The War Machine - I Just Asked Erik Prince To Stop Bribing Politicians (David Swanson)

[Octafish]

The War Machine

I Just Asked Erik Prince To Stop Bribing Politicians

by DAVID SWANSON
CounterPunch, APRIL 16, 2015

“It’s bad enough to be creating more profit incentive for war,” I told former head of Blackwater Erik Prince, “but you recycle part of the profits as bribes for more war in the form of so-called campaign contributions. You yourself have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to political parties and candidates. The three of you,” I said, referring to Prince, another guest, and the host of a television show that had just finished filming and was taking questions from the audience, “you seem to agree that we need either mercenaries or a draft, ignoring the option of not having these wars, which kill so many people, make us less safe, drain the economy, destroy the natural environment, and erode our civil liberties, with no upside. But this systemic pressure has been created for more war. Will you, Erik Prince, commit to not spending war profits on elections?”

Prince had hardly been asked a serious question during the past hour of filming, but that of course did not mean he would answer one. The point was to raise the topic and put it in the minds of the people sitting and applauding him. Prince tried to answer by talking about how much the F-35 fighter jet costs, continuing the hour-long pretense that if you oppose mercenaries you favor the rest of the military. I cut him off and told him to answer the question. So he said that he was no longer working with the U.S. government but with other governments around the world. Does that mean he’ll stop bribing the U.S. government? Does that mean he doesn’t bribe other governments? He didn’t say.

SNIP...

Repeatedly Prince claimed to be fighting evil people “who want to destroy the Western world, you know, our way of life.” He claimed that mercenaries could be hired to destroy ISIS, no problem! He also claimed that what’s going on in the Middle East is an age-old Sunni-Shia conflict that the United States can only tweak around the edges (through such steps, I suppose, as destroying ISIS). That each war creates more problems to be addressed with more wars, that ISIS would never have existed without the 2003 invasion, didn’t come up (except through my comments during the Q&A).

One questioner suggested that “if war were the path to peace we’d sure have peace by now,” and Prince claimed to be for peace. So Hagedorn asked him, a-t l-e-n-g-t-h, to fund the peace movement (even though she has no opinions as a Journalist), and he declined, suggesting that the mercenary industry association should do it. That’s an association, by the way, that changed its name from the International Peace Operations Association to the International Stability Operations Association in response to criticism of being “too Orwellian” — as if war brings stability any more than it brings peace.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/16/i-just-asked-erik-prince-to-stop-bribing-politicians/

David Swanson, a DUer, is one heck of a fighter -- for peace.

More on Defense Contractors lobbying cough bribing our elected representatives: OpenSecrets.org

Here's an important note: Blackwater Lobbyist Will Manage the House Intelligence Committee

[rainy]

1. Thank you David for still fighting!

The world cod use more people like you!

[Octafish]

3. Let's Try Democracy

The fighter's writings:

http://davidswanson.org/

World could use more like you, too, rainy!

[johnnyreb]

2. David Swanson is a good man.

Thank you David.

[Octafish]

4. + Infinity

The guy knows each human life holds infinite value...a soul.

Which is why Blackwater corporate lobbyists shouldn't head the staff of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, especially in corrupt "Money trumps peace" times when private "investment banks" like Carlyle Group control the nation's abilities to spy on America's people through private corporations they own and operate, like Booz Allen Hamilton, where Edward "Thank you, Rev. Moon!" Snowden once worked.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026131945

So, yes. Thank you, David, and johnnyreb!

[johnnyreb]

5. A core of murderous thieves stands between us and all of our policy goals.

"There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." —Henry David Thoreau

song: All In Our Name.mp3

[Octafish]

6. Like 'Twilight Zone' where the car's broke, monsters are coming, and the sheriff is an alien.

We vote to end wars, yet the policies that keep us at war, if not the people who got us in them, remain around to tell us to get into the next one. Like the Rendon Group.

The Man Who Sold the War

Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war

JAMES BAMFORD
Rolling Stone, Nov 17, 2005 4:25 PM

The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.

On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.

Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.

CONTINUED...

http://crashrecovery.org/rendon/1.html

The great DUer bobthedrummer noted the Rendon Group put together the 2004 Democratic national convention, too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025474178#post49

[closeupready]

7. I like it. K&R

[Octafish]

10. AIPAC to UANI: Make Gary Samore Shut Up!

United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), the secretive neoconservative group, is apparently intent on distancing itself from the comments of its own president, Gary Samore, who has spoken favorably of the framework agreement reached with Iran.

