Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
War is Swell: the Carlyle Group and the Middle East at War
The Knights of the Revolving Door
When War is Swell: the Carlyle Group and the Middle East at War
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
CounterPunch, Weekend Edition September 6-8, 2013
Paris.
A couple of weeks ago, in a dress rehearsal for her next presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, the doyenne of humanitarian interventionism, made a pit-stop at the Carlyle Group to brief former luminaries of the imperial war rooms about her shoot-first-don’t-ask-questions foreign policy.
For those of you who have put the playbill of the Bush administration into a time capsule and buried it beneath the compost bin, the Carlyle Group is essentially a hedge fund for war-making and high tech espionage. They are the people who brought you the Iraq war and all those intrusive niceties of Homeland Security. Call them the Knights of the Revolving Door, many of Carlyle’s executives and investors having spent decades in the Pentagon, the CIA or the State Department, before cashing in for more lucrative careers as war profiteers. They are now licking their chops at the prospect for an all-out war against Syria, no doubt hoping that the conflagration will soon spread to Lebanon, Jordan and, the big prize, Iran.
For a refresher course on the sprawling tentacles of the Carlyle Group, here’s an essay that first appeared in CounterPunch’s print edition in 2004. Sadly, not much has changed in the intervening years, except these feted souls have gotten much, much richer. – JSC
Across all fronts, Bush’s war deteriorates with stunning rapidity. The death count of American soldiers killed in Iraq will soon top 1000, with no end in sight. The members of the handpicked Iraqi Governor Council are being knocked off one after another. Once loyal Shia clerics, like Ayatollah Sistani, are now telling the administration to pull out or face a nationalist insurgency. The trail of culpability for the abuse, torture and murder of Iraqi detainees seems to lead inexorably into the office of Donald Rumsfeld. The war for Iraqi oil has ended up driving the price of crude oil through the roof. Even Kurdish leaders, brutalized by the Ba’athists for decades, are now saying Iraq was a safer place under their nemesis Saddam Hussein. Like Medea whacking her own kids, the US turned on its own creation, Ahmed Chalabi, raiding his Baghdad compound and fingering him as an agent of the ayatollahs of Iran. And on and on it goes.
Still not all of the president’s men are in a despairing mood. Amid the wreckage, there remain opportunities for profit and plunder. Halliburton and Bechtel’s triumphs in Iraq have been chewed over for months. Less well chronicled is the profiteering of the Carlyle Group, a company with ties that extend directly into the Oval Office itself.
Even Pappy Bush stands in line to profit handsomely from his son’s war making. The former president is on retainer with the Carlyle Group, the largest privately held defense contractor in the nation. Carlyle is run by Frank Carlucci, who served as the National Security advisor and Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Carlucci has his own embeds in the current Bush administration. At Princeton, his college roommate was Donald Rumsfeld. They’ve remained close friends and business associates ever since. When you have friends like this, you don’t need to hire lobbyists..
Bush Sr. serves as a kind of global emissary for Carlyle. The ex-president doesn’t negotiate arms deals; he simply opens the door for them, a kind of high level meet-and-greet. His special area of influence is the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia, where the Bush family has extensive business and political ties. According to an account in the Washington Post, Bush Sr. earns around $500,000 for each speech he makes on Carlyle’s behalf.
One of the Saudi investors lured to Carlyle by Bush was the BinLaden Group, the construction conglomerate owned by the family of Osama bin Laden. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Bush convinced Shafiq Bin Laden, Osama’s half brother, to sink $2 million of BinLaden Group money into Carlyle’s accounts. In a pr move, the Carlyle group cut its ties to the BinLaden Group in October 2001.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/06/when-war-is-swell-the-carlyle-group-and-the-middle-east-at-war/
30 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
War Is Still A Racket
by Ed Rippy
www.globalresearch.ca 25 August 2003
September 11 2001 — we hear over and over — changed everything. In the "War On Terrorism," says President Bush, anyone who isn’t with "us" is with the terrorists. Afghanistan and Iraq are now US clients or protectorates. But a deeper look shows that except for the details and the players, nothing has changed at all.
