Bush's Military-Industrial Warriors

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One would expect that President Bush would be humbled by his lack of experience in the military, and, that his same shallow depth of involvement in foreign affairs would cause him to wield our armed forces with caution and restraint.

Yet, upon assuming the moniker of the commander-in-chief he reflexively aligned himself with the armed forces' bureaucracy which has, in the last decade, involved itself more with the projection and preservation of U.S. monied interests around the globe, than with the actual defense of democratic ideals of economic and social justice.

It was that alignment which fostered the unprecedented appointments of hundreds of the who's-who in the military industrial world to the most sensitive positions in our government offices.

The biggest threat to the World community is the proliferation of WMDs here in the U.S., facilitated by a nest of former military-industrial executives (military-industrial warriors) and shareholders in the Defense department and throughout the Bush administration.

In 1999, when Bush was governor, Texas had 219 aircraft companies, with 47,757 workers. The industry exported $10.0 billion to the top five export markets of Mexico, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.

Major aircraft industry employers in Texas are: Fairchild Aircraft Inc; Lockheed Martin; Northrop Grumman; and Raytheon Systems Co. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/AA/dnaul.html (Handbook of Texas Online)

A World Policy Institute review found that 32 major policy makers in the current administration have significant ties to the arms industry now, and prior to joining the administration. http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/reportaboutface.html#III

Vice-president Dick Cheney is among the wealthiest members of the administration with an estimated booty of $70 million. He has invested heavily in state governments, which account for as much as $12.5 million of his fortune. The bulk of his assets is in savings accounts, certificates of deposit etc., totaling nearly $50 million. He holds stock with Electronic Data Systems and Anadarko Petroleum http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/e2415.htm (USA Today). He also retains ‘unpaid' directorships at the nation's leading companies, including Procter & Gamble, EDS and Union Pacific. (stock in lieu of payments).

He is still receiving a yearly paycheck from Halliburton.

-Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense owns shares of General Electric stock worth $100,001 to $250,000 (GE has a wide range of government contracts and regulatory issues. It is one of the largest defense contractors, with $1.7 billion worth of contracts in 2000 http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=15&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0). Rumsfeld previously served as CEO of the pharmaceutical manufacturer G.D. Searle, a subsidiary of Pharmacia and served on the board of the drug research and development company, Gilead Science.

As a director for Gulfstream Aerospace, Rumsfeld’s stock in the company reportedly was valued at $11 million when the company was acquired by defense contractor General Dynamics in 1999. http://www.opensecrets.org/bush/cabinet/cabinet.rumsfeld.asp (Center for Responsive Politics)

Rumsfeld was chosen as defense chief to usher in the next cash cow for the military industry: Space-Based Weaponry. He chaired the Rumsfeld Commission a.k.a.: "Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States" http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/missile/rumsfeld

Wolfowitz was on the board, and Iraq reconstruction's Gen. Jay Garner was there too. The propped up space commission; the invention of Rep. Curt Weldon of Pa. (a frequent traveler to Russia and a friend of the Russian elite), was formed to refute the CIA's assessment that Star Wars was costly, unnecessary, and unworkable. Not surprisingly the commission came down in favor of restarting the Space nuclear race.

Bush talked up the renewal of the Star Wars program during the campaign, money was put into research, and the program is waiting for the war to die down so they can pump more money in.

In the 2004 defense budget, Congress appropriated $100 million to reinstate one of the canceled missile defense tests. The total amount the administration requested for Ballistic Missile Defense: $9.1 billion; Senate's bill: $9.1 billion.

Lockheed and possibly Raytheon stands to receive the lion's share of future space contracts because of Boeing's suspension for spying on Lockheed.

-Peter B. Teets, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, is the former president and chief operating officer of Lockheed Martin who retired from the company in late 1999.

Teets now serves as the director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) http://www.nro.gov/, Undersecretary of the Air Force, and chief procurement officer for all of military space, controlling a budget in excess of $65 billion, a figure that includes $8 billion a year for missile defense and $7 billion annually for NRO spying.

