9/11 & "Faulty" Intelligence:

[kpete]

[Octafish]

1. Cheney as Poppy's SecDef privatized warmaking, steering business to...Halliburton.

Cheney's Multi-Million Dollar Revolving Door

News: As Bush Sr.'s secretary of defense, Dick Cheney steered millions of dollars in government business to a private military contractor -- whose parent company just happened to give him a high-paying job after he left the government.

By Robert Bryce
Mother Jones
August 2, 2000

EXCERPT...

In 1992, the Pentagon, then under Cheney's direction, paid Texas-based Brown & Root Services $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies -- like itself -- could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world. BRS specializes in such work; from 1962 to 1972, for instance, the company worked in the former South Vietnam building roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases. Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave the company an additional $5 million to update its report. That same year, BRS won a massive, five-year logistics contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to work alongside American GIs in places like Zaire, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, the Balkans, and Saudi Arabia.

After Bill Clinton's election cost Cheney his government job, he wound up in 1995 as CEO of Halliburton Company, the Dallas-based oil services giant -- which just happens to own Brown & Root Services. Since then, Cheney has collected more than $10 million in salary and stock payments from the company. In addition, he is currently the company's largest individual shareholder, holding stock and options worth another $40 million. Those holdings have undoubtedly been made more valuable by the ever-more lucrative contracts BRS continues to score with the Pentagon.

Between 1992 and 1999, the Pentagon paid BRS more than $1.2 billion for its work in trouble spots around the globe. In May of 1999, the US Army Corps of Engineers re-enlisted the company's help in the Balkans, giving it a new five-year contract worth $731 million.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/20...

PS: Money really does trump peace these days. For some reason, Corporate McPravda ignores this reality. I've very glad that you don't, kpete.

[kpete]

2. greed

is killing our planet

thanks for your spot-on reply

peace,
kp

[Raster]

5. War profiteering used to be considered a foul crime of heinous greed.

Now it appears it's just prudent, long-range financial planning.

[valerief]

8. Bingo! nt

[Octafish]

39. So says The New York Times: ''The Pitfalls of Peace''

Prof. Tyler Cowen kids us not.

The Pitfalls of Peace

The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth

Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014

The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.

An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.

The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.

It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not today’s entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.

War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.

SNIP...

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0

Thanks to DU, each day fewer people become aware of what's going on. The New York Times certainly isn't spelling it out.

[mountain grammy]

13. sickening, disgusting.

money trumps peace..

[JDPriestly]

17. You have just painted a portrait of corruption in my humble opinion.

Fox News complains about government and government spending and used to complain about pork, voila. There it is. All of it wrapped up in one tidy little brown package.

And where is Fox News on this?

[Enthusiast]

32. +1 You nailed it a shit load.

[bullwinkle428]

3. Absolutely, something else that we should NEVER FORGET.

K&R.

[Raster]

4. THANK YOU, kpete!

L I H O P

[Enthusiast]

33. At the very least.

LIHOP.

[wildbilln864]

6. k & r & thanks! MIHOP! n/t

[Gothmog]

7. Cheney lied and thousands died

[Ford_Prefect]

21. Hundreds of thousands have died indeed.

[appalachiablue]

9. K & R. Greed is killing us and destroying the planet. Has to end!

~ If there must be trouble, let it be in may day, that my child may have peace. ~ Thomas Paine.

[PufPuf23]

10. Greed and lies and Man's inhumanity to Man.

There is scant justice, kindness, empathy, nor true love in this life.

Stupidity, greed, and cruelty reign.

[kacekwl]

11. After seeing those numbers again

I can't believe all those who knowingly knew this was all B.S. have not killed themselves . I can't imagine how you could go on living with the DEATH and SUFFERING you are responsible for.

[Botany]

12. w and Cheney blew off 70 warnings prior to 9/11

Thania Sayne leans on the headstone of her husband the day before their wedding anniversary on 16 October 2013.



No bush v Gore = no 8/6/01 PDB and a legally elected President Gore would have done
something after getting that warning and we would have had no 9/11 and with no 9/11
we would have had no unneeded war in Afghanistan or Iraq.

[ejbr]

20. + 1000 n/t

[Botany]

22. That poor little boy lying dead on that beach in Turkey was on the run from ISIS

along w/those Syrians who died in that truck in Austria and why do we have ISIS?

w bush did not know that there was difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims
before he started Dick Cheney's war for profit.

But please everybody look at Hillary's emails.

[ejbr]

23. She'll figure out how to regulate that sh@t n/t

[leveymg]

26. Hillary and Petraeus had essential roles in creating the civil war that led to that poor little boy

becoming a dead refugee on that beach.

Had the necons on the Cabinet and National Security Council not pushed an interventionist game of regime change in Libya and Syria during 2011, that little boy would probably be alive and well in his home in Syria, today.

This is the result of neocons in two U.S. Administrations who have destroyed the Arab Mideast and set off a religious war between the Sunni and Shi'ia. Who knows where this will spread next?

[yardwork]

29. That is a terrible misrepresentation.

There is a huge difference between the Democrats and Republicans on this and all other issues. Please stop spreading misinformation that will lead to another Republican administration.

