Know your BFEE: Scions of the Military Industrial Complex

[Octafish]

The Bush Family Evil Empire maintains a Tradition of War Profiteering. Some trace it back to the Civil War. The modern record makes clear their connection between foreign policy and personal profiteering from it, especially war.



To be part of the BFEE means you have to be part of what George W Traitor Bush called "His Base," the elite economic class.



"What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base."

Membership has its privileges in the form of tax breaks and government war contracts for big business.

That's why a crazy, smirking monkey could lie America into the current illegal and immoral war in Iraq. Members of the BFEE are making mountains of money at it for themselves, their cronies and those whom they serve.

From Lexington, S.C. to the White House

War Profiteering and Corruption

By TOM TURNIPSEED
Weekend Edition
August 18 / 19, 2007

A businesswoman in my home county of Lexington, South Carolina, pleaded guilty on August 16, 2007 to defrauding U.S. taxpayers of $20.5 million in shipping costs for Pentagon supplies. According to a front page story in The State newspaper, "Charlene Corley, 46, pleaded guilty to a nine-year fraud that included charging the Pentagon $998,798.38 for shipping two 19 cent bolt washers."

SNIP...

Cheney personifies war profiteering. He slid through the revolving door connecting the public and private sectors of the defense establishment on two occasions in a career that has served his relentless quest for power and profits.

As Defense Secretary, Mr. Cheney commissioned a study for the U.S. Department of Defense by Brown and Root Services (now Kellogg, Brown and Root), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Halliburton. The study recommended that private firms like Halliburton take over logistical support programs for U.S. military operations around the world. Just two years after he was Secretary of Defense, Cheney stepped through the revolving door linking the Department of Defense with defense contractors and became CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton was the principal beneficiary of Cheney's privatization efforts for our military's logistical support and Cheney was paid $44 million for five year's work before he slipped back through the revolving door of war profiteering to become Vice-President of the United States. When asked about the money he received from Halliburton, Cheney said. "I tell you that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it"

Before the Iraq War began, Halliburton was 19th on the U.S. Army's list of top contractors and zoomed to number 1 in 2003. Cheney stated he had, "severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests."

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said that Cheney's stock options in 2004 were worth $241,498 and were valued at more than $8 million in 2005-- for an increase of 3,281%. Cheney has pledged to give the proceeds to charity. Cheney continues to receive a deferred salary from the company. He was paid $205,298 in 2001; $162,392 in 2002; $178,437 in 2003; and $194,852 in 2004.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/turnipseed08182007.html

That's just what we know about. Who knows how much Halliburton took to Dubai -- or what Sneer's spiff is.



Back in Gulf War I, they ignored all offers for peace in order to make war:

The Big Lie about the "failure" of diplomacy. As with Kosovo, during the Persian Gulf war experience the media accepted that the enemy has refused to negotiate, thus compelling military action. Although Bush himself stated repeatedly that there would be no negotiations--"no reward for aggression"--and that Iraq must surrender, the media pretended that the U.S. was laboring to "go the extra mile for peace," while they suppressed information on numerous rejected peace offers. Thomas Friedman, after acknowledging that Bush strove to block off diplomacy lest negotiations "defuse the crisis" (Aug. 22, 1990), subsequently reported that "diplomacy has failed and it has come to war" (Jan. 20, 1991), without mentioning that the diplomatic failure was intentional.

SOURCE:

http://www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/1999-05/may_31herman.htm

More here:

George Bush's War

By Jean Edward Smith

From Kirkus Reviews

According to Smith (Political Science/Univ. of Toronto; Lucius D. Clay, 1990, etc.) in this volatile study, America's adventure in the Persian Gulf War was not a crusade for freedom but a checkpoint on the personal agenda of George Bush, who disregarded constitutional restrictions on presidential power and cynically manipulated the public, the press, Congress, and even the military. Quoting contemporary media accounts, books, and academic and law journals, Smith chronicles Bush's personalization of the crisis and details the resulting twists and turns of public perception, policy, and action. By Smith's account, Bush showed little interest in the Iraq situation until he met with Margaret Thatcher, who ``performed a successful backbone transplant'' and convinced him that Saddam Hussein posed a Hitler-like threat to the entire Middle East. According to Smith, this resonated with Bush's penchant for heroism and led him to adopt a ``crusading'' posture against Iraq. This personalizing of world affairs resulted in rapid, short-term success, but Smith spells out its possible dangers for democracy: Bush's alleged disregarding of expert advice, particularly from the State Department and the military, could have led to disaster, Smith says; and the crumbling of congressional caution during the crisis, he adds, undermined the separation of powers, making the President a virtual dictator of foreign policy. Particularly damning is Smith's abundant evidence of the Administration's policy of ``minimum candor'': even Generals Powell and Schwartzkopf apparently learned of Bush's decision to switch from defensive to offensive operations through TV news reports. Balancing criticism of the President with praise for military professionalism (especially in resisting adventurous campaigns), this study gives a better sense of the complexities of the situation, and sticks closer to the reported facts, than Stephen Graubard's similar (and similarly titled) Mr. Bush's War (to be published next month). -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

SOURCE: http://www.amazon.com/George-Bushs-Jean-Edward-Smith/dp/0805013881

They made money throughout the Cold War.



Wonder what ever happened to that missing $2.3 Trillion with a "T" from the Pentagon ol' Donald Rumsfeld brought up on September 10, 2001?

The War On Waste

Defense Department Cannot Account For 25% Of Funds — $2.3 Trillion

CBS News - Los Angeles, Jan. 29, 2002

(CBS) On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.

He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.

"In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he said.

Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.

Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."

More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

CONTINUED...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

Money. It's a hit. During the Vietnam war, Poppy Bush, under CIA cover, explored for oil in Vietnam.



The upper class made a killing:

CIA Helped Bush Senior In Oil Venture

By Russ Baker and Jonathan Z. Larsen | The Real News Project

January 8, 2007

NEW YORK--Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer.

Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a 'real shocker.'

But the freshly uncovered memos contend that Bush maintained a close personal and business relationship for decades with a CIA staff employee who, according to those CIA documents, was instrumental in the establishment of Bush's oil venture, Zapata, in the early 1950s, and who would later accompany Bush to Vietnam as a "cleared and witting commercial asset" of the agency.

According to a CIA internal memo dated November 29, 1975, Bush's original oil company, Zapata Petroleum, began in 1953 through joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned his agency position that same year to go into private business. The '75 memo describes Devine as an "oil wild-catting associate of Mr. Bush." The memo is attached to an earlier memo written in 1968, which lays out how Devine resumed work for the secret agency under commercial cover beginning in 1963.

"Their joint activities culminated in the establishment of Zapata Oil," the memo reads. In fact, early Zapata corporate filings do not seem to reflect Devine's role in the company, suggesting that it may have been covert. Yet other documents do show Thomas Devine on the board of an affiliated Bush company, Zapata Offshore, in January, 1965, more than a year after he had resumed work for the spy agency.

It was while Devine was in his new CIA capacity as a commercial cover officer that he accompanied Bush to Vietnam the day after Christmas in 1967, remaining in the country with the newly elected congressman from Texas until January 11, 1968. Whatever information the duo was seeking, they left just in the nick of time. Only three weeks after the two men departed Saigon, the North Vietnamese and their Communist allies launched the Tet offensive with seventy thousand troops pre- positioned in more than 100 cities and towns.

While the elder Bush was in Vietnam with Devine, George W. Bush was making contact with representatives of the Texas Air National Guard, using his father's connections to join up with an elite, Houston- based Guard unit - thus avoiding overseas combat service in a war that the Bushes strongly supported.

The new revelation about George H.W. Bush's CIA friend and fellow Zapata Offshore board member will surely fuel further speculation that Bush himself had his own associations with the agency.

Indeed, Zapata's annual reports portray a bewildering range of global activities, in the Mideast, Asia and the Caribbean (including off Cuba) that seem outsized for the company's modest bottom line. In his autobiography, Bush declares that "I'd come to the CIA with some general knowledge of how it operated' and that his 'overseas contacts as a businessman' justified President Nixon's appointing him as UN ambassador, a decision that at the time was highly controversial.

Previously disclosed FBI files include a memo from bureau director J. Edgar Hoover, noting that his organization had given a briefing to two men in the intelligence community on November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The memo refers to one as "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" and the other as "Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency."

CONTINUED...

http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg08573.html

Before World War II, Bushes, Dulleses, and Harrimans helped arm Hitler.

The Bush Family Fortune

Gramps made nice with some not very nice people in the '30s

by James Ridgeway
Village Voice -- Mondo Washington
September 28th, 2004 11:20 AM

the chainsaw-wielding Texas rancher, the blue blood of Connecticut runs deep. But not so many people know that there are a couple of rocks to be turned over in the Bush family history.
Prescott Bush, sometimes described as a progressive Republican senator from Connecticut and often described as the man who looked like he should be president, turns out to have been a creepy front man for industrialists who bankrolled and built the Nazi war machine.

Over the weekend, The Guardian (U.K.) set out in a lengthy story based on files in the National Archives the story of how in the '30s, young Prescott Bush, with the help of his father, got together with Averill Harriman, son of the railroad scion E.H. Harriman, and set up a company called UBC (Union Banking Corporation). Bush was a founder and director and owned one share, valued at $125. As it turned out, UBC was an American shell company for the Thyssen family interests. The Thyssens were a preeminent German business family that dominated the nation's iron and steel and coal businesses and were crucial to bankrolling and building the Nazi war machine. UBC was a shell, owned by a Netherlands bank, with anonymous real owners who, on further inspection, turned out to be the Thyssens.

