have been noticed

"Bush is the first president to be so honored, "and maybe the last," said the company's spokeswoman, Lauri Aibel, who notes that some complaints have already been received. "We don't condone or endorse the president, but he fit the criteria of our Elite Force collection. . . . It would have to be somebody in uniform, a military hero of some kind, or depicting a military uniform."

[grasswire]

9. why not a max cleland doll? (eom)

[Mandate My Ass]

14. A military hero of some kind??????????

Why are our dead service people, who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, being sneaked back into the States out of public view like sacks of soiled laundry while that deserter POS is immortalized as a military hero? :wtf:



edited for grammar

[onehandle]

10. Uh...Milbank did put a pretty sharp stab in the sub-story...

I'm pretty happy myself. Go after the Hundreds of other newswhore sites that posted the AP Bush ass-licking version.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

11. Didn't Kerry make some put down remark already?

I thought he said something last night.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

12. Did Kerry say this about Bush?

"You're a pretender in a pretty little flight suit"

or is that a paraphrase?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

13. so what did Kerry say?

(annoying kick)

[CBHagman]

15. Don't be too hard on Dana Milbank

He's actually one of the few Post columnists that have paraded some of the more embarrassing aspects of the Bush administration before the public. If I remember correctly, he revealed the choreographed nature of the second-to-last "press conference" Bush held and also reprinted unedited selections from transcipts that showed how verbally clumsy Bush is.

And as for the GOP, too many of them seem to be in love with the fantasy of the military, not reality. You have someone like Tom DeLay, who never served in the military, attacking Ted Kennedy, who did (U.S. Army), along with virtually all of his brothers, one of whom was killed in action. We have to call the GOP on the carpet virtually every time they pull a stunt like this. Send those letters to the editor, make those calls to C-SPAN, e-mail politicians on the Hill. There's a lot to be angry about.

[KoKo]

16. Agree, Dana is hanging on to job..but trying for us. Bush tried to throw

him off the White House Press beat because Dana criticized him "early on." So, he's been limping his way back with articles that have "double entendres" ever since.

He's too young to have the stature of Pincus, or that old "middle of the road" hack Broder....but he's carving his way forward. We have to "read between the lines" with some of these folks.

They have very ugly powerful CEO's=Bosses, who try to reign them in....it can't be easy.....