The Racket works in many ways. First it funnels money from taxpayers and consumers to banks and big business. Butler gives some examples from World War I (the numbers have been adjusted for inflation using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator):6
FASCISM AND THE RACKET
Powerful Racketeers from US business, political, and military circles have wanted a global fascist order for a long time. (For example, in the mid-1930s, vice-president of General Motors Graeme K. Howard wrote a book titled America and a New World Order, which described the glories of an international fascist regime led by the US.) IBM, ITT, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Ford, General Motors, The Chase Bank, the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank/Citigroup), and other US businesses and banks funded Hitler before and during World War II.7 (As we noted above, Prescott Bush, G. W. Bush’s grandfather, funneled money to the Nazis from New York.8) They also supplied trucks, oil, aircraft engines, communications equipment, transportation, and propaganda to the fascist powers. Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, who later became head of the CIA and Secretary of State respectively, were heavily involved in this collaboration. Some of these fascists actually plotted a military coup against President Roosevelt, but it was discovered.9 After the war, the US fascists saw to it that most of the Nazi industrialists — and their capital equipment — remained in place. (The British foreign policy elite, led by the "Round Table" founded by Cecil Rhodes, had secretly wanted to give Nazi Germany enough of Europe to make it a strong bulwark against Communism, but wanted to avoid war.10)
The Office of Naval Intelligence recruited the Mafia to control the New York waterfront and help plan the invasion of Italy. The US military also installed Mafia chiefs as mayors of many towns and cities in Italy (they had set them up as an occupation force to release US troops for the European theater of war). Under Lucky Luciano, the Mafia rebuilt its heroin trade, expanding into Marseille (we shall revisit this in a later section). The Mafia also guarded against Socialist and Communist resurgence, a great aid to US foreign policy. King Ibn Saud (of Saudi Arabia) had supported Hitler; right after the war FDR cut a deal with him (and some other Arab heads of state). The CIA, which adopted hundreds of Nazi spies, scientists, and military officers, set up a fascist network in the Middle East to assure control of oil supplies and to counter Soviet influence. It also brought many Nazis to the US and to South America.
One of the Nazis US Racketeers spirited away to South America was Klaus Barbie. Known as "The Butcher of Lyons," he helped set up the infamous "School of the Americas," a training center for torture and repression, for the US army in the Panama Canal Zone.11 (The school later moved to Fort Benning, GA, and has changed its name to the "Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Co-operation."
Barbie’s mercenaries, wearing Swastika armbands, carried out the bloody "Cocaine Coup" of 1980 — the first time in history that an entire government had been bought by drug dealers, according to a State Dept. diplomat. This was part of a regional plan of the US military — involving six South American governments — to rid the continent of "leftists."12
CONTINUED...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIP308B.html
by Ed Rippy
www.globalresearch.ca 25 August 2003
September 11 2001 — we hear over and over — changed everything. In the "War On Terrorism," says President Bush, anyone who isn’t with "us" is with the terrorists. Afghanistan and Iraq are now US clients or protectorates. But a deeper look shows that except for the details and the players, nothing has changed at all.
In the early 1930s Major General Smedley Butler, retired from thirty-three years in the US Marine Corps, had a fit of realization and then a fit of honesty. He began making speeches and published a book, all telling a fundamental, ugly, and timeless truth: War Is A Racket.1 Seventy years later, The Racket is going stronger than ever. It is not so much a conspiracy as a combination political philosophy and business model.
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in," confessed Butler. The National City Bank’s descendent, Citigroup, is now the biggest bank in the world2 — and the eleventh biggest corporation — and collects revenues in over a hundred "decent places" including Angola, Vietnam, Panama, Saudi Arabia, and Colombia3 — all of which (like most of the world) have had Butler's successors on the scene to keep them "decent."
"I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909–1912," Butler relates, and within years Brown Brothers, by then merged with the Harriman Co., helped pay Hitler’s Wehrmacht to "purify" Europe. Prescott Bush, later a US Senator and then both father and grandfather of US Presidents, ran the New York office of this piece of The Racket.4
"In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested." Later on, the Chinese "molested" Standard Oil, but now they are finding their place in The Racket: the Chinese Academy of Sciences owns part of a company which is in a consortium which has bought the manufacturer of critical parts for US "precision" weapons — and is relocating the factory to China.5
The Racket works in many ways. First it funnels money from taxpayers and consumers to banks and big business. Butler gives some examples from World War I (the numbers have been adjusted for inflation using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator):6
"Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people . . . . How did they do in the war?. . . Eight hundred and twelve million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times. . . .