Jim Lobe
LobeLog, last updated: April 14, 2015

I attended a lunch panel on Iran hosted by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) with Eric Edelman, John Hannah, Ray Takeyh, and Jonathan Ruhe as the featured presenters. The conversation on the dais veered between quite hawkish and moderately hawkish, as one might expect from members of JINSA’s Iran task force. As the lineal successor to the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Iran task force, JINSA’s team has been urging the Obama administration to, among other measures, supply Israel with the latest version of the bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) and the aircraft to deliver it so as to, if Netanyahu finds it desirable, obliterate the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.

As usual with these meetings, however, some of the most interesting dialogue came on the sidelines.

During lunch, I happened to be sitting in front of Charles Perkins, AIPAC‘s assistant director for policy and government affairs. I didn’t hear the full conversation, but Perkins at one point engaged a staffer whose name I didn’t catch from the pro-sanctions and highly mysterious group, United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI). UANI, whose board includes a neoconservative who’s who, has opposed various stages of diplomacy with Iran. But, as my colleague Eli Clifton has noted,[font color="blue"] the group’s president—nuclear expert and Obama’s first-term non-proliferation czar Gary Samore—has defended the framework with Iran as probably the best that can be achieved at this stage of the game.[/font color]

It was evident at the JINSA event that Perkins, the AIPAC official, was not pleased by this development. He complained to the UANI staffer about Samore’s praise for the announced framework. In particular, he was upset about Samore’s signing, along with several dozen former senior national-security officials, of a statement published by The Iran Project last week in support of the agreement. Perkins appeared to be under the misapprehension that Samore was speaking out in UANI’s name. But the group’s staffer assured him that, despite his position as president, Samore only speaks in his personal capacity (although he also noted that he was sometimes identified as the executive director of Harvard’s Belfer Center).

[font color="red"]Indeed, he stressed that Mark Wallace—a former George W. Bush ambassador and a businessman involved in mining ventures that would allegedly profit from war with Iran—was UANI’s CEO and controlled the group’s agenda. [/font color]It bears noting that when Samore has expressed skepticism about the P5+1 negotiations, UANI has issued press releases signed by both their top executives, as with these statements from September 2013, July 2014 and last November. It’s also worth noting that UANI has not issued a similar leadership release since the framework’s announcement, only a statement highlighting the purported differences between the U.S. “parameters,” Iran’s response, and the “Joint EU-Iran” communiqué.

Though the conversation was brief, and I couldn’t hear all of it, the gist recalled above was crystal clear. (I did not have my notebook to hand; hence the unfortunate absence of direct quotes here.) I don’t want to overstate its importance, but it’s telling in a number of ways.[font color="red"] First, UANI, which built its reputation by placing prominent non-proliferation experts like Gary Samore in high positions, is now distancing itself from Samore because it doesn’t agree with his expert analysis. Secondly, AIPAC is likewise worried that nuclear non-proliferation experts might actually consider the prospective deal with Iran a positive development or, in any event, the least bad achievable result under the circumstances. This, of course, is not the view of Amb. Wallace or any of the JINSA task force members who spoke yesterday.[/font color]

SOURCE w/links:

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/aipac_to_uani_make_gary_samore_shut_up

[Dont call me Shirley]

8. E Prince is the evil people he is fighting.

If it seeks to harm it is Evil. If it seeks to heal it is Good.

This what EP and comrades seek:

"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesman for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective...is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjugation."

Henry Wallace
US VP 1941-1945
Speaking in regard to Libertarians

[Octafish]

11. Erik's just the man to do it.

First, he can afford it. Second, he knows what thumb drive the target data is on.

Blackwater managed CIA Predator drone assassination program

Henry Wallace was a heck of a human being. A capitalist agriculturalist-industrialist, he worked to see all are treated fairly, unafraid of being called "socialist" for believing that the government has a role to play in economic life of the nation. He makes me proud to be a Democrat.

[Dont call me Shirley]

12. The time will come when being on the side of the Henry Wallace's of the world will be

fashionable again. People will be seeking activities that heal and promote equality for all.

The bushes and the princes, and the criminality they evoke, will fall out of people's favor. People will grow weary of their hatred, meanness and greed.

[johnnyreb]

9. Dear David, I'm an alumnus of UVa.

Back when they had "the best party in America", "Easters Weekend".

There used to be a TJ's pub on the corner down by 14th Street. After Thomas Jefferson, Edgar Allan Poe was the name we all learned, with his well-maintained dorm on the Lawn. Now, the pre-emptive war advocate, mythologist and failed 9/11 Commission director Zelikow teaches history there. Which adversely affects the alumnae contributions of at least several of us. Thanks in part to your persistent work.