Young Fritz Thyssen was infatuated with Hitler and joined the Nazi party in 1931. When the Nazis were having a hard time, he bailed them out financially. By the late '30s, along with Harriman's Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest investment bank, Bush had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal, and U.S. treasury bonds to Germany. In addition, it appears that Bush may have had ties to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company, which during the war used slave labor from the Nazis' concentration camps. He might also have been involved through the Thyssens in another company that was linked to the chemical giant I.G. Farben, which used slave labor.

There was nothing illegal or even unusual about doing business with the Germans in the '30s before war broke out; numerous American companies had holdings in Germany during that era. The issue with Prescott Bush is whether he had actually owned shares in the Thyssen enterprise or was just holding them in a shell for the German owners. U.S. investigations never answered the question, and no one ever brought any charges.

CONTINUED...

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0439,mondo3,57129,6.html

During the New Deal, they plotted to overthrow FDR.

Smedley Butler, Meet John Perkins

by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Published on Friday, November 19, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

Remember Smedley Butler?

He was perhaps the most decorated Major General in Marine Corps history.

In the early part of this century, he fought and killed for the United States around the world.

Butler was awarded two Congressional Medals of Honor.

Then, when he returned to the United States he wrote a book titled “War is a Racket” which opens with the memorable lines: “War is a racket. It always has been.”

“I was a high class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers,” Butler said. “In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

In a speech in 1933, Butler said the following:

“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. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”

SNIP...

“The system is set up such that the countries are so deep in debt that they can’t repay their debt,” Perkins said. “When the U.S. government wants favors from them, like votes in the United Nations or troops in Iraq, or in many, many cases, their resources – their oil, their canal, in the case of Panama, we go to them and say – look, you can’t pay off your debts, therefore sell your oil at a very low price to our oil companies. Today, tremendous pressure is being put on Ecuador, for example, to sell off its Amazonian rainforest -– very precious, very fragile places, inhabited by indigenous people whose cultures are being destroyed by the oil companies.”

When a leader of a country refuses to cooperate with economic hit men like Perkins, the jackals from the CIA are called in.

Perkins said that both Omar Torrijos of Panama and Jaime Boldos of Ecuador -– both men he worked with – refused to play the game with the U.S. and both were cut down by the CIA -– Torrijos when his airplane blew up, and Roldos when his helicopter exploded, within three months of each other in 1981.

If the CIA jackals don’t do the job, then the U.S. Marines are sent in –- Butler’s “racketeers for capitalism.”

Perkins also gives lurid details of how he pimped for a Saudi prince in the 1970s, in an effort to get the Saudi royal family to enter an elaborate deal in which the U.S. would protect the House of Saud. In exchange, the Saudis agreed to stabilize oil prices and use their oil money to purchase Treasury bonds, the interest on which would be used to pay U.S. construction firms like Bechtel to build Saudi cities.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1119-24.htm

Here's a recent, stunning BBC report on the subject:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

In our day, they overthrew Al Gore's electoral mandate.

Helps to be in the know:

War isn't just Big Business.



It's the biggest, most profitable and powerful business there is.

[seemslikeadream]

1. Marching on Babylon: Is Bush Acting Out an Elaborate Religious Fantasy thru War?

http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/3286/index.php

Is this war really about the oil? Or are Bush and his core support block of rightwing religious fanatics turning the world into a stage for acting out an elaborate "Armageddon" fantasy?
Marching on Bablyon: Are Bush() and the Religious Right Forcing the World to Act Out their Religious Fantasies?
By Cheryl Seal
Mt. Vernon, Baltimore


Bush's obsession with attacking Iraq() has been attributed to oil, to family vendetta due to his father's confrontation with Saddam, and with over-zealous terrorist-fighting efforts. However, what really lies beneath this obsession is a religious delusion, one shared, alas by many of his government appointees, including John Ashcroft, a devout Pentecostal. Bush, like Ashcroft, believes (and in fact is trying to insure) that the world is in the "end times" called for by the biblical book of Revelation - at least as interpreted by the doomsdayers, who are generally barely functional clinically classical paranoid schizophrenics (Pat Robertson being a prime example). Bily Graham, Bush's much-touted mentor, believes Armaggedon is at hand and has helped to fuel Bush's messianic complex as the "blessed" leader of the righteous in the end times. You can see that messianic complex so clearly in Bush's often inappropriately "rapturous" expression and grandiose body language.

In this fantasy scenario, following a mighty battle in a region the "faithful" have pinpointed as Iraq, about 144,000 "good Christians" will be sucked up into Heaven, while the rest are left to fry in a horrific conflagration. The support Bush has shown Israel isn't because of his pro-Jewish sentiments, it is because the "end times prescription" calls for Jews to be in complete control of all of Israel at the time of the big event. But, according to the fanatics' nasty little scenario, the joke will be on the Jews, who will be left to burn with everyone else, aside from a few perhaps a few last-minute converts to Christianity. Sharon, plainly fully aware of Bush's obsession, is taking full advantage of it. He just asked for - and is expected to be granted, up to $10 BILLION more dollars to help secure Israel and to buy war planes to help secure "Babylon."

In the fanatic's scenario, Iraq plays a special central role as "Babylon," embodying in the fundy's dark fantasies the "false religion" and the empire of the the "anti-Christ" in the end times. Here's a blurb for a book plugged by the "Bible Prophecy and the Rapture Report: "The Two Babylons. Authored by the late Rev. Alexander Hislop. An excellent source of information regarding the beliefs and rituals of the ancient babylonian cult that will dominate the empire of the Antichrist just as it dominated the major world empires and the Roman Catholic Church. "

The Roman Catholic Church, by the way is targeted for the wrath and villification of the righteous rapturists, who condemn it as "a false religion." I doubt if it is any coincidence that since Bush has been in office, the media has aggressively and relentlessly gone after the Catholic Church, fanning the pedophile priest stories into a modern witch hunt, while failing to investigate or expose similar allegations chronically being made by members of other religions, where such abuse may be just as rampant or even worse.

Bush's mentor, Billy Graham, as he grew in international fame, became very adept at appearing far more non-fanatical than he truly is in order to draw a bigger audience, a bigger bank account. Yet Graham attended Bob Jones University for some time, is on record making anti-Semitic comments in phone conversations with Richard Nixon, and, in 1948 declared, "The three gravest menaces faced by orthodox Christianity are communism, Roman Catholicism, and Mohammedanism."

In reality, Graham is still very much a fanatic, promoting the end times zealously. Here's a quote from his website:

"The Bible plainly forecasts the coming of yet another great war. It will be a war to eclipse anything the world has ever seen. It will embrace most of the nations of the world; and its focal point will be in the Middle East, where the armies of the world will some day deploy themselves, centering at Mount Megiddo. This great war has been called the battle of Armageddon. In the midst of this terrifying war that could destroy civilization the Lord Jesus Christ will return to this earth in glory and power to judge the nations of the world and set up His own glorious kingdom.

"The Scripture describes this great battle in the sixteenth chapter of the book of Revelation. The sixth angel will pour out his vial upon the great river Euphrates. We are told that the waters of the Euphrates River will be 'dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.' The dry riverbed will permit unhindered passage of the great armies of the East to the scene of the battle. Unclean spirits, demons, will go out into the world to the kings of the earth 'to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty' (verses 12-14).”

This passage is terrifying because if you use this scenario as Bush's real context for the Iraq war, it fits so well. It explains his total refusal to listen to any sort of reason, to the pleas of traditional allies, to the protests of millions. Who cares if millions protest if you are "figthing evildoers led by the anti-Christ," and the end times are near, anway? Billy Graham has been described by followers (and possibly by himself) as the second coming of John the Baptist. If so, then Bush (God help us all) is being seen by fanatics as the second coming of Christ, who is now in the process of setting up "his own glorious kingdom." The diversion of water from the Euphrates, the river that runs across southern Iraq, seems to play a big role in this prophesy (see also http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/revelation_16_12.htm) Don't be surprised if you hear of the Pentagon issuing a demand to divert or pump water out of the Euphrates. If this happens, it will certainly be an ominous signal...the loonies are advancing their cause.


http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/Media_video/christian-embassy/index.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/3/125520/2516





A lawsuit filed by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (see this Dec. 13, 2006 Slate story, "Onward Christian Soldiers", for the full text of MRFF's legal complaint ) was dismissed for "lack of standing" but a just released 47 page report from the Department of Defense Inspector General concurs < see Truthout full PDF of report>, substantially, with MRFF's allegations that high ranking Pentagon officials improperly endorsed the "Christian Embassy" through their appearances in the Christian Embassy's promotional video.

Please keep the following in mind:

Individuals featured in the Christian Embassy promotional video are among the highest ranking members of the United States military, and as such they are supposed to be the ones setting the standards for military behavior.

The Pentagon Inspector General's report provides evidence for the following conclusion which I have been substantiating, along with other MRFF researchers :

The United States military is now heavily influenced by para-church ministries that promote politicized, right leaning, religious ideological views, and that influence extends from the upper levels of the Pentagon down to the level of the military rank and file.