"Bethlehem Steel's) 1910–1914 yearly earnings averaged $84,000,000. . . . Then came the war. . . . (t)heir 1914–1918 average was $686,000,000 a year!. . .
"Or, let’s take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $1,470,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914–1918 was $3,360,000,000. Not bad."
But "If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. . . . those little secrets never become public. . . ."
FASCISM AND THE RACKET
Powerful Racketeers from US business, political, and military circles have wanted a global fascist order for a long time. (For example, in the mid-1930s, vice-president of General Motors Graeme K. Howard wrote a book titled America and a New World Order, which described the glories of an international fascist regime led by the US.) IBM, ITT, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Ford, General Motors, The Chase Bank, the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank/Citigroup), and other US businesses and banks funded Hitler before and during World War II.7 (As we noted above, Prescott Bush, G. W. Bush’s grandfather, funneled money to the Nazis from New York.8) They also supplied trucks, oil, aircraft engines, communications equipment, transportation, and propaganda to the fascist powers. Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, who later became head of the CIA and Secretary of State respectively, were heavily involved in this collaboration. Some of these fascists actually plotted a military coup against President Roosevelt, but it was discovered.9 After the war, the US fascists saw to it that most of the Nazi industrialists — and their capital equipment — remained in place. (The British foreign policy elite, led by the "Round Table" founded by Cecil Rhodes, had secretly wanted to give Nazi Germany enough of Europe to make it a strong bulwark against Communism, but wanted to avoid war.10)
The Office of Naval Intelligence recruited the Mafia to control the New York waterfront and help plan the invasion of Italy. The US military also installed Mafia chiefs as mayors of many towns and cities in Italy (they had set them up as an occupation force to release US troops for the European theater of war). Under Lucky Luciano, the Mafia rebuilt its heroin trade, expanding into Marseille (we shall revisit this in a later section). The Mafia also guarded against Socialist and Communist resurgence, a great aid to US foreign policy. King Ibn Saud (of Saudi Arabia) had supported Hitler; right after the war FDR cut a deal with him (and some other Arab heads of state). The CIA, which adopted hundreds of Nazi spies, scientists, and military officers, set up a fascist network in the Middle East to assure control of oil supplies and to counter Soviet influence. It also brought many Nazis to the US and to South America.
One of the Nazis US Racketeers spirited away to South America was Klaus Barbie. Known as "The Butcher of Lyons," he helped set up the infamous "School of the Americas," a training center for torture and repression, for the US army in the Panama Canal Zone.11 (The school later moved to Fort Benning, GA, and has changed its name to the "Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Co-operation."
Barbie’s mercenaries, wearing Swastika armbands, carried out the bloody "Cocaine Coup" of 1980 — the first time in history that an entire government had been bought by drug dealers, according to a State Dept. diplomat. This was part of a regional plan of the US military — involving six South American governments — to rid the continent of "leftists."12
CONTINUED...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIP308B.html
Could it be that the BFEE did more than oppose President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal?
Smedley Butler Stopped American Fascist Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR
Their aim was to put an end to "Socialist New Deal."
United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler exposed their conspiracy.
The treason was chronicled by the great Dave Emory in this interview with author Jules Archer.
For more, the BBC's "Document" program did an excellent report.
Gen. Butler's good work is seldom mentioned in high school history --
which is about the extent of most American citizen's knowledge of their nation's past.
You almost never read that Butler received two Medals of Honor for his gallantry
during war, which he called a "racket."
Hmm. Just another fascist conspiracy at play, I guess.
The Plot to Sieze the White House
by Jules Archer
Hawthorn Books: New York
244 pp.
Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940) blew the whistle on the little- known plot of the title. He was on public television the fall of 1993 in "The Road to Rock Bottom"--Part 2 of The Great Depression series (Blackside production). Near the end it shows Butler in shirtsleeves, urging on 10,000 of the war veterans who had marched to Washington and camped in Anacostia DC. It was July 1932. The Bonus Army asked for early payment of moneys promised for 1945. "Some were the same men who had fought under Smedley Butler in the Spanish-American War, the Philippines campaign, the Boxer Rebellion, ...Caribbean interventions, the Chinese intervention of 1927-8, and World War I" (p 3).
Butler, a major general at 48, retired from the Marine Corps in 1931. He had faced gunfire 120 times. Columnist Will Rogers wrote of Butler, "He is what I would call a natural born warrior. He will fight anybody, any time....He carries every medal we ever gave out. He has two Congressional Medals of Honor....You give him another war and he will get him another one....I do admire him" (p 116).