[Octafish]

13. Congratulations, johnnyreb. University of Virginia is a global cultural treasure.

"Adversity doesn't build character, it reveals it." -- Anonymous.

So. Talking about pressure:

'Go in there and frig around with the missiles, you're screwed'

The moment general mocked JFK behind his back at the height of Cuban Missile Crisis caught on tape

By DANIEL BATES
The Mail
24 September 2012

It was the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the nation was supposed to be pulling together.

But John F Kennedy’s top generals were actually bad-mouthing him behind his back - whilst standing in the White House.

When the former US President left the room Marine Corps Commandant General David Shoup said that Mr Kennedy was doing things ‘piecemeal’ and needed a talking to.

SNIP...

But the tapes reveal that after Mr Kennedy and Defence Secretary Robert McNamara went out the room, General Shoup launched into his own tirade - without realising the tape was still running.

CONTINUED...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2207946/Revealed-JFKs-stabbing-generals-mocked-President-battled-avoid-regarded-trigger-happy-Americans-lost-Berlin.html

It's almost odd that this wasn't mentioned in my hometown newspaper. The elite must want us to forget something important. Let's ask an expert...

As Noam Chomsky reported, Shoup was alone among the Joint Chiefs to oppose escalation in Vietnam. However, in this case, the White House taping system caught the Marine Commandant in an act of insubordination -- denigrating the Commander in Chief before his fellow Joint Chiefs of Staff. The mis-translation of what was said in the meeting had been the "gold standard" among historians since the publication of tape transcripts created by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, "academic" friends of the right.

What JFK Really Said

The author checked the Cuban-missile-crisis transcript in The Kennedy Tapes against the recorded words. He discovered "errors that undermine its reliability for historians, teachers, and general readers

by Sheldon M. Stern
The Atlantic

EXCERPT...

An unforgettable moment in these unique historical records concerns JFK's apprehension that military action in Cuba might touch off the ultimate nightmare of nuclear war, which he grimly describes at a meeting on October 18 as "the final failure." Brian McGrory, of The Boston Globe, who listened to this tape with me in 1994, after it was declassified, used those words in the lead of his article on the newly released tapes. But when I checked the transcript recently, I was unable to find "the final failure." Certain that the editors must be right, since they had technically cleaner tapes, I listened again; there is no question that Kennedy says "the final failure." The editors, however, have transcribed it as "the prime failure."

SNIP...

The participants then discuss evidence that work on the missile sites is continuing. They debate whether to add petroleum, oil, and lubricants (POL) to the list of quarantined materials immediately, or to wait twenty-four hours to see if talks proposed by UN Secretary-General U Thant produce a breakthrough. McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's national security adviser, suggests that they "leave the timing until we've talked about the U Thant initiative." The inaccuracy in The Kennedy Tapes is especially bizarre in this case, with Bundy saying "leave the timing until we've talked about the attack thing." These last two examples—"the destroyers " and "the attack thing"—could easily leave a reader wondering what in the world these men were talking about. (Three days later, on October 29, U Thant was mentioned again. JFK asserts, "We want U Thant to know that Adlai is our voice." But The Kennedy Tapes transcribes this line as "We want you to know that Adlai is our voice.&quot

October 27 saw the darkest moment in the crisis. An unconfirmed report was received at midday that a U-2 spy plane had been shot down over Cuba by a Soviet SAM missile, and the pilot killed. On the tape of the late-afternoon meeting Kennedy discusses whether to order an air strike on the SAM sites if the incident is repeated (a delay that produced consternation at the Pentagon). He declares that two options are on the table: begin conversations about Khrushchev's proposal to swap Soviet missiles in Cuba for U.S. missiles in Turkey, or reject discussions until the Cuban crisis is settled. Kennedy chooses the first, with the caveat that the Soviets must provide proof that they have ceased work on the missile sites. He repeatedly refers to "conversations" and "discussions" and concludes, "Obviously, they're not going to settle the Cuban question until they get some conversation on Cuba." Incredibly, The Kennedy Tapes substitutes "compensation" for "conversation." It's easy to imagine how Cold War veterans like Rusk, Bundy, and McCone would have reacted to any suggestion of compensation for the Soviets in Cuba.