A few months ago that would have been an unfounded assertion on my part, but since then I've been working as part of a team effort, under the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, to amass evidence to support that claim. I can't divulge specifics right now, but yesterday I wrote, in general terms, of what I have helped uncover, for MRFF, on the spread of Christian nationalist events, improperly endorsed by the US military, across the nation. Material from that research will be emerging over the course of the next few weeks and months.

For an example of some recent Military Religious Freedom Foundation research that is public, please see MRFF researcher Chris Rodda's excellent MRFF Investigates OCF Neighborhood Bible Study Program at Fort Leavenworth.

[valerief]

2. Rummy said on 9/10/2001, that they couldn't account for 2 trillion dollars

of Pentagon money. I'm sure that's all in Dubai.

[EFerrari]

31. It's one of those things he knows he doesn't know. n/t

[Octafish]

3. Chernobyl as Wormwood.

Thank you for bringing up these important theologic aspects, seemslikeadream.

Explains how a certain type of mindset gets promoted these days:

General Casts War in Religious Terms

The top soldier assigned to track down Bin Laden and Hussein is an evangelical Christian who speaks publicly of 'the army of God.'

by Richard T. Cooper

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has assigned the task of tracking down and eliminating Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other high-profile targets to an Army general who sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan.

Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, is a much-decorated and twice-wounded veteran of covert military operations. From the bloody 1993 clash with Muslim warlords in Somalia chronicled in "Black Hawk Down" and the hunt for Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar to the ill-fated attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980, Boykin was in the thick of things.

Yet the former commander and 13-year veteran of the Army's top-secret Delta Force is also an outspoken evangelical Christian who appeared in dress uniform and polished jump boots before a religious group in Oregon in June to declare that radical Islamists hated the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan."

Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin told another audience, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

"We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this," Boykin said last year.

On at least one occasion, in Sandy, Ore., in June, Boykin said of President Bush: "He's in the White House because God put him there."

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1016-01.htm

And frightening, considering Monkey's moving nuked ACMs from Mindrot down the Mississippi.

[seemslikeadream]

5. Monkey's moving nuked ACMs from Mindrot down the Mississippi.

I've got a feeling the Dominionists have some thing to do about those nukes being moved

http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/urgent_issues.html#

Weinstein: I’m saying that the Dominionist Christian… it’s an imperious, fascistic contagion without a conscience. You know who General Wesley Clark is. He ran for President, he was the supreme NATO commander, he’s a four-star general. He came to my house for a fundraiser a few months ago. He said, “Mikey, you have a cause worth dying for. Let me assure you, the people you are fighting are the most wretched combination I have ever seen of two terrible human characteristics: heartlessness and zealousness. They have no conscience.” So therefore passivity and a peaceful attitude is going to be as useful as a baseball bat in a football game or a cricket bat in a rugby game.

Weinstein: It appears as though everything changed in 1972. That’s when we ended the draft, mandatory conscription. When we had it, at least in theory, we were pulling uniformly from what we now refer to as blue and red states. But after the end of the draft, mostly the members of our military started coming from what we now know as red states, where they fuse this weaponized gospel with patriotism.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

56. THE DRAFT MUST REPLACE THE ALL FOR PROFIT MILITARY

1972 MARKS THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR OUR CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY.

[tomp]

58. NO DRAFT, NO WAY, PERIOD! nt

[nebenaube]

25. umm

Sadam diverted the Euphrates over a decade ago...

[Myrina]

28. ... its about money.

... the "war on terror" is simply a facade for looting and pillaging the unprecedented Clinton/Gore US budget surplus to fill the BFEE's war-profiteering cronies' coffers.

I wish it were a religious thing - at least then I could suspect that the Bush family believes in something; but alas when it comes right down to it - they don't give a rat's ass one way or the other about religion, gender/sexuality issues, abortion, democracy ... its purely about money.

[Virginia Dare]

38. Much like the "war on communism" was...

a facade for looting and pillaging..and the "war on drugs" was actually a war on the poor.

[ancient_nomad]

4. I'm learning my BFEE and.....

happy to give this a KnR!

Thank you, Octafish!

:toast: :yourock:

[Octafish]

6. Hi, ancient_nomad! A hearty welcome to DU!

Here's some light reading for a good cause:




Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=872755


Know your BFEE: Money Trumps Peace. Always.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x250447


Know your BFEE: They kill good soldiers like Col. Ted Westhusing for profit...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x126094


Know your BFEE: America’s Ruling Gangster Class

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2969845


Poppy Bush brought up JFK Assassination and ''Conspiracy Theorists'' at Ford Funeral

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3029417


Know your BFEE: Robert Gates did more than keep the doors open at BCCI

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2810465


Know your BFEE: The Fellowship ‘Preys’ for America

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2591203&mesg_id=2591203


Sink the BFEE: Foley gives us Congress. Condi sends 'em to prison.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2401056


Beat the BFEE: Poppy’s CIA warned about terror plots and did not stop them

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2418621


Know your BFEE: Los Amigos de Bush

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2214484


Know your BFEE: Neil Bush hangs out with Russian Mafiya Godfather

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2082945


Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush was in Dallas the day JFK was assassinated.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1946852


Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn’t win WWII, so they / Bushes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1547206&mesg_id=1547206


Know your BFEE: At every turn, JFK was opposed by War Party

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1366764


Know your BFEE: Lies Are the Currency of Their Realm

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1170858


Know your BFEE: Cheney & Halliburton Sold Iran Nuke Technology

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=928662


Know your BFEE: The Stench of Moussaoui Permeates the Octopus

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=757860&mesg_id=757860


Know your BFEE: Moussaoui Must Die for Bush and 'His' Government

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=602016


Know your BFEE: Alito is just another word for Mussolini

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=266685


What the heck, this belongs here, too:

BFEE Turd Daniel Pipes tied to DANISH CARTOONS

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=417774


Know your BFEE: Like a NAZI

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=133897


Know your BFEE: The China-Bush Axis

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5333644


Know your BFEE: Bush and bin Laden Clans Together in Bed

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5280903


Know your BFEE: Libby Is the First Big BFEE Turd to Go Down

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5233814


Know your BFEE: WHIG (White House Iraq Group) made phony case for Iraq War

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5077403


Know your BFEE: The Secret Government

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5027094


Know your BFEE: Reinhard Gehlen

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4863411&mesg_id=4863411


Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush Armed Saddam

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4813493


Know your BFEE: Killer Businessmen who put Power and Profit before Country

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4401300


Know your BFEE: Nixon Threatened to Nuke Vietnam

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3953519


Know your BFEE: Corrupt Craftsmen Hoover and Dulles

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3908104


Know your BFEE: Poppy’s CIA Made Saddam Into the Butcher of Baghdad

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3853409


Know your BFEE: Hitler’s Bankers Shaped Vietnam War

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3832033&mesg_id=3832033&page=


Know your BFEE: Merchants of Death

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3743890


Know your BFEE: R. James Woolsey, Turd of War

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3699042


Know your BFEE: Sneering Dick Cheney, Superturd-Superrich-Supercrook

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3627538


Know your BFEE: Bush Lied America into War

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3601654


Know your BFEE: James R Bath – Bush – bin Laden Link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3571293&mesg_id=3571293&page=


Know your BFEE: War Profiteers

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3493251


Know your BFEE: Dead Men Tell No Tales

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3389867


Know your BFEE: Bush and bin Laden Clans Together in Bed

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5280903


Know your BFEE: Rev. Sun Myung Moon OWNS Poppy Bush

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3355939


Know your BFEE: Homeland Czar & Petro-Turd Bernie Kerik

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2788428


Know your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3312956


Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2511192


Know your BFEE: The Barreling Bushes

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2472759


Know your BFEE: A Crime Line of Treason

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2748315


Know your BFEE: How Smirko Got Rich

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2529964


Know your BFEE: George W Bush did "community service" at Project P.U.L.L.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2956067


Know your BFEE: Vote Suppressor Supreme, the Turd Bill Rehnquist

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2414083


Know your BFEE: George W Bush Knew 9-11 Was Coming and Did NOTHING!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2404049


Know your BFEE: Oliver North, Drug Dealer

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2396787


Know your BFEE: Pat Robertson Incorporated a Gold Mine with a Terrorist

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2397004



These aren’t labeled “Know Your BFEE,” but they’re meant in the same spirit:

Poppy Bush Involved in JFK Assassination -- BFEE's Spooked!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3274455


Vietnam and Iraq Wars Started by Same People

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3193142


JFK Would NEVER Have Fallen for Phony INTEL!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5501005&mesg_id=5501005


Plame Affair makes clear: USA is run by TRAITORS.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4200507

BFEE Is More than Capable of Bombing Their Own Countrymen

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4045149

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x46709



And for all my friends in those hard-to-reach areas:

A Short History of Conspiracy Theory

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4086438

Thanks for the kick, my Friend!

[ancient_nomad]

7. OMG!!

Thank you soooooo much! I'll be glued to this screen for weeks....and you are very welcome for the kick!

Actually, I have been a member of DU almost 3 years; however, I don't post much. It seems I am always reading (I am on dialup), and learning. I cannot tell you how much I have learned from your posts. I look forward to and appreciate them beyond words.

Thank you again!

[Ghost in the Machine]

20. Octafish, seemslikeadream, bobthedrummer, H20 Man, autorank, and so many more

here have kept me learning and reading for years. I lurked around since late '03/early '04. Took me a while to sign up and join into conversations, but I don't regret it one bit.