[leveymg]

37. The truth may be horrible but it doesn't lead to the GOP. Just better and

more Democrats.

Read what is written in that light.

[Botany]

36. your post is shameful

n/t

[leveymg]

38. You should be ashamed to deny the truth.

How are the American people supposed to trust and support Democrats if like the GOP we also deny the obvious and well documented mistakes? The mistake in both Administrations was neocon regime change strategy. Get rid of them and things will improve.

[DrBulldog]

14. The biggest crime is now on us.

We let these criminals walk away scot-free.

[kairos12]

15. Cheney is evil personified.

[geardaddy]

16. Not all of the people who died on 9/11 were Americans

There were people from 90 countries who died in the attacks. Otherwise, those graphics are great.

[gademocrat7]

18. K&R

[RoccoR5955]

19. 9/11 was an inside job.

Don't forget that. There is plenty of evidence of that, you just have to look for it.

[LibDemAlways]

24. The last two days my

FB wall is full of "Never forget" posts with images of the twin towers and American flags. The posters are generally well meaning people who to this day have no idea that the Bush/Cheney cabal let it happen so that they could launch their long planned war in Iraq. The news media did a great disservice to the American people by cheerleading for the war while ignoring its origins. A while back Rachel Maddow did a special on the Iraq War, and even she never once mentioned PNAC. Either it was lazy journalism or the threat of being fired. Probably the latter. The 9/11 commission years later should have been called the 9/11 ass covering commission. Bush administration criminals knew it was coming, let it happen, and then gleefully profitted from it, and 14 years later, much of the American public is still clueless.

[RufusTFirefly]

25. Congress has been concerned about war profiteering for more than 80 years

On Feb. 8, 1934, Senator Gerald Nye, a progressive Republican from North Dakota, submitted a Senate Resolution calling for an investigation of the munitions industry.

Dorothy Detzer, executive secretary of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, had approached Nye, George Norris and Robert La Follette and asked them to instigate a Senate investigation into the international munitions industry. Meanwhile, a book called Merchants of Death, which came out that year and was a best-seller and a Book of the Month Club selection, also had an influence on the formation of the Nye Committee. In fact, the Nye's committee, which was officially known as the Senate Munitions Committee, was commonly known as the "Merchants of Death" Committee.

The committee came into being because of widespread reports that manufacturers of armaments had unduly influenced the American decision to enter the war in 1917.  These weapons’ suppliers had reaped enormous profits at the cost of more than 53,000 American battle deaths.  

According to Harvard historian Jill Lepore, Nye’s hearings were “the most rigorous inquiry into the arms industry that any branch of the federal government has ever conducted.” He convened 93 hearings and questioned more than 200 witnesses, including J.P. Morgan and Pierre du Pont (both of whom were also implicated in the Business Plot).

The United States had entered the war, the committee concluded, neither to save the world for democracy nor to defend its own interests, but as the result of the intrigues of profiteers. According to Nye:

“When Americans went into the fray, they little thought that they were there and fighting to save the skins of American bankers who had bet too boldly on the outcome of war and had two billions of dollars of loads to the Allies in jeopardy.”

Nye’s proposed solution was for weapons manufacturing to be limited to the government: “The removal of the element of profit from war,” he explained “would materially remove the danger of more war.”

The Senate cut off funding in 1936 after Nye accused the late former President Woodrow Wilson of withholding essential information from Congress as it weighed a declaration of war against Germany. Nevertheless, the Nye panel helped inspire passage of congressional neutrality acts in the mid-1930s that signaled profound American opposition to overseas involvement — which lasted until what the Project for a New American Century would describe decades later as "a catastrophic and catalyzing event" – the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

[J_J_]

27. They continued to use 'faulty' evidence even after the CIA told them it wasn't true

Condi said they 'simply forgot' what the CIA told them so they still put it in W's state of the union.

These people were so freaking obvious- the corporate media has absolutely no credibility, I don't know why anyone would believe them about anything anymore.

[bobthedrummer]

28. K&R#57 + Spy Chief James Clapper Compares U.S. "Intelligence Community" to Spiderman (Kevin Gosztola

9-10-2015 Shadow Proof)
http://shadowproof.com/2015/09/10/spy-chief-james-clapper-compares-u-s-intelligence-community-to-spider-man

I compare it to The False Prophet.

[Rex]

30. All that evidence yet nobody is serving a single day in jail over it.

Lie to Congress? NP. Lie to America and the world? NP. Get us involved in a war of aggression. NP. Close down the federal government. NP.

Watch some doctored videos on Planned Parenthood...OMG RED ALERT RED ALERT! DEFUND DEFUND er DIVE DIVE DIVE!!!

Republicans are the WORST kind of people imo.

[nationalize the fed]

34. Lie to congress? NP

This creep is still creeping around. A D is president.

[Rex]

35. In total agreement on this one and also the puke worthy quote of calling them 'patriots'.

The Security State is in full control of this nation - lock, stock and barrel. It overrides all other priorities imo.

[Enthusiast]

31. K&R! This post deserves hundreds of recommendations!