Except the two years in China, Butler spent the last third of his service in police work and administration. During this time a disillusion with war spread through Europe and America. The mood fed on books like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT and MERCHANTS OF DEATH.
August 21, 1931, Butler spoke to an American Legion convention in New Britain CT. Looking back, he reflected on his career. His remarks stunned the audience. Few papers dared report even part of the speech:
"I spent 33 years...being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism....
"I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street....
"In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested....I had...a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions....I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents..." (p 118).
CONTINUED...
http://www.eclectica.org/v1n1/reviews/wharton_plot.html
The story of how Gen Smedley Butler exposed an American Fascist conspiracy to overthrow FDR NEVER GETS MENTIONED in the contemporary college curriculum or what passes for journalism, nor historic context on the nightly news, either.
And that is a shame.
Those Democrats -- and pukes and pindependents -- who give a damn about democracy will see that his story is told, which is why DU is so important. This place spreads the Truth about the fascist bastards, whose sons and grandsons, and those of their cronies continue to haunt America.
As for those who stand in the way of truth about the BFEE: They can go to hell.
This is the guy Ike was talking about
when he thought of making it:
“Military-Intelligence-Congressional Complex.”
Check out what U.S. Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush, wrote back in 1959,
cheerleading for Boeing, General Electric, Westinghouse, Remington,
Chevron and the rest of the war profiteers hogging at the trough of the U.S. Treasury:
To Preserve Peace Let’s Show Russians How Strong We Are
By Prescott Bush
U.S. Senator from Connecticut;
member of the Senate Armed Services Committee
The Reader’s Digest July 1959
MAN’S GREATEST danger, it is said, is ignorance. In a very real sense, the Soviet Union’s ignorance of our military strength may be the source of her gravest peril—and ours. Kaiser Wilhelm started World War I because he miscalculated Allied power. Hitler, mistakenly thinking he could blitz the world, launched World War II. Kruschev today lacks firsthand knowledge of our country; he may be given what others think he would like to hear—rather than an objective report on our actual military strength. Although it seems impossible that any sane person could start a war, we would be wise to take no chances.
Why not invite the Soviet high command to the United States for a conducted tour of our military might? We are bringing Russians to see our farms and factories, our scientific laboratories and research centers; we exchange dancers and musicians. Why not have their military leaders over for the most beneficial look of all? Our expressed policy, the aim and purpose of our entire defense system, is to deter the Kremlin from starting a war. What better way to deter than to show?
What we could show is nothing more nor less than the greatest military might ever assembled in the history of the world. If the Soviet high command could see what we have, they should be of our mind—that for them to start war today would be an act of insanity.
We could start in a Pentagon briefing room. There, with maps, globes, films and sound-projection equipment to help illustrate our points, we could give them a good hard look at the distribution of American power. Then we could fly the group to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Montana, where bombers of the Strategic Air Command are on 24-hour alert, many ready to take off within 15 minutes. We could see an awe-inspiring line of B-47’s, any one of which can, in a single mission, deliver explosive power equivalent to that of all the bombs dropped by all sides in World War II. We could invite the commander of the Soviet air force to ride in one of these planes, and see it refueled in the air, thus quietly demonstrating that, while most Soviet bombers would have to fly one-way missions, ours can strike any target in the world and return nonstop.
SNIP...
The demonstration at SAC should effectively dismiss from Soviet minds any speculation about the possibility of their gaining an advantage from all-out war any time soon. But we must face the fact that in a few years the Russians may be able to zero in our SAC bases with ballistic missiles. To drive this temptation out of their minds, we could show them other deterrents.
CONTINUES…
The Reader’s Digest
July 1959 pp. 25-30
Prescott Bush detailed how Kruschev and the head of the Soviet armed forces be our guest on nuclear submarines, demonstrations of sea- and land-launched ICBMs, operations from aircraft carriers and a cruise aboard the inter-continental strategic bomber, the B-52.
The guy was on to something. You know how much they get for a B-2 these days? Two billion? Each?
Almost forgot. Prescott also discussed the strategic importance of Iraq –
the very same right next door to Iran, the very place the CIA and MI6 had, five years earlier,
replaced a democratically elected government with a despot, the Shah. For the oil, I’d wager.