:hi:

[H2O Man]

36. A pot of gold

at the end of a rainbow!

Thank you for all you do.

[Octafish]

70. Money line that I didn't write: 'Bushes use Pentagon as their own private army.'

George HW Bush and his dim son both started wars America didn't need, but did turn out most profitably for them and their allies cronies.

Both Bushes also emptied the Treasury to enrich their friends.

Then, again, you knew that H20 Man. Thank you for everything.

[LibertyorDeath]

8. Such great info on the powers that be

Thanks Octafish !

Rec 5 off to the greatest....

[Octafish]

10. ''War Is a Racket''

As you know, LibertyorDeath, Gen. Butler won the Medal of Honor twice. He understood war is the most profitable scam there ever was. He also knew the military actually was working and dying for Brown Brothers Harriman and their ilk. For those new to the subject:

Chapter One

WAR IS A RACKET

By Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, USMC (Ret.)

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War (I) a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

SNIP...

Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

CONTINUED...

http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Thanks for the kick and for giving a damn, my Friend. The Truth has them on the run.

[Cleita]

9. K&R

[Octafish]

13. Carlyle's Way

To a certain class, war is just a business.

Carlyle’s Way

Making a mint inside "the iron triangle" of defense, government and industry.

By Dan Briody
December 11, 2001

Like everyone else in the United States, the group stood transfixed as the events of September 11 unfolded. Present were former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker III, and representatives of the bin Laden family. This was not some underground presidential bunker or Central Intelligence Agency interrogation room. It was the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., the plush setting for the annual investor conference of one of the most powerful, well-connected, and secretive companies in the world: the Carlyle Group. And since September 11, this little-known company has become unexpectedly important.

That the Carlyle Group had its conference on America's darkest day was mere coincidence, but there is nothing accidental about the cast of characters that this private-equity powerhouse has assembled in the 14 years since its founding. Among those associated with Carlyle are former U.S. president George Bush Sr., former U.K. prime minister John Major, and former president of the Philippines Fidel Ramos. And Carlyle has counted George Soros, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud of Saudi Arabia, and Osama bin Laden's estranged family among its high-profile clientele. The group has been able to parlay its political clout into a lucrative buyout practice (in other words, purchasing struggling companies, turning them around, and selling them for huge profits)--everything from defense contractors to telecommunications and aerospace companies. It is a kind of ruthless investing made popular by the movie Wall Street, and any industry that relies heavily on government regulation is fair game for Carlyle's brand of access capitalism. Carlyle has established itself as the gatekeeper between private business interests and U.S. defense spending. And as the Carlyle investors watched the World Trade towers go down, the group's prospects went up.

In running what its own marketing literature spookily calls "a vast, interlocking, global network of businesses and investment professionals" that operates within the so-called iron triangle of industry, government, and the military, the Carlyle Group leaves itself open to any number of conflicts of interest and stunning ironies. For example, it is hard to ignore the fact that Osama bin Laden's family members, who renounced their son ten years ago, stood to gain financially from the war being waged against him until late October, when public criticism of the relationship forced them to liquidate their holdings in the firm. Or consider that U.S. president George W. Bush is in a position to make budgetary decisions that could pad his father's bank account. But for the Carlyle Group, walking that narrow line is the art of doing business at the murky intersection of Washington politics, national security, and private capital; mastering it has enabled the group to amass $12 billion in funds under management. But while successful in the traditional private-equity avenue of corporate buyouts, Carlyle has recently set its sites on venture capital with less success. The firm is finding that all the politicians in the world won't help it identify an emerging technology or a winning business model.

Surprisingly, Carlyle has avoided the fertile VC market in defense technology, which now, more than ever, comes from smaller companies hoping to cash in on what the defense establishment calls the revolution in military affairs, or RMA. Thus far, Carlyle has passed up on these emerging technologies in favor of some truly awful Internet plays. And despite its unique qualifications for early-stage funding of defense companies, the firm seems to have no appetite for the sector.

Despite its VC troubles, however, the Carlyle Group's core business is set for some good times ahead. Though the group has raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill in the past, the firm's close ties with the current administration and its cozy relationship with several prominent Saudi government figures has the watchdogs howling. And it's those same connections that will keep Carlyle in the black for as long as the war against terrorism endures.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Bush_Gang/Carlyle's_Way.html

Thanks, Cleita!

PS: How are you, my Friend?

[Karenina]

22. Ike warned us...

K&R!!! :kick:

[Octafish]

53. Almost forgot: BAE Bribed Bandar for $2 Billion with a 'B.'

Gee. Bandar Bush made friends with people who wanted to get a piece of the petrodollar action.

Brothers in Arms: Bandar Bush Took a Billion in Bribes to Push UK Weapons Deal

Written by Chris Floyd   
Empire Burlesque
Thursday, 07 June 2007

So says the Guardian, which has had a sneak peek at the evidence compiled by Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in its lengthy investigation of vast corruption in a decades-long arms deal between Saudi Arabia and the Anglo-American arms merchant, BAE, Tony Blair's favorite war profiteer. The SFO's probe was preemptorily quashed by Blair's ever quiescent attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, last December. Now the Guardian has learned that BAE paid a quarterly bribe to Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud-- long-time ambassador to the United States, and so intimate with America's ruling family that the president nicknamed him "Bandar Bush." BAE was plying Prince Bush with $30 million every quarter -- for ten years. Nice work if you can get it.

The background to this sordid business can be found in a piece I did last year: Last Bad Deal Gone Down: War Profits Trump the Rule of Law. A brief excerpt below sets the scene:

Slush funds, oil sheikhs, prostitutes, Swiss banks, kickbacks, blackmail, bagmen, arms deals, war plans, climbdowns, big lies and Dick Cheney – it's a scandal that has it all: corruption and cowardice at the highest levels, a festering canker at the very heart of world politics, where the War on Terror meets the slaughter in Iraq. Yet chances are you've never heard about it – even though it happened just a few days ago. The fog of war profiteering, it seems, is just as thick as the fog of war.

But here's how the deal went down. On Dec. 14, the UK Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith (Pete Goldsmith as was, before his longtime crony Tony Blair raised him to the peerage), peremptorily shut down a two-year investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into a massive corruption case involving Britain's biggest military contractor and members of the Saudi royal family. SFO bulldogs had just forced their way into the holy of holies of the great global backroom – Swiss bank accounts – when Pete pulled the plug. Continuing with the investigation, said His Lordship, "would not be in the national interest."

It certainly wasn't in the interest of BAE Systems, the British arms merchant which has become one of the top 10 U.S. military firms as well, through its voracious acquisitions during the profitable War on Terror – including some juicy hook-ups with the Carlyle Group, the former corporate crib of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and still current home of the family fixer, James Baker. BAE director Phillip Carroll is also quite at home in the White House inner circle: a former chairman of Shell Oil, he was tapped by George II to be the first "Senior Adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Oil" in those heady "Mission Accomplished" days of 2003. BAE has allegedly managed to "disappear" approximately $2 billion in shavings from one of the largest and longest-running arms deals in history – the UK-Saudi warplane program known as "al-Yamanah" (Arabic for "the dove"). Al-Yamanah has been flying for 18 years now, with periodic augmentations, pumping almost $80 billion into BAE's coffers, with negotiations for $12 billion in additional planes now nearing completion. SFO investigators had followed the missing money from the deal into a network of Swiss bank accounts and the usual Enronian web of offshore front companies.

Bandar Bush was instrumental in setting up the deal in the first place, the Guardian notes, wheeling and dealing with Maggie Thatcher from his Washington redoubt. The prince -- one of the leading figures in perhaps the most repressive and extremist Islamic state on earth -- has continued to be influential with the White House even after stepping down as ambassador in 2005. (He's now head of the repressive state's security organs.) He's also played a key role in L'il Bush's political career -- making a deal to cut oil prices before the 2004 vote and publicly endorsing his "brother" in the election. One cannot but speculate on how much of the dirty BAE money was used to grease the overt and covert ops of the Bush political machine. According to the Guardian, Bandar's BAE bribes were drawn from BAE's slush fund and deposited in Bandar's account in Washington's Riggs Bank -- the notorious money-laundering outfit used for decades by American and foreign elites to wash their filthy lucre. L'il Bush's uncle, Jonathan Bush, was a top executive at Riggs Bank when it was hit with a record $25 million fine in 2004 for skirting money-laundering laws, as David Sirota -- and then the Washington Post -- report.

CONTINUED w/links...

http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1179/

Of course, I know you know what major American crime family has extensive ties to Riggs Bank.

Most importantly: Thank you, Karenina! In all ways, you really do make this a much better world for people like me.

[Karenina]

62. Right back atcha!!!

:loveya:

Oh, those BAE BAD BOARD BOYS... Phillip Carroll, Peter Weinberg, "top-tier talent" with impeccable connexions. :woohoo:

[wildbilln864]

11. K&R #8!

Keep up the greta work! Thank you! :patriot:

[Octafish]

16. War is a catalyst for the tranference of wealth.

Thanks, wildbilln864! I know you understand this, but for the many who never have seen the "Why?" spelled out:

The wealth transfer scheme

Bush's budget uses deficit as excuse for massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich

Geov Parrish - WorkingForChange.com 02.18.05 -

Everyone saw this one coming. But that doesn't make it any better.