To date it is believed that the NRO has provided more than $500 million each to Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. "A key player in supplying revolutionary breakthrough technology has been, and will continue to be, the National Reconnaissance Office," Teets said February in a Pentagon briefing. http://portal.lobbyliberal.it/article/articleprint/271 (Space industry: Supporting U.S. Supremacy, Loring Wirbel) http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2002/t02072002_t0207st.html

Teets boasted that the military makeover now underway is geared to "make the world's best space forces even better." http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2002/02

- Stephen Hadley, 53, served as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy from 1989 to 1993 and was responsible for defense policy on NATO and Western Europe, nuclear weapons and ballistic missile defense, and arms control. He was active in the negotiations that resulted in the START I and START II treaties.

Hadley was also a member of the National Security Council staff during the earlier Bush administration. Former Lockheed president, Bruce Jackson and former Lockheed counsel, Hadley have worked closely together on the Committee to Expand NATO. http://zena.secureforum.com/Znet/zmag/articles/petrassept97.htm (Nato Expansion, James Petras) Jackson was president of this entity, based in the Washington offices of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute; Hadley was its secretary.

As reported by Karl Grossman of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space http://www.space4peace.org/ (Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space), Stephen Hadley told an Air Force Association Convention in a speech September 11, 2000, "Space is going to be important. It has a great feature in the military," http://zena.secureforum.com/Znet/zmag/feb01grossman.htm (Aerospace Executives On Bush Star Wars Team, Karl Grossman)

- Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Director of Iraq Reconstruction is president and managing partner of former law firm, Feith & Zell; clients include Northrop-Grumman and Loral Space Communications http://www.loral.com/. Feith created International Advisors Incorporated, a lobbying firm whose main client was the government of Turkey. The firm retained Richard Perle as an adviser between 1989 and 1994. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content?030317fa_fact (LUNCH WITH THE CHAIRMAN, SEYMOUR M. HERSH)

Feith owns shares of AT&T stock worth $500,00 to $1 million, (AT&T is the DOD's 43d largest contractor), Ford Motor Co. stock worth $250,001 to $500,000 (Ford is lobbying the DOD over appropriations), Verizon Communications stock worth $500,001 to $1 million, and Lucent Technologies stock worth $250,001 to $500,000.

Bechtel awarded a $25 million subcontract in October to shareholder Feith's Lucent Technologies to carry out ‘emergency' repair and rehabilitation of the communications network in Iraq. This was the first major communications infrastructure subcontract Bechtel awarded in Iraq. http://www.lucent.com/press/0803/030825.nsa.html

- Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of DOD, and former assistant to Dick Cheney, was a Northrop-Grumman consultant.
Wolfowitz, along with Condi Rice and Richard Perle, and others, formed the Bush campaign foreign policy and national security team with others, which Ms. Rice named "The Vulcans," after a statue of the Roman god in Rice's hometown. http://www.merip.org/mer/mer216/216_urbina.html

Wolfowitz is a longtime member of the PNAC, and a veteran of both the Reagan and Bush I administrations.

- Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State is president and partner of Armitage Assoc. LLP http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=45246&group=webcast , was a Boeing consultant, a Raytheon consultant and an advisory board member. Armitage was also President Bush's special emissary to Jordan's King Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War. Armitage has also worked in the past for Halliburton. From March 1992 until 1993, Armitage as ambassador, funneled U.S. dollars into the new independent states of the former Soviet Union. In January 1992, the Bush Administration's desire to cozy up to the NIS (and their oil) resulted in Armitage's appointment as Coordinator for Emergency Humanitarian Assistance.

During this time Armitage took on the other international patronage projects that normally follow war, accommodating the assuagement of the European Community, Japan and other donor countries.

Armitage owns Electronic Data Systems stock worth $250,001 to $500,000 (EDS is the 49th largest defense contractor, and lobbies the Defense Dept. over various appropriations issues), General Electric stock worth $500,001 to $1 million, Merck & Co. stock worth $100,001 to $250,000 (Merck lobbied the Defense Dept. over the Biological Weapons Convention implementation protocol), and Verizon Communications stock worth $250,001 to $500,000.