It’s fortunate for them that we want only peace with justice. Our entire record attests to that. We have no history of aggression, profess no desire for world domination, as do the Communists. Only by their continued menace have we been forced to take these measures for defense.
I ASK, “Why don’t we show the Russians many of these defense measures?” What I would not show them is any self-satisfaction on our part about the future, any slowing-up of plans to produce the new weapons which must inevitably take the place of the old ones. I believe we are in a continuing struggle to keep on top in this business of declaring war. I think that the Russians are never to be underrated. [font color="red"]I also believe that the Communists are master bluffers that they seek to put us off by arrogant threats to Berlin and to the peace of the far Pacific, and, while our people are preoccupied with these threats, they may try to take over Iraq as the Chinese Reds have conquered Tibet.
[/font color]
So. At least three generations of the Bush Family Evil Empire have had their eyes on Iraq’s oil. Interesting how Prescott mentioned Tibet's destruction by China. How was he to know his namesake would one day become head of the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce? The article also shows how Prescott boosted the Cold War, way back in ’59. It’s not so odd to think that three generations of crazy petrodollar-loving warmongers would rise to the top echelons of American leadership.
IMFO, this is exactly what Ike was talking about when he mentioned being on our guard against the “Military-Industrial Complex.” The Bushes and their supporters may think they're American royalty, but all they are is a multi-generational mob of traitors.
Fmr. Top Republican Strategist Examines the History of the Bush Family
Seems they've more than a lot to lie about.
Documents: Bush's Grandfather Directed Bank Tied to Man Who Funded Hitler
AP / FoxNews.com
Friday, October 17, 2003
WASHINGTON — President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.
Prescott Bush (search) was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp. (search), a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Fritz Thyssen (search) was an early financial supporter of Hitler, whose Nazi party Thyssen believed was preferable to communism. The documents do not show any evidence Bush directly aided that effort. His position with Union Banking never was a political issue for Bush, who was elected to the Senate from Connecticut in 1952.
Reports of Bush's involvement with the seized bank have been circulating on the Internet for years and have been reported by some mainstream media. The newly declassified documents provide additional details about the Union Banking-Thyssen connection.
CONTINUED w/links...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,100474,00.html
Seems they've more than a lot to lie about.
Documents: Bush's Grandfather Directed Bank Tied to Man Who Funded Hitler
AP / FoxNews.com
Friday, October 17, 2003
WASHINGTON — President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.
Prescott Bush (search) was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp. (search), a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Fritz Thyssen (search) was an early financial supporter of Hitler, whose Nazi party Thyssen believed was preferable to communism. The documents do not show any evidence Bush directly aided that effort. His position with Union Banking never was a political issue for Bush, who was elected to the Senate from Connecticut in 1952.
Reports of Bush's involvement with the seized bank have been circulating on the Internet for years and have been reported by some mainstream media. The newly declassified documents provide additional details about the Union Banking-Thyssen connection.
CONTINUED w/links...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,100474,00.html
James Risen wrote about a death threat made by Blackwater's main man in Iraq upon an official from the State Department sent to investigate contractor corruption. Upon hearing that news, and before I could think of what that really meant or anything else, I thought of Col. Theodore S. Westhusing, United States Army.
Col. Westhusing was in charge of training the new Iraqi army and overseeing civilian contractors. He is remembered as a good man, a brilliant man who followed the Cadet Code: "I will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.” As an instructor at West Point, the PhD colonel served as the Army's chief ethicist. So, as an honest officer in Iraq, he came to suspect something was very wrong with the conduct of some of the private military contractors in the employ of USIS. Unfortunately, before he revealed those suspicions, and just a few weeks before he was scheduled to return home to his loving wife and family, he became a suicide.
The subject was discussed on DU. One thread from 2007:
Know your BFEE: They kill good soldiers like Col. Ted Westhusing for profit...
Another from 2012, when Petraeus ran into some conduct unbecoming problems at CIA:
Is David Petraeus Dirty? Ted Westhusing Said So, and Then He Shot Himself.
Which brings me back to hearing the report of Blackwater's top manager in Iraq. Imagine the gall of the son of a bitch! To threaten the life of a U.S. citizen sent on official government business -- the People's business -- to see how our money was being spent, or in the case of the Iraq War, stolen. It seems some groups, such as the private military contractors, join their employers in Washington in thinking that they really are above the law. They certainly behave that way.