President Bush's FY 2006 budget proposal, unveiled in detail last week, is the other shoe dropping.

It's not quite fair to say that this is a budget designed to reduce the deficit. There's still plenty of expansive spending; the Pentagon's budget increases again in this cycle, and pork for favored Republican projects still abounds.

But what it does do is use the deficit, created in four short years by this administration, as an excuse for targeting all the programs Republicans don't like. The Department of Education -- which Republicans once wanted to abolish -- takes a $4.3 billion hit. Money for health care, $1.7 billion in reduced or eliminated programs. $2.5 billion in agriculture. Half a billion in federal housing expenditures. Even aid to local and state law enforcement gets a $1.5 billion reduction. Regulatory agencies from the EPA to the Forest Service will have to make do with less.

SNIP...

Bush's budget is just as telling for what it omits. Costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- let alone any prospective wars in Iran or Syria or North Korea -- aren't included. Neither are the massive transition costs attached to Bush's plan for partial privatization of Social Security.

In both cases, when the feds spend money, it winds up in very deep pockets -- the military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, banks and Wall Street for Social Security.

Follow the money. This is not fiscal prudence; it is a massive wealth transfer scheme, an effort to use the power of federal spending to benefit the economic elites who are George W. Bush's core constituency. This is the thank-you for the hundreds of millions poured into Bush's re-election campaign.

CONTINUED...

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18583

When it comes to money, all is forgiven.

[Virginia Dare]

39. Money is NEVER lost..

it is only transferred.

[bridgit]

12. thanks, Octafish, country needs one big ass refresher plenty k&r'd...

:kick:

[Octafish]

17. Taibbi: The Great Iraq Swindle

Most of the good folks know something's wrong.

The Great Iraq Swindle

How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury

By Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone --From Issue 1034
Posted Aug 23, 2007 8:51 AM

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.
You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good -- four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life.

A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that's supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy but one of the great engineering clusterfucks of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in shit and piss, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.

You've done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of the Saw movies: "We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate," they write, adding that "the urine was so pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles" and that "during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an assessment team member's shirt." The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor.

When Congress gets wind of the fias­co, a few members on the House Oversight Committee demand a hearing. To placate them, your company decides to send you to the Hill -- after all, you're a former Air Force major general who used to oversee this kind of contracting operation for the government. So you take your twenty-minute ride in from the suburbs, sit down before the learned gentlemen of the committee and promptly get asked by an irritatingly eager Maryland congressman named Chris Van Hollen how you managed to spend $72 million on a pile of shit.

You blink. Fuck if you know. "I have some conjecture, but that's all it would be" is your deadpan answer.

The room twitters in amazement. It's hard not to applaud the balls of a man who walks into Congress short $72 million in taxpayer money and offers to guess where it all might have gone.

Next thing you know, the congressman is asking you about your company's compensation. Touchy subject -- you've got a "cost-plus" contract, which means you're guaranteed a base-line profit of three percent of your total costs on the deal. The more you spend, the more you make -- and you certainly spent a hell of a lot. But before this milk-faced congressman can even think about suggesting that you give these millions back, you've got to cut him off. "So you won't voluntarily look at this," Van Hollen is mumbling, "and say, given what has happened in this project . . . "

"No, sir, I will not," you snap.

". . . 'We will return the profits.' . . ."

"No, sir, I will not," you repeat.

Your testimony over, you wait out the rest of the hearing, go home, take a bath in one of your four bathrooms, jump into bed with the little woman. . . . A year later, Iraq is still in flames, and your president's administration is safely focused on reclaiming $485 million in aid money from a bunch of toothless black survivors of Hurricane Katrina. But the house you bought for $775K is now ­assessed at $929,974, and you're sure as hell not giving it back to anyone.

"Yeah, I don't know what I expected him to say," Van Hollen says now about the way Robbins responded to being asked to give the money back. "It just shows the contempt they have for us, for the taxpayer, for everything."

CONTINUED...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle

They just need some specifics.



Thanks for caring, bridgit!

[bridgit]

18. good god!! there he is, and they say they don't see enough of bin Laden...

Neil Bush, that's the cat that needs a bell round his neck :puke:

and you're most welcome friend, i appreciate your take on things :hi:

[hootinholler]

14. Civil war?????

Hadn't heard that part Der Fishie. I hope you would elaborate on that aspect someday.

-Hoot

[Octafish]

29. Brown Brothers Harriman

The firm made famous for its pro-Hitler work has a history of siding with the supremacist mind-set:

The relationship of Brown Brothers & Harriman with the German Steel Trust extended across the sea to England. Brown Brothers was an English firm that had merged with Harriman’s firm after the stock market crash of 1929. In England, it continued to operate under its traditional name of Brown Shipley. Brown Brothers had a tradition that served it well in supporting Hitler. During the Civil War Brown Brothers were renown for their ships running the blockade and transporting cotton from the south to England.

SOURCE:

http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/betrayalp11.htm

Of course, a few years later, these guys made off big in the Spanish-American War and then the first World War, where their ilk became known as the "Merchants of Death." It's damn clear its the BFEE motto.

Samuel Prescott Bush

From SourceWatch
Father of Prescott Sheldon Bush, grandfather to George Herbert Walker Bush (Poppy), great-grandfather to George Walker Bush (Dubya).

Sam Bush was in his era to Remington Arms what Dick Cheney is to Halliburton in ours. Son of an Episcopal minister, he switched to a darker religion. Sam started out as low-management for railroads, where he made the connections needed to move over to Buckeye Steel Castings Company. Buckeye harbored railroad strike-breaker sentiment from the president on down. It's founder was member of the "Cleveland Gatling Gun Battery",<1> called a military and social organization, set up in 1878, the year after nationwide railroad strikes.

This guns and railroad connection returns for World War I, when Buckeye Steel produced gun barrels and shell casings, and Sam Bush was moved by his patrons into the position of chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board. Bush took national responsibility for government assistance to and relations with Remington and other weapons companies.<2> This was during the time that Buckeye Steel was casting gun barrels and Bush was president of Buckeye.

Preacher's son Bush looks innocent until you are informed that his patron, Percy Rockefeller took control of Remington Arms in 1914. Frank Rockefeller was president of Buckeye Steel for three years from 1905-1908, followed by Sam Bush from 1908-1927, throughout the WWI years and the gunbarrel sales era of Buckeye.<3> In 1915 a new Remington plant was constructed, operational by 1916 for the first world war, just in time to get a million rifle order from Russia.<4>, <5> 67% of all the ammunition used in WWI by the US, Britain and Russia was sold by "Merchants of Death" Remington. Somebody got a no-bid contract on gun barrels for their company.

SOURCE:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Samuel_Prescott_Bush

I'll try and get as much Civil War stuff as I can tacked on in the coming days. Thanks for giving a damn, Hootico!

[hootinholler]

34. JCOATH!

:rofl:

Please do elaborate when you have a chance.

-Hoot

[Virginia Dare]

40. The American Civil War was nothing but a land and money grab..

if you look at the players involved, including some speculators in Britain, that much becomes clear.

[glitch]

15. K & R According to their own history their looting of the commons goes back a lot further -

don't they claim to be cousins of Queen Elizabeth from way way back? I always assumed it was all the way back to Richard III, just from the remarkable resemblance.

[Octafish]

33. Bush Crime Family Has Impressive Lineage

Lots of inbred heads.

Bush Family Has Impressive Lineage

- by Joan House, http://morningsun.net, December 17, 2000 -

This country is more of something resembling an American monarchy than most people have given thought to. This refers not only to the fact of a former president having two sons who achieved state governorships but to the genealogy of the Bush family.

The background of the Bushes is much more elevated than anyone would realize if they had not seen the Bush pedigree. Not only are they descended from kings and queens, but their wives are also, and they are related to other former U.S. presidents, who are also descended from royalty.

George Herbert Walker Bush has three lines that go back to King Edward I of England. He also is descended from King Henry I and King Henry II, both of England, and William I and Robert II, both of Scotland. Bush has common ancestors with 15 American presidents: Washington, Fillmore, Pierce, Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Cleveland, both Roosevelts, Taft, Coolidge, Hoover, Nixon and Ford.

Other presidents who have connections to British royalty are George Washington, the two Adamses, Millard Fillmore, Rutherford Hayes, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

SNIP...

George Herbert Walker Bush has kinship with Presidents Nixon, Taft, Hayes, Pierce, Coolidge, Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Grant, Ford, Cleveland, Garfield, Washington, Fillmore, Theodore Roosevelt, Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, and John Adams Jr.

With such lineages as these one wonders how anyone else has a chance at the presidency.

They do, of course. "This is America, where anything is possible," as the saying goes.

CONTINUED...

http://www.illuminati-news.com/impressive-lineage.htm

Like the British and Saudi rOils, the Bushes are raised to think they are better, by birth, than others.

That's un-American.



A smirking, crazy monkey
who thinks he's above royalty
and the Law.

Thanks for giving a damn, glitch! Much appreciate what you do.

[Virginia Dare]

41. The original British settlers in America were very class conscious..

they brought the "gentleman" class with them from the mother country, so in reality it's not un-American at all.

[H2O Man]

42. Yet they

were British, not American. The societies they interacted with were largely "classless," who influenced many of those settlers, and the concepts expressed in the the creation of the USA (though not always the practice) was to create a new society based upon equality.