- Robert Card, Undersecretary of Energy owns CH2M stock worth more than $1 million - $5 million (CH2M's subsidiary, Kaiser-Hill, has contracts with the Department of Energy, including cleanup of the Rocky Flats nuclear site in Colorado).

- Colin Powell, owned more than $1 million in General Dynamics stock before joining the administration.

He also owns Merck & Co. stock worth $500,000. Raymond Gilmartin, CEO of Merck & Co., personally contributed $32,000 to the Republicans ($1000 of which went to Bush). Merck gave $526,534 in PAC, soft money, and individual contributions, with 78 percent going to Republicans.

In 1999, Merck reported lobbying expenditures of $5,320,000.

- Gordon England, Secretary of the Navy was a General Dynamics contractor and a former president of Lockheed. General Dynamics will benefit from administration initiatives to extend the life of the Trident submarine by utilizing it both to carry submarine-launched ballistic missiles and new "conventional strike" munitions.

- Undersecretary of Defense Michael Wynne, was Senior Vice President for International Planning and Development at General Dynamics before joining the administration.

- Richard Perle, White House Defense Policy Advisor, worked for Trireme, a company of which he is a managing partner, involved in security and military technologies, and agreed to work as a paid lobbyist for Global Crossing, a telecommunications giant seeking a major Pentagon contract. After the 1991 Gulf War, Perle was involved in an unsuccessful attempt to sell security systems to the Saudi's.
http://www.trireme.co.uk/firstpageframeALL.htm http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content?030317fa_fact

Perle accepted an offer from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to chair the Defense Policy Board, which is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A.

The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country's strategic defense policies.

Three of Trireme's Management Group members currently serve on the Defense Policy Board: Perle, Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State. Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle's, had almost no senior policy or military experience in government before being offered a post on the policy board.

Perle now serves as a director of the Autonomy Corporation, a British firm that recently won a major federal contract in homeland security. http://www.rocketnews.com/rocket/jsp/NewsSearch.jsp?searchWords=internet+infrastructure

-Alliant Techsystems has five retired senior government officials on its board, including David Jeremiah, an ex-admiral who currently sits on the Defense Policy Board along with Richard Perle. http://www.business.com/directory/aerospace_and_defense/military/defense_and_armaments/munitions/alliant_techsystems

-Karl Rove, Senior Advisor to the President is a Boeing shareholder who ran George W. Bush's presidential campaign. Mr. Rove is worth nearly $5 million.

Rove met with Intel executives while serving in the White House despite owning as much as $250,000 in Intel stock. He holds shares of Enron, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and USA Education Group. His largest holding is the River Oaks Lodge in Ingram, Texas, worth as much as $1 million.

-Michael Jackson, Deputy Secretary of Transportation is the former Vice President, Former CEO of Lockheed Information and Management Services and a shareholder. Lockheed Martin has $77 billion in federal contracts, primarily with the Defense Dept., but also with Transportation, and has lobbied the Federal Aviation Administration in 2001, which is a component of the Transportation Dept.

-Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transportation is a former Vice President, shareholder of Lockheed, who fell out of Congress and into Lockheed's financial cradle.

-John Bolton, Undersecretary of State holds Merck & Co. stock worth $250,001 to $500,000 (Merck lobbied the State Dept. over the Biological Weapons Convention implementation protocol).

-Otto Reich, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America was a paid consultant for Lockheed when the company was seeking a reversal of the U.S. ban on the sale of high tech weapons to Latin America.

-James G. Roche, Secretary of the Air Force is a former president of Northrop-Grumman, a subsidiary of Lockheed. "We have encouraged and exploited the rapid advancement and employment of innovative technologies and have taken significant action to implement the findings of the Space Commission in our new role as the executive agent for space," he said to a Senate committee in 2002.

-Dov Zakheim - Under Secretary for Comptroller of Defense was a paid advisory board member of Northrup-Grumman.

-Nelson F. Gibbs, Air Force; Assistant Secretary for Installations, Environment and Logistics is a former corporate comptroller for Northrop-Grumman.

-Sean O'Keefe, NASA Administrator was on a paid advisory board of Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon.