Could there be any connection between Blackwater and USIS, the once-public then privatized public employee background check organization now turned military contractor in Iraq? Of course, there are. Both are BFEE-connected for-profit outfits that are making enormous fortunes from the Iraq War.
Blackwater was owned and operated largely by one Erik Prince, darling of America's hard right and Michigan's right to inherit wealth beyond imagination class. His sister is a GOP kingmaker, including his brother in law, the once unsuccessful GOP candidate for Michigan governor. Petraeus and CIA were so enamored of the talents and abilities of Mr. Prince, CIA outsourced drone targeting to his firm.
At the time of Col. Westhusing's death, USIS was owned and operated largely by Carlyle Group, a private investment bank known for finding, buying, and flipping defense-related companies at a nice profit. They literally and figuratively are good friends and actual employers of George W Bush, his father, George H.W. Bush, Sec. of State James Baker, Sec. of Defense Frank Carlucci, Prime Minister John Major of the UK and other government insiders and players connected to the grand ol' oily chess board.
In short, both USIS and Blackwater are controlled by the "money trumps peace" crowd, the cronies and family of George W Bush. What Bartcop termed the BFEE for Bush Family Evil Empire, or what I call the War Party for short, follow the philosophy that the United States can be defended at a handsome profit and, if you apply enough media spin, quite patriotically.
As for Col. Westhusing: He, according to one officer under his command, at first very much believed in his mission. Why? Because the same BFEE liars who lied America into war also lied the good men and women at West Point and at the Pentagon into war. Until he got to Iraq and saw with his own eyes and heard with his own ears, he never thought "money would trump peace."
An Army psychologist concluded that Westhusing struggled with the idea that “monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war.” This, she said, was a flaw. -- Westhusing's Flaw
Of course, the colonel's only "flaw" was in being a highly ethical person, one who would NOT "go along to get along." In short, Col. Westhusing was a man of integrity. He was the kind who stand in the way of the warmongers and war profiteers. Until the politicians who lied him and America into war are brought to justice, we just won't know how much he became their victim.
Col. Westhusing was in charge of training the new Iraqi army and overseeing civilian contractors. He is remembered as a good man, a brilliant man who followed the Cadet Code: "I will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.” As an instructor at West Point, the PhD colonel served as the Army's chief ethicist. So, as an honest officer in Iraq, he came to suspect something was very wrong with the conduct of some of the private military contractors in the employ of USIS. Unfortunately, before he revealed those suspicions, and just a few weeks before he was scheduled to return home to his loving wife and family, he became a suicide.
The subject was discussed on DU. One thread from 2007:
Know your BFEE: They kill good soldiers like Col. Ted Westhusing for profit...
Another from 2012, when Petraeus ran into some conduct unbecoming problems at CIA:
Is David Petraeus Dirty? Ted Westhusing Said So, and Then He Shot Himself.
Which brings me back to hearing the report of Blackwater's top manager in Iraq. Imagine the gall of the son of a bitch! To threaten the life of a U.S. citizen sent on official government business -- the People's business -- to see how our money was being spent, or in the case of the Iraq War, stolen. It seems some groups, such as the private military contractors, join their employers in Washington in thinking that they really are above the law. They certainly behave that way.
Could there be any connection between Blackwater and USIS, the once-public then privatized public employee background check organization now turned military contractor in Iraq? Of course, there are. Both are BFEE-connected for-profit outfits that are making enormous fortunes from the Iraq War.
Blackwater was owned and operated largely by one Erik Prince, darling of America's hard right and Michigan's right to inherit wealth beyond imagination class. His sister is a GOP kingmaker, including his brother in law, the once unsuccessful GOP candidate for Michigan governor. Petraeus and CIA were so enamored of the talents and abilities of Mr. Prince, CIA outsourced drone targeting to his firm.
At the time of Col. Westhusing's death, USIS was owned and operated largely by Carlyle Group, a private investment bank known for finding, buying, and flipping defense-related companies at a nice profit. They literally and figuratively are good friends and actual employers of George W Bush, his father, George H.W. Bush, Sec. of State James Baker, Sec. of Defense Frank Carlucci, Prime Minister John Major of the UK and other government insiders and players connected to the grand ol' oily chess board.