[Virginia Dare]

43. Yet it is something we've never been able to fully achieve..

we continue to import an underclass of people to do the drudge work. That is the price we pay for our freedom, it has always been the price.

[H2O Man]

44. Right, you are.

The poor are by-products of this system. And there are those who capitalize off of other people's poverty and suffering.

[Ghost in the Machine]

19. A question about this part:

"CIA Helped Bush Senior In Oil Venture

By Russ Baker and Jonathan Z. Larsen | The Real News Project

January 8, 2007

NEW YORK--Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer.

Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a 'real shocker.'"

How do they explain this?

"Date: November 29, 1963

To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

From: John Edgar Hoover, Director

Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=125&topic_id=136109#137079

[Chemical Bill]

24. Senior has always said that there was another George Bush ...

in the CIA in Texas at that time. There was, George William Bush, and he has always said that he was far too low on the food chain for Hoover's man to brief him.

Bill

[Ghost in the Machine]

48. Thank you

They still think we're stupid, I guess...

[sce56]

26. How about a smoking gun he was caught on camera at the scene of the crime

Then Nixon was a Prescott Bush Protege

Sen. Prescott Bush (on the right) straightens out his young chum Sen. Tricky Dickie's hat.


Also one mr Jack Rubenstien name comes up as having worked for US REP Nixon

[Ghost in the Machine]

49. Thanks! I had seen the pic of Prescott & Tricky Dick before, but not the other ones

Has anyone ever tried to blow up or digitally enhance that picture to make a positive ID?

Also, with the technology they had in '63, could they tell if Poppy really called from Tyler, Texas? How do they know he wasn't on a pay phone right there near Dealy Plaza? I don't know, I was 8 months old then...

[sce56]

51. Not sure I tried to enhance from it and the face blends in to the brick to low resolution.

As for the calls well they did not even keep a record of the so called tramps they removed so who knows what else they did not do that day to preserve the crime scene and all other evidence.

[Octafish]

45. Poppy seems to have lied to Congress in '75.

George Herbert Walker Bush testified he was never a member of the agency until he was appointed to head it by appointed President Gerald Ford. In light of the new documents, that would seem to indicate perjury. But, the media never hold a Bush accountable for perjury or just plain old lying.

Not that lying is anything new for Mr. Plausible Deniability.

Wim Dankbar shows what we mean:

Did the Bushes help to kill JFK?

If nothing else, these pages will show the reader the following:

- Although he does not recall when asked, George (Herbert Walker) Bush was in Dallas the day JFK was assassinated.

- Bush lies about the fact that he was a high-ranking CIA official at the time of JFK's death.

- Bush allowed the escape of a convicted terrorist from prison to go to work for him as an undercover CIA asset in Iran-Contra.

- Bush has released another convicted terrorist.

- Both these terrorists were present on Dealey Plaza on 11/22/1963.

- Both these terrorists were convicted for killing 73 people by blowing up an airliner.

- Bush is personal friends with a close associate of these convicted terrorists, who was also a participant in Iran Contra.

- Bush has taken a leading role as CIA official in structuring/organizing these terrorists in effective organizations.

Shall we say: "Only in America, the land of unlimited opportunities"?

SOURCE w/loads o' info:

http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm

Loads o' info on Dallas:

http://www.jfklancer.com/

Thanks Ghost In The Machine.



I really appreciate you give a damn about the Big Prickture.

[AntiFascist]

47. Great websites! K&R ...

"There are numerous indications and allegations that Nixon's Watergate scandal had a direct connection with the Kennedy assassination and that every time that Nixon is talking about the danger that the "Bay of Pigs thing" might be exposed because of Watergate, he was actually covertly referring to the Kennedy assassination. None of these rumours could solidify, because shortly before his resignation, Nixon replaced Spiro Agnew by Gerald Ford as his vice president, who promptly pardoned him from further prosecution. The allegations of a direct connection with Dallas are certainly not unfounded, considering the incomplete official story and the preponderance of Watergate individuals connected to the Bay of Pigs and the Kennedy assassination. When it became clear that Watergate may not be kept under the lid, Nixon fires and replaces his entire administration with the exception of George H.W. Bush, because "he will do anything for our cause"."

[Ghost in the Machine]

50. Thanks Octafish, for all you do.

I don't know how you guys keep up with all of this, but I appreciate that you do it.

[mod mom]

21. Thank you bookmarked for a rainy afternoon read. Hey Octafish:

:yourock:

[Octafish]

55. Remember when the Cold War ended and we thought we had a 'Peace Dividend'?

We know what happened to that:

Published on Thursday, May 22, 2003 by the Guardian/UK

So Much for the Peace Dividend:
Pentagon is Winning the Battle for a $400 Billion Budget
Despite huge military inefficiency, Republicans return US defense spending to cold war levels to buy cold war weaponry


by Julian Borger in Washington and David Teather in New York

 
The biggest US defense budget since the cold war is being rammed through Congress by the Republican majority this week despite persistent questions over waste and the Pentagon's own admission that it cannot account for more than a trillion dollars.

The 2004 military spending request of over $400bn (£244bn) does not include the occupation of Iraq, which will be covered by a later, supplemental bill of up to $35bn. Very little of the money will go towards the war on terrorism or homeland security, which are principally paid for by other agencies like the FBI and the CIA.

The threat of more terrorist attacks has created public and congressional support for a ballooning defense budget, but the lion's share of the money is being spent on traditional weapons such as the jet fighters and submarines originally designed to fight the Soviet Union.

The last time the US spent this much on defense was in 1991. In fact the current budget is bigger in real terms than the average during the cold war, when US force levels were considerably higher.

The 2004 budget also represents a bonanza for big military contractors, some of whom had faced significant losses from the Bush administration's initial plans to axe some cold war-era programs to pay for "transformational" new technology like unmanned drones, to make the US military more agile.

After intense lobbying from the defense industry and its allies in the Pentagon and Congress, known as the Iron Triangle, the new spending bill represents a decision to pay for both the old and the new.

"There's a lot of stuff for everybody," Christopher Helman, a military analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said. "A couple of years ago we were looking at a situation which would force some hard choices. But this is a no-choice budget."

Only $25bn of the $400bn could be described as "transformational", aimed at modernizing, he said, and of that $10bn will be spent on the controversial national missile defense"star wars" scheme.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0522-01.htm

Gee. That $400 Billion dollar Pentagon budget was in 2003. This year, not counting the illegal and immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the total nears $540 Billion. Throw them in and it's gotta be near a freaking trillion dollars. And we don't get to spend a dime on Detroit or New Orleans -- let alone job creation, health care, schools, infrastructure and so on? C'mon.

PS: Back at ya, Mod Mom. Really appreciate that you care about stopping these traitors that have stolen our nation's Treasury, surrendered our national security, shredded its Constitution and tried to bankrupt our nation's soul.

[Chemical Bill]

23. Thanks again, Octafish,

for fleshing out the skull and bones.

K&R

Bill

[Octafish]

61. Mystery of the Missing Meters - Accounting for Iraq's Oil Revenue

Like vampires and blood, oil is the lifeblood of their realm.

Mystery of the Missing Meters:

Accounting for Iraq's Oil Revenue

by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch
March 22nd, 2007

The line of ships at the Al Basra Oil Terminal (ABOT) stretches south to the horizon, patiently waiting in the searing heat of the Northern Arabian Gulf as four giant supertankers load up. Close by, two more tankers fill up at the smaller Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT). Guarding both terminals are dozens of heavily-armed U.S. Navy troops and Iraqi Marines who live on the platforms.

These two offshore terminals, a maze of pipes and precarious metal walkways, deliver some 1.6 million barrels of crude oil, at least 85 percent of Iraq's output, to buyers from all over the world. If the southern oil fields are the heart of Iraq's economy, its main arteries are three 40-plus inch pipelines that stretch some 52 miles from Iraq's wells to the ports.

Heavily armed soldiers spend their days at the oil terminals scanning the horizon looking for suicide bombers and stray fishing dhows (boats). Meanwhile, right under their noses, smugglers are suspected to be diverting an estimated billions of dollars worth of crude onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of ABOT and KAAOT - has not worked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Officials blame the four-year delay in repairing the relatively simple system on "security problems." Others point to the failed efforts of the two U.S. companies hired to repair the southern oil fields, fix the two terminals, and the meters: Halliburton of Houston, Texas, and Parsons of Pasadena, California.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) is scheduled to publish a report this spring that is expected criticize the companies' failure to complete the work.

Smuggled Three Ways

Oil smuggling is believed to be occurring in three different ways in Iraq:

1. Iraqi crude. At ABOT, officials at Iraq's state-owned South Oil Company (SOC) that extracts the crude, and at the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) that pipes the crude to the terminals, would have to know about smuggling, even if they were not benefiting from the scheme.

Buyers from Brazil to India, from Thailand to the United States, purchase crude from Iraq at ABOT. The tanker operators would also have to be part of smuggling schemes. They would sign receipts for a lower quantity than they actually receive, and pay the extra directly to the smugglers. The most likely collaborators are either Iraqi or U.S. officials who supervise the production and delivery. Or both.

2. Imported fuel. Iraq spends a small fortune to buy fuel from neighboring countries including Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Much of this fuel goes to local drivers at a subsidized rate, and constitutes possibly the single most expensive item in the national budget after government salaries. In 2005 Iraq spent $4.2 billion of its $24.2 billion gross domestic product (GDP) on imported oil; the bill for 2006 is expected to exceed $5 billion. Smugglers siphon off a significant amount of the government subsidized fuel to sell back overseas at full price: The Ministry of Oil estimates the value at $800 million.