-I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff and Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs was a Northrup-Grumman consultant. Libby served on the advisory Board for RAND Corporation's Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He was managing partner of Washington office of international law firm Dechert, Price and Rhoads. He also served in the Department of Defense under Pres. George H.W. Bush.

Retired general Jay Garner, who served briefly as the administrator for postwar Iraq, is the President of SYColeman Corp., which is owned by L-3, one of Lockheed-Martin's communications technology units. http://www.l-3com.com/

Ronald Sugar, the new head of Northrup-Grumman, at a recent conservative policy forum on the defense industry remarked, that he expects the government to be responsible for a financially stable military industry.

"Time is risk, . . . the defense industry needs steady, predictable growth," he said.

Pentagon senior defense consultant Richard Perle, who also spoke at the conference, opined that, "A profitable defense industry keeps America strong."

Profits have been pretty darn good; CEO pay, however, has been even better. According to the study by United for a Fair Economy, More Bucks for the Bang: ", the median CEO salary at the 37 largest publicly traded defense contractors rose 79% between 2001 and 2002 whereas overall CEO salary increased only 6%. In 2002, defense industry CEOs earned an average of $5.4 million - or 577 times as much as a private in Iraq - while other U.S. CEOs, on average, earned "only" $3.7 million." http://www.ufenet.org/press/2003/BucksforBang.pdf

The Pentagon just can't seem to keep our own military contractors from proliferating their sensitive technology around the globe. They are pitting nation against nation in a death race as they steadily increase our military corporation- compromised arsenal. And then they turn around and destroy the weapons again in phony conflicts.

They lord over our defense' dollars in our government houses and shepherd the money into some death merchant's bank account. Where's the security?

Congressional contributors such as Hughes, Raytheon, TRW, Madison Research, Texas Instruments, Teledyne, Northrop-Grumman and Rockwell all have ongoing co-mingled defense and missile projects that requires them to work together on a contractor/subcontractor basis to develop their military projects.

There is no question that in this incestuous weapons production pyramid, the shareholder's bottom line dictates the amount of support and funding an individual project would receive, especially when so many of the principles in and out of government have large amounts of money and prestige invested in the success of these weapon's deals.

There seems to be no limit to aerospace ambitions. The administration is pushing ahead with the expansion of the military space program, despite the limitations of the nation's weak economy and the adoption of many other costly ‘priorities' for the armed forces.

Of course, there exists the possibility that President Bush actually assembled the Pentagon's recent pack of aerospace executives to run his foreign policy in his own anticipation of a credible 'space threat', to deter a future assault on our nation's security.

What foresight he must have had from his Texas ranch. What of it, if executives and shareholders in the space industry happen to rape of our treasury to fulfill their own hunger to dominate military and commercial space?

At the military industry conference hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, defense policy advisor Richard Perle mused that, "It would be better if we simply handed the money to the defense industry and let them invest it themselves, . . . but Congress likes to control that . . . , but it gives the impression that the merchants of death are unduly licenced." http://www.cspan.org/Search/basic.asp?ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&BasicQueryText=American+Institute+of+Aeronautics

Perle then made a weak plea for less regulation of arms exports ($140 + billion since 1992), and suggested that export licencing be consolidated into one agency. I wonder who the administration executives will suggest to head that office. Industry lawyers; resumes at the ready!

You can hear the regret in his statement. If we would only just give the industry the money they want, no strings attached; they would provide for the nation's defense needs.

The industry wants us to believe that they are the best judges of what the next generation's needs are in terms of weaponry.

But the existence of these corporations and their new hi-tech boondoggles will not make us anymore secure than the existence of these same executives in our government have kept our sons and daughters from dying in senseless wars.


These are excerpts from my book: Power Of Mischief-Military Industry Executives are Making Bush Polcy and the Country is Paying the Price

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0974735205/002-0073119-5222456?v=glance&s=books

http://www.returningsoldiers.us/pompage.htm

[david_vincent]

1. Outstanding post

Thank you!

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2. Thank you for your kind words

Thanks for reading.

[mmonk]

3. truly excellant

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4. ues the info well mmonk

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5. plink

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6. boot