On October 29, the day after Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles, the President and his advisers, relieved but not euphoric, conclude that surveillance and the quarantine will continue until the missiles have actually been removed. After a lull in the meeting, during which the conversation turns to college football, the President observes, "I imagine the Air Force must be a little mad," referring to the division of responsibility for aerial photography between the Air Force and the Joint Chiefs' photo-reconnaissance office. The Kennedy Tapes transcribes this as "I imagine the airports must be looking bad," which must leave many readers scratching their heads: the removal of the missiles had nothing to do with Cuban airports. Kennedy then ponders why, in the end, the Soviets decided to back down. He notes, "We had decided Saturday night to begin this air strike on Tuesday." No effort was made to conceal the military buildup in southern Florida, and Kennedy wonders if the impending strikes pushed the Russians to withdraw their missiles. The Kennedy Tapes, however, has JFK saying "We got the signs of life to begin this air strike on Tuesday," making his shrewd speculation unintelligible.

ONE particular error, among scores not cited above, seems to epitomize the problems with these transcripts. On the October 18 tape Dean Rusk argues that before taking military action in Cuba, the United States should consult Khrushchev, in the unlikely event that he would agree to remove the missiles. "But at least it will take that point out of the way," The Kennedy Tapes has Rusk saying, "and it's on the record." But Rusk actually said that this consultation would remove that point "for the historical record." The historical record is indeed the issue here.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/05/stern.htm

The "prime failure" is much different than "final failure." Presidents -- especially the Hawks since then -- have all made clear to the Soviets, Russians, terrorists, rogue states that nuclear war was winnable and survivable. Unfortunately, "survivable" could be defined as zero enemy and one American. As long as they're on the inside of Mt. Thunder when the spaghetti hits the fan, they're OK with those figures.

Now this guy Larry J. Sabato from your old school surprised a lot of folks by stating what he thought -- not what he could prove, but what he thought, regarding Dallas in his keynote address at the Duquesne conference in 2013: "Why the Study of the JFK Assassination Continues...and Should." Then he dropped this bombshell in US News & World Report:

Was JFK's Assassination a Conspiracy?

EXCERPT...

As the American Enterprise Institute's Karlyn Bowman and Andrew Rugg wrote in U.S. News earlier this month, the notion of a cabal to kill Kennedy is the most widely-believed conspiracy theory in America. An April 2013 poll showed that nearly 60 percent of Americans believe others were involved in the assassination. A recent Gallup poll showed the same thing, with 61 percent of Americans believing there was a conspiracy; the Mafia and the “federal government” are the most popular culprits. Even Secretary of State John Kerry has said that “to this day I have serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.”

SNIP...

The Arguments

-----------

YES — A complacent media let someone get away with murder

JOHN KELIN, Author

-----------

YES — Physical evidence shows JFK was hit with multiple bullets from multiple directions

MICHAEL VOLLBACH, RONALD BURDA, Professors of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Oakland Community College Comment

-----------

YES — None of the available theories prove just one man killed JFK

JEFFERSON MORLEY, Moderator of JFK Facts

-----------

YES — Bungled investigations into JFK's death may keep the truth under wraps forever

LARRY SABATO, Director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics

-----------

NO — After 50 years, any concrete evidence of a JFK conspiracy would have been found

JOHN MCADAMS, Professor of Political Science at Marquette University

SOURCE: http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/was-jfks-assassination-a-conspiracy?int=1fe97e

Thank you for sharing about UVA. I always thought you were a gentleman -- should have seen you are a Cavalier.

[johnnyreb]

15. Thank you, Sir Octafish of DU!

I would so rather see the likes of you and David employed at Jefferson's UVa, rather than the aforementioned "B" professor whose "Exams are written to confuse you."

"I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius, and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read & understand what is going on in the world, and to keep their part of it going on right: for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant & distrustful superintendence. I do not believe with the Rochefoucaults & Montaignes, that fourteen out of fifteen men are rogues: I believe a great abatement from that proportion may be made in favor of general honesty. But I have always found that rogues would be uppermost, and I do not know that the proportion is too strong for the higher orders, and for those who, rising above the swinish multitude, always contrive to nestle themselves into the places of power & profit." —Thomas Jefferson to Mann Page, 1795

[sabrina 1]

16. Thank you David Swanson who used to be a DUer, but has gone on to doing some great work in the RW.

Erik Prince is a psychopath. He SHOULD be in jail for the crimes his Mercs committed in Iraq.

Too bad he wasn't asked about the recent convictions and sentencing of his 'peace makers'.

We are being ruled by lunatics. I hope it's just a phase.

It's good to know there are people like Swanson still exposing the criminals.

Imagine if the MSM did this kind work?

Then we would have peace.

David better watch his back, psychos like Prince don't take kindly to being challenged. He's more used to the MSM who treat these crooks like elder statesmen.