3. Theft of locally-produced gasoline. Iraqi gasoline is stolen from refineries or illegal taps on pipelines and resold within the country or smuggled abroad. Another $800 million worth of black market fuels is sold within Iraq, in places from Penjwin in the far north, to Abu al-Khasib in the south. (see next box)

SNIP...

Halliburton & Parsons

U.S. contractors have played a key role in the repair and upgrading of Iraq's oil infrastructure and expected the industry to pay for reconstruction. In January 2004, under project Restore Iraqi Oil II (RIO II), the Bush administration contracted with Halliburton to fix southern Iraq's oil fields and with Parsons to handle the northern fields. The two companies were supposed to be supervised by yet another contractor, New Jersey-based Foster Wheeler. (The first RIO contract was the infamous, secret no-bid contract issued to Halliburton before the invasion of Iraq. Although RIO II was competitively bid, Sheryl Tappan, a former Bechtel employee wrote a book criticizing the award as unfair.)

Halliburton and Parsons have long histories in Iraq, going back more than 40 years. Brown & Root, which is now part of Halliburton , began work in Iraq in 1961, while Parsons dipped into Iraq's oil sector in the 1950s. Foster Wheeler dates its work in Iraq to the 1930s.

These companies have a lot of experience at the terminals where the black market now thrives. Indeed, Halliburton built the ABOT terminal, then known as Mina al-Bakr, in the early1970s. After it was damaged during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Halliburton repaired the terminal, before it was bombed yet again during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

CONTINUED...

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14427

It's a certainty older Bonesmen remember when it was easy to pull the wool over the sheeps' eyes.

Thanks for giving a damn, Bill. Really appreciate it.

[Divine Discontent]

27. amazing proof,

that evil exists.

there is a hell.

vengeance is mine saith the Lord.

to think otherwise would make me feel they've won.

excellent work on this, OP. K&R

"There are forces at work in this world besides just those of evil" - Gandalf in C.S. Lewis' Lord of the Rings

[Octafish]

63. ''They lied us into war and huge profits were made by insiders''

Is how winston put it on op-ed news, referring to the Taibbi article in Rolling Stone, The Great Iraq Swindle:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_winston_070908_persistent_propagand.htm

War Crimes and War Profiteering

By Norman D. Livergood

EXCERPT...

Rob the Poor and Give Billions to the Rich

While working class people were burying their dead in New York City, GM, GE, IBM, Enron and other Fortune 500 companies who put Bush into power were paying off their lackeys in Congress. The so-called "Economic Stimulus" bill gives tax cuts to the corporate fat cats to the tune of $70 billion a year.

But this soak-the-poor-to-give-to-the-rich scam isn't just for next year to stimulate the economy, it's RETROACTIVE FOR 15 YEARS! So IBM will get $1.4 billion, GM $833 million, GE $671 million, etc. Enron, the Houston energy company and a major Bush supporter, would get $254 million. Guess what ordinary workers get!

Bush has already given away $40 billion of our hard-earned tax dollars to war profiteering CEOs. But the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the recent House-passed bill would provide only $2.3 billion in supplemental unemployment benefits by the end of next September, 2002. The airline industry alone got a $15 billion bailout package, and they have laid off 100,000+ Americans with families to support.

This year CEOs gave themselves, through a board vote (with other CEO's siting on these boards), on average a 22% raise. Executive pay jumped 571% between 1990 and 2000. If the minimum wage, which stood at $3.80 an hour in 1990, had grown at the same rate as CEO pay over the decade, it would now be $25.50 an hour, instead of $5.15 an hour.

Bush Senior In Collusion with the Bin Laden Family

Since he left office, ex-President and ex-CIA Director George Bush, working as a consultant, has been using his influence and contacts for the Washington-based Carlyle Group, a $12 billion private equity firm and eleventh largest defense contractor in the U.S. Carlyle's portfolio is heavily invested in defense and telecommunications firms.The Bin Laden family has large investments in Carlyle. The New York Times has reported that former President George Bush met with the bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia in 1998 and 2000.

Bush senior's Carlyle connection means he is on the payroll of corporate interests that receive defense contracts from the U.S. government while his son is president. Charles Lewis of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, indicated that "in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments."

Bush Senior specializes in Saudi Arabia and therefore has a personal interest in the corrupt Saudi regime's survival and continued profitability. The public-interest law firm Judicial Watch earlier this year strongly criticized Bush senior for his ties with the Bin Laden family, pointing out in a March 5 statement that it is a "conflict of interest could cause problems for America's foreign policy in the Middle East and Asia."

In a Sept. 29 statement, Judicial Watch added that, "This conflict of interest has now turned into a scandal. The idea of the president's father, an ex-president himself, doing business with a company under investigation by the FBI in the terror attacks of September 11 is horrible." Judicial Watch demanded that President Bush make his father pull out of the Carlyle Group.

The New York Times on October 26, 2001 reported that, "The Saudi family of Osama bin Laden is severing its financial ties with the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm known for its connections to influential Washington political figures, executives who have been briefed on the decision said today." Some of those influential figures include George H.W. Bush and his son, President Bush.

CONTINUED...

http://www.hermes-press.com/profiteering.htm

Like you quoted, there are forces at work that aren't evil:

Good Lord willing, tonight I am attending a talk by Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a Detroit cleric recognized for his anti-war work over decades. Believe it or not, more than a few of his colleagues in the Church don't like what he has to say.

http://ncrcafe.org/blog/34/

Thanks for caring, themartyred.

[EFerrari]

30. Thanks, Octafish. K&R

[Octafish]

65. The 10 Most Brazen War Profiteers

Here are a few names for We the People to remember:

The 10 Most Brazen War Profiteers

By Charlie Cray, AlterNet
Posted on September 5, 2006, Printed on September 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/41083/

The history of American war profiteering is rife with egregious examples of incompetence, fraud, tax evasion, embezzlement, bribery and misconduct. As war historian Stuart Brandes has suggested, each new war is infected with new forms of war profiteering. Iraq is no exception. From criminal mismanagement of Iraq's oil revenues to armed private security contractors operating with virtual impunity, this war has created opportunities for an appalling amount of corruption. What follows is a list of some of the worst Iraq war profiteers who have bilked American taxpayers and undermined the military's mission.

No. 1 and No. 2: CACI and Titan

In early 2005 CIA officials told the Washington Post that at least 50 percent of its estimated $40 billion budget for that year would go to private contractors, an astonishing figure that suggests that concerns raised about outsourcing intelligence have barely registered at the policymaking levels.

In 2004 the Orlando Sentinel reported on a case that illustrates what can go wrong: Titan employee Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, an Egyptian translator, was arrested for possessing classified information from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Critics say that the abuses at Abu Ghraib are another example of how the lines can get blurred when contractors are involved in intelligence work. CACI provided a total of 36 interrogators in Iraq, including up to 10 at Abu Ghraib at any one time, according to the company. Although neither CACI, Titan or their employees have yet been charged with a crime, a leaked Army investigation implicated CACI employee Stephen Stefanowicz in the abuse of prisoners.

CACI and Titan's role at Abu Ghraib led the Center for Constitutional Rights to pursue companies and their employees in U.S. courts.

"We believe that CACI and Titan engaged in a conspiracy to torture and abuse detainees, and did so to make more money," says Susan Burke, an attorney hired by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), whose lawsuit against the companies is proceeding into discovery before the Federal Court for the District of Columbia.

The private suits seem to have already had some effect: In September 2005 CACI announced that it would no longer do interrogation work in Iraq.

Titan, on the other hand, has so far escaped any serious consequences for its problems (in early 2005, it pleaded guilty to three felony international bribery charges and agreed to pay a record $28.5 million Foreign Corrupt Practices Act penalty). The company's contract with the Army has been extended numerous times and is currently worth over $1 billion. Last year L-3 Communications bought Titan as part of its emergence as the largest corporate intelligence conglomerate in the world.

No. 3: Bechtel: precast profits

The San Francisco-based construction and engineering giant received one of the largest no-bid contracts -- worth $2.4 billion -- to help coordinate and rebuild a large part of Iraq's infrastructure. But the company's reconstruction failures range from shoddy school repairs to failing to finish a large hospital in Basra on time and within budget.

Recall that USAID chief Andrew Natsios originally touted the reconstruction as a Middle Eastern "Marshall Plan." Natsios should have known that all would not go smoothly with Bechtel in the lead: Prior to joining the Bush administration, he was chief executive of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, where he oversaw the Big Dig -- whose costs exploded from $2.6 billion to $14.6 billion under Bechtel's lead.

In July, the company's reputation for getting things done unexpectedly plummeted like a 12-ton slab of concrete when Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), released an audit of the Basra Children's Hospital Project, which was $70 million to $90 million over budget, and a year and half behind schedule. Bechtel's contract to coordinate the project was immediately cancelled.

Now that the money is running out, American officials are beginning to blame Iraqis for mismanaging their own infrastructure. But as Bowen warns, contractors like Bechtel, the CPA and other contracting agencies will only have themselves to blame for failing to train Iraqi engineers to operate these facilities (esp. water, sewage and electricity) when they leave.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/41083/

Thanks for giving a damn, sfexpat2000. Really appreciate it and you.