In short, both USIS and Blackwater are controlled by the "money trumps peace" crowd, the cronies and family of George W Bush. What Bartcop termed the BFEE for Bush Family Evil Empire, or what I call the War Party for short, follow the philosophy that the United States can be defended at a handsome profit and, if you apply enough media spin, quite patriotically.
As for Col. Westhusing: He, according to one officer under his command, at first very much believed in his mission. Why? Because the same BFEE liars who lied America into war also lied the good men and women at West Point and at the Pentagon into war. Until he got to Iraq and saw with his own eyes and heard with his own ears, he never thought "money would trump peace."
An Army psychologist concluded that Westhusing struggled with the idea that “monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war.” This, she said, was a flaw. -- Westhusing's Flaw
Of course, the colonel's only "flaw" was in being a highly ethical person, one who would NOT "go along to get along." In short, Col. Westhusing was a man of integrity. He was the kind who stand in the way of the warmongers and war profiteers. Until the politicians who lied him and America into war are brought to justice, we just won't know how much he became their victim.
[font size="4"]Remembering Team B[/font size]
The most notorious attempt by militarists and right-wing ideologues to challenge the CIA was the Team B affair in the mid-1970s. The 1975-76...
Tom Barry, last updated: February 11, 2004
Institute for Policy Studies
The most notorious attempt by militarists and right-wing ideologues to challenge the CIA was the Team B affair in the mid-1970s. The 1975-76 "Team B" operation was a classic case of threat escalation by hawks determined to increase military budgets and step up the U.S. offensive in the cold war. Concocted by right-wing ideologues and militarists, Team B aimed to bury the politics of détente and the SALT arms negotiations, which were supported by the leadership of both political parties. 1
The historical record shows that the call for an independent assessment of the CIA's conclusions came from the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB--pronounced piffy-ab ). But the fear-mongering and challenges to the CIA's threat assessments--known as National Intelligence Estimates--actually started with nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter, who laid down the gauntlet in a 1974 Foreign Policy article entitled "Is There a Strategic Arms Race?" 2 Wohlstetter answered his rhetorical question negatively, concluding that the United States was allowing the Soviet Union to achieve military superiority by not closing the "missile gap." Having inspired the Gaither Commission in 1957 to raise the missile gap alarm, Wohlstetter applied the same threat assessment methodology to energize hawks, cold warriors, and right-wing anticommunists in the mid-1970s to kill the politics of détente and increase budget allocations for the Pentagon. Following his Foreign Policy essay, Wohlstetter, who had left his full-time position at RAND to become a professor at the University of Chicago, organized an informal study group that included younger neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz and longtime hawks like Paul Nitze.
PFIAB, which was dominated by right-wingers and hawks, followed Wohlstetter's lead and joined the threat assessment battle by calling in 1975 for an independent committee to evaluate the CIA's intelligence estimates. Testimony by PFIAB President Leo Cherne to the House Intelligence Committee in December 1975 alerted committee members to the need for better intelligence about the Soviet Union. "Intelligence cannot help a nation find its soul," said Cherne. "It is indispensable, however, to help preserve the nation's safety, while it continues its search," he added. George Bush Sr., who was about to leave his ambassadorship in China to become director of intelligence at the CIA, congratulated Cherne on his testimony, indicating that he would not oppose an independent evaluation of CIA intelligence estimates.
Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush Support Team B Joining in the chorus of praise, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Bechtel's president George Shultz also congratulated Cherne, implicitly adding their backing for an independent threat assessment committee. 3 Led by several of the board's more hawkish members--including John Foster, Edward Teller, William Casey, Seymour Weiss, W. Glenn Campbell, and Clare Booth Luce--PFIAB had earlier in 1975 called for an independent evaluation of the CIA's national intelligence estimates. Feeling that the country's nuclear weapons industry and capacity was threatened, PFIAB was aiming to derail the arms control treaties then under negotiation.
Shortly after President Gerald Ford appointed Bush to be the new director of intelligence, replacing the beleaguered William Colby, Bush authorized PFIAB's plan for an alternative review. The review consisted of three panels: one to assess the threat posed by Soviet missile accuracy; another to determine the effect of Soviet air defenses on U.S. strategic bombers; and a third--the Strategic Objectives Panel--to determine the Soviet Union's intentions. The work of this last panel, which became known as the Team B Report, was the most controversial. As Paul Warnke, an official at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the time of the Team B exercise, wrote: "Whatever might be said for evaluation of strategic capabilities by a group of outside experts, the impracticality of achieving useful results by 'independent' analysis of strategic objectives should have been self-evident. Moreover, the futility of the Team B enterprise was assured by the selection of the panel's members. Rather than including a diversity of views ... the Strategic Objectives Panel was composed entirely of individuals who made careers of viewing the Soviet menace with alarm." 4
Team members included Richard Pipes (father of Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum) and William Van Cleave, both of whom would become members of the second Committee on the Present Danger, as well as Gen. Daniel Graham, whose "High Frontier" missile defense proposal foreshadowed President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or "Star Wars." The team's advisory panel included Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Nitze, and Seymour Weiss--all close associates of Albert Wohlstetter. 5 Although Richard Perle played no direct role in Team B, he was instrumental in setting it up. It was Perle who had introduced Richard Pipes, a Polish immigrant who taught Czarist Russian history at Harvard, to Sen. Henry Jackson, catapulting Pipes into a clique of fanatically anti-Soviet hawks. Pipes, who served as Team B's chairman, later said he chose Wolfowitz as his principal Team B adviser "because Richard Perle recommended him so highly." 6
CONTINUED
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/Remembering_Team_B
PS: Insiders have power that outsiders lack, such as top secret information. Otherwise, what's the point of secret government? It's absolutely useful on Wall Street, among other places.
Thanks for the thread, Octafish.
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
The Newspaper of War
by Howard Friel
Published on Tuesday, May 13, 2014 by Common Dreams
Many years ago, Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnam, Communist China, and Soviet Russia were saying one thing about what had happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in early August 1964, while President Johnson and top administration officials were all saying the exact opposite. How should the Times have responded to that situation, assuming a commitment to an independent press and an informed citizenry?
Ten years earlier, in July 1954, the governments of Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China all signed the Final Declaration of the Geneva Accord on Vietnam, which formally concluded France’s U.S.-supported colonial war in Vietnam. The United States refused to sign, and thereafter proceeded to undermine the most important stipulation of the accord – that elections to unify the northern and southern zones of Vietnam take place in 1956. By what journalistic criteria should the New York Times have covered this refusal by the Eisenhower administration to sign and comply with the Geneva Accord on Vietnam, which opened the door to the twenty-year American military campaign in Vietnam?
When Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, and Rice claimed in 2001-2003 that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, including an active nuclear weapons program, and when Saddam Hussein denied those claims, what journalistic standard did the Times apply in its response to those conflicting claims?
Journalism schools should teach a course focused on questions like these, given that over the past sixty years the Times and every other mainstream news organization has repeatedly flunked such tests, in each instance aiding the government’s efforts in its illegal interventions and wars.
SNIP...
On April 4, 2003, while witnessing the U.S. bombing of Baghdad, Times correspondent John F. Burns, wrote: “American air power, as the 21st century begins, is a terrible swift sword that strikes with a suddenness, a devastation and a precision, in most cases, that moves even agnostics to reach for words associated with the power of gods.”
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/13-0
This is the "paper of record" that gave us Judith Miller and aluminum tubes in 2002, while failing to mention word that George W Bush's illegal domestic spying operation until after Selection 2004. I also want to emphasize this paper has done all it can to keep up the fiction that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot President John F. Kennedy, who had ordered withdrawal of the U.S. from Vietnam. In addition, this is an important read for those interested in seeing how Corporate McPravda exclusively serves the warmongers and not the People, as intended by the nation's Founders in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
"All the news that's shit to print"?
This paragraph blows me away, although considering Eisenhower's actions in Iran overthrowing their democracy, it probably shouldn't.
Ten years earlier, in July 1954, the governments of Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China all signed the Final Declaration of the Geneva Accord on Vietnam, which formally concluded France’s U.S.-supported colonial war in Vietnam. The United States refused to sign, and thereafter proceeded to undermine the most important stipulation of the accord – that elections to unify the northern and southern zones of Vietnam take place in 1956. By what journalistic criteria should the New York Times have covered this refusal by the Eisenhower administration to sign and comply with the Geneva Accord on Vietnam, which opened the door to the twenty-year American military campaign in Vietnam?
How different could our world be today, had we allowed the vote in Vietnam?
Two time Congressional Medal of Honor winner Marine Corps General Smedley Butler nailed it when he said "War is a racket"