[Swamp Rat]

32. ... and the war business will continue at the expense of the world's poor and helpless.

[Octafish]

66. 2003: Military spending nears $1 trillion

When I was a kid, 35 years ago, I had the good fortune of hearing a man on the radio say that if the Soviet Union and the United States were to pool their military spending for one year, we would be able to build water and sewage facilities and hospitals for all towns without then lacking them with a population of more than 10,000 people. We didn't and we haven't and things have gotten more, eh, interesting.

Here's a bit of specifics :

Military spending nears $1 trillion

By Thalif Deen

NEW YORK - After declining in the post-Cold War era of the early 1990s, global military spending is on the rise again - threatening to break the US$1 trillion barrier this year, according to a group of United Nations-appointed military experts.

The 16-member group estimates that military spending will rise to nearly $950 billion by the end of 2004, up from $900 billion in 2003. By contrast, rich nations spend $50 billion to $60 billion on development aid each year.

The 2004 estimates would be "substantially higher if the costs of the major armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were included", the experts say in a 30-page report released in New York. The US Congress has authorized spending of about $25 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq in 2004, but that is expected to more than double by the end of the year. US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate in May that war spending in Afghanistan and Iraq was approaching about $5 billion a month. He predicted that total costs for 2005 would be $50 billion to $60 billion.

"At a time when global poverty-eradication and development goals are not being met due ... to a shortfall of necessary funds, rising global military expenditure is a disturbing trend," warns the UN study. The report, titled "The Relationship between Disarmament and Development in the Current International Context", will go before the 59th session of the UN General Assembly beginning mid-September.

"With the end of the Cold War, global military expenditure started to decrease," the report said. "Many expected that this would result in a peace dividend as declining military spending and a less confrontational international environment would release financial, technological and human resources for development purposes."

But that never materialized, say the experts, who included retired Brigadier Richard Baly of the UK Department for International Development; Friedrich Groning, deputy commissioner of Germany's Arms Control and Disarmament Department; Catharina Kipp, director of the Department for Global Security in Sweden; and Prasad Kariyawasam, director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka.

"Despite decades of discussions and proposals on how to release resources from military expenditure for development purposes, the international community has not been able to agree on limiting military expenditure or establishing a ratio of military spending to national development expenditure," they write.

At the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1970s, global military spending rose above $900 billion. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it kept declining, to about $780 billion in 1999. The recent increases are due primarily to a significant rise in the US military budget.

"The United States now accounts for about half of world military spending, meaning that it is spending nearly as much as the rest of the world combined," said Natalie J Goldring, executive director of the program on global security and disarmament at the University of Maryland. "This is difficult to justify on the basis of known or anticipated threats to US national security."

The world's top five spenders are the US, Japan, the United Kingdom, France and China.

CONTINUED...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/FH19Dj01.html

Thanks for giving a damn, Compay. Estamos casi, casi.

[Swamp Rat]

67. No problema carnal

:hi:

[Octafish]

68. US nuclear tab at $5.8 trillion

Almost forgot a most important point...

US nuclear tab at $5.8 trillion

South News July 1

Washington: In an enormous drain on resources the United States has spent $5.8 trillion on nuclear weapons according to a new study

A four-year study of newly declassified Pentagon documents, released yesterday by the Brookings Institute, looked at the expenditures of producing and deploying nuclear explosives over the past 5 1/2 decades with current spending on the arsenal at about $35 billion annually, or roughly 15 percent of the total defense budget.

Since the birth of the atomic weapons program in 1940, a total of $5.5 trillion was spent through 1996, the Washington think tank reports. That is 29 percent of all U.S. military spending and almost 11 percent of all government spending through the 52 years.

In the first comprehensive audit of the US nuclear arsenal,it calculated costs for research, development, deployment, command and control, defenses and dismantlement. The U.S. government has never attempted to track these costs, and whether the weapons helped to bring down the Soviet Union, against whom most of the arms were aimed after World War II, remains an open question, Stephen I. Schwartz, chairman of the four-year study, said in the report.

SNIP...

The audit shows that when McNamara declared in 1964 that a total nuclear force equivalent to 400 megatons (equal to 400 million tons of TNT) would have been enough to achieve "mutual assured destruction" with the Soviet Union, the U.S. stockpile already totaled 17,000 megatons.

Highlights of the report:

• The United States produced 70,000 nuclear warheads between 1945 and 1990, with an arsenal that peaked in the 1960s at 32,000 warheads
• Making the warheads was relatively inexpensive. Firing, storing and handling them was extremely costly. The 70,000 warheads cost $409.4 billion, only about 7 percent of the total. But thousands of aircraft, submarines, ships, missiles, and a large network of factories, bases and personnel cost $3.241 trillion.
• In 1996 dollars, the World War II Manhattan Project cost more than $26 billion.
• The United States has produced 65 warhead types for 116 different weapons systems.
• Thirteen major U.S. facilities - including Washington state's Bangor submarine base - handle and maintain nuclear weapons, and cover an area larger than Delaware, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined.
• Some 6,135 strategic ballistic missiles were purchased at a cost of $266 billion, as well as 4,680 strategic bombers since World War II at a cost of $227 billion.
• The 2,975 submarine-launched ballistic missiles alone cost $97 billion, said the report. Since their inception, the United States has designed and deployed 14 kinds of strategic bombers. Some 210 nuclear-powered military vessels have been built or are being built.
• The figures include the estimated $7 billion costs of attempting to develop a nuclear-powered airplane, which never got off the ground.
• At the moment, the U.S. nuclear arsenal - long-range strategic and short-range tactical - is estimated at 10,635 warheads.
• The current stockpile has the equivalent explosive force of about 120,000 Hiroshima bombs.
• The United States is spending an estimated $35 billion a year on nuclear weapons and related programs, the Brookings Institution says in a massive study.

CONTINUED...

http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/980701-USnukes.htm

Paints a real picture.

Yours though, show Truth.

[jeff30997]

35. Yep!

Damn murderous parasites.

[Octafish]

69. Cashing In - Fortune In Profits Await Bush Circle After Iraq War

Well paid murderous parasites, at that.

Should they evade prison, their names will be rememberd in history forever.

Cashing In

Fortune In Profits Await Bush Circle After Iraq War

By Andrew Gumbel
The Independent - London
9-15-2

The last time the United States went to war against Iraq, Dick Cheney did very nicely from it.

Having served as Defence Secretary, and basked in the reflected glory of the US military's surprisingly rapid advance across the desert sands to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, he then managed to reap benefits of a very different kind once the war was over and he left government to become chief executive of Halliburton, the Texas-based oil services company.

When the United Nations relaxed its sanctions regime in 1998 and permitted Iraq to buy spare parts for its oil fields, it was Halliburton, under Mr Cheney's leadership, that cleaned up on the contract to repair war damage and get Saddam Hussein's oil pipes flowing at full capacity again. Two Halliburton subsidiaries did business worth almost $24m (£15m) with the man whom these days Mr Cheney calls a "murderous dictator" and "the world's worst leader".

Since taking over as George Bush's vice-president, Mr Cheney has severed all formal ties with his former employer, notably when he cashed in $36m in stock options and other benefits at the height of the market in August 2000. But Halliburton currently struggling with a corporate accounting scandal that may or may not implicate Mr Cheney could profit all over again if the much-threatened new war against Iraq comes to pass.

We can certainly expect more air strikes against the oil fields, possibly combined with a ground invasion. Then, when it is all over, someone is going to have to mop up the damage once again. Halliburton, with its previous experience and unparalleled political connections (not limited to Mr Cheney), would be in pole position for the job.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0915-04.htm

Thanks for giving a damn, jeff30997

[Virginia Dare]

37. A tour de force there Octafish...

many people don't know or like to forget that our involvement in Viet Nam was due primarily to oil. Thanks for a brilliant post, as usual!

[HCE SuiGeneris]

46. Put together brilliantly Octafish

many accolades... :applause: :applause: :applause: :kick:

[Canuckistanian]

52. You always open my eyes, Octafish

And what I see ain't pretty.

Kudos for another bookmark-worthy post.

K&R!

[Initech]

54. Great stuff! Remember: MONEY TRUMPS PEACE. ALL THE TIME.

Not sometimes like W calls it.

[begin_within]

57. It's chilling to me because my grandfather knew Smedley Butler

My grandfather and both of my parents served in the USMC. My grandfather (who died 16 years before I was born) was an expert rifleman who taught other Marines how to shoot rifles, and for a time in the 1920s he was in command of Camp Matthews, which has now become the University of California at San Diego. He served in WW1 and was stationed in Haiti and China after WW1 before settling in San Diego. He died unexpectedly of heart failure in 1944, at the age of 58. While he and his family (my mother and grandmother) were living in Haiti, my grandmother drove the car into a ditch, and he never let her drive again after that. I never met him but I knew my grandmother well, and both of my parents were Marines, so I heard a lot of "Marine talk" in the family. I heard the name Smedley Butler several times and I always thought it was a comical name, like someone who should have been in a Three Stooges or Marx Brothers movie. I never met him though. I should read his book because his USMC career probably paralleled my grandfather's career.

[Blecht]

59. Just a kick - nt

nt

[Blashyrkh]

60. Whilst true, a mere distraction.

[porphyrian]

64. This is certainly worth another kick. - n/t