Best Way To Never Have Another Stupid Endless War....No More Presidents From TEXAS!

[McCamy Taylor]

Don't get me wrong. This is not your usual uninformed Texas bashing thread. I am from Texas, and I have lived here most of my life. This allows me to bash the state with some authority. A certain company is located here, one which has been profiteering from war all the way back since the 1940s, when FDR was trying to stamp out the scourge of fascism in Europe and the Bush family was trying to promote it.

That's right, Brown & Root , the one hundred year old construction company out of Houston, Texas that got its start building roads and the Congressional career of Lyndon Baines Johnson. LBJ was a favorite of FDR, and as his fortunes rose, so did B & R's. In the 1930s, they got public works money, and they did their one good deed, building a(n illegal) dam for Austin (illegal because it was built with federal money on nonfederal land) that has saved the city from floods so that millions of Yuppies could move there, transforming the paradise of my youth into the hell hole that it is today. Just about everything in Houston is named for George Brown or one of his relatives.

In the 1940s, the Browns took a turn towards the dark side, and they scored big with military spending----an air force base in Corpus Christi, stuff like that. War profiteering is like crack. Once you get a taste, you want more. Not that they were innocent to begin with. They wrote off their campaign contributions to LBJ, and FDR told the IRS to look the other way, presumably because Johnson was such a charmer. Even mean old J. Edgar Hoover had a soft spot for the man from Texas who would later become president.

In 1962, Halliburton bought Brown & Root. Only the name changed.

Funny thing about Brown & Root's fortunes. As LBJ's career took an unexpected turn for the better in the 1960s, so did B & Rs. Note that Johnson was the first of three president's from Texas in the second half of this century to be in the seat of power when someone created a pretext for a war. In his case, it was the Gulf of Tonkin. Brown & Root got a lucrative contract for lots of support work. The Vietnam war was like the Terminator. It just went on and on and on....as anyone who followed the history of France's involvement in the area could have predicted. Good for B&R's pocketbook. Very bad for President Johnson who had some serious things he wanted to accomplish at home. In 1968, he decided enough was enough, and he cut short his executive career and declined to run again so that he could work on brokering a peace deal. However, the war criminal Henry Kissinger, who was supposed to be working for LBJ, cut a secret deal with Nixon to sabotage the peace talks, telling the South Vietnamese that they would get a better deal with Nixon if they held out---this to help Nixon's chances. The rest---the illegal incursions into Cambodia, the Killing Fields, four more years of bloody war, Operation Condor, coups of democratically elected governments in other countries for which Dr. K. has yet to be tried in international court---are history.

Now, I do not know if LBJ personally sat down and said to himself My good buddies at Brown and Root need a military conflict so that they can make some money. I had better whip them up a war. . More likely,he was preoccupied with his agenda of the War on Poverty and passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act and similar legislation. According to people who knew him, LBJ had a soft streak a mile wide. Based upon his records and other people's accounts, he worked like a dog to do good things for the oppressed people of this country---the ones who fell through the cracks during FDR's New Deal.

Maybe he did not realize that the methods one employees to achieve a position of power can come back and bite you on the ass. No doubt, his staff was riddled with people from Texas all of whom owed their souls to companies like Brown and Root and who believed the mantra War is good for business! .






Move forward in time a couple of decades, and you get to the first George Bush. Remember how he started a war? He had his ambassador tell Saddam Hussein You want to invade Kuwait? Go right ahead. Be my guest. Then, when the deed was done, the UN had a pretext to rub out the man whom the United States had made king in order to fight our enemies in Iran. Who was Secretary of Defense under George Bush Sr.? Darth Cheney, aka the Dick. He helped steer contracts to Halliburton, leading to this:

In honor of Big Business Day 2003, Citizen Works will present Dick Cheney the "Daddy Warbucks" Award for eminence in corporate war profiteering on Friday, April 4.

Since the contract was a multimillion dollar report on how a company (in this case Halliburton itself) could provide logistical support for the U.S. military around the world at a time when the Pentagon was scaling back its size, you can guess what happened during the Clinton years. Yep. Halliburton got a bunch of contracts to provide...logistical support around the world. In return, Cheney was hired on to head Halliburton when he left office. He repaid them by buying Kellogg from Dresser Industries in 1998, saddling Halliburton with enough asbestos debt to give everyone in the federal government a mesosthelioma. Brown & Root needed money and lots of it. Thank god for those whacked out Neo Cons!

Halliburton decided it could do without Cheney's expert corporate governance in 2000 so freeing him up to tell George W. Bush what to do as he ran for president. Once the pair stole the election and were installed in the White House, they wasted no time in making a case for multiple foreign wars, all of which would profit Kellogg Brown& Root aka KBR. First, Afghanistan, after they conveniently ignored multiple warnings about 9/11 after the Taliban refused to save Enron's bankrupt butt with a gas pipeline deal (see "Carpet of gold or bombs"). Then, they fabricated a reason to invade Iraq. Since then, they have tried many times to get the country warm to the idea of a war with Iran---even though Cheney lobbied to open the country for business with Iran when he ran Halliburton. (Libya was on his list of most favored nations in the 1990's, too.

KBR made out like a bandit under Bush/Cheney, because this time its man was directly at the helm making all his decisions for the sole purpose of enriching the Houston based war profiteering firm.

Obviously, the next candidate from Texas will not come directly from KBR's board room. The nation will not tolerate that. However, Texas Republican governor Rick Perry or Texas Republican senator John Cornyn or even some of the Texas blue dog Democrats would come to DC with staffs that are loaded with people who are indebted to the giant corporation. According to wiki, KBR is the largest non-union construction company in the United States. An anti-worker behemoth like this is not going to sit back and allow the American people to be the masters of their own fate. For all we know, they may already be nurturing their next Texan Candidate . KBR's next financial bailout project at federal taxpayer expense might even come disguised in a more humanitarian form than the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

So, if you do not want another stupid, endless war, do not elect anymore presidents from Texas. Because if he or she does not work for KBR, someone on their staff probably does.

More info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg,_Brown_and_Root

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0403-10.htm

http://weeklywire.com/ww/current/austin_pols_feature2.html

Edited to link to this discussion about the latest shower death by electrocution, that of a medic initially called a "natural death" in 2004. I am guessing it was one of KBR's showers of doom. According to the article there have been 18 electrocution deaths of military people in Iraq. How many are due to B&R's greed? These people should never get federal work again!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3720874&mesg_id=3720874

[jwirr]

1. No more Presidents from any state that uses the military industrial

complex to stabilize its economy.

[McCamy Taylor]

2. BUt only one company requires an active war. The others can sell planes, weapons during peace time.

That is what makes KBR so dangerous. The Cold War or an equivalent is just as good for the business of GE, Lockheed, Boeing--possibly even better since their products do not get tested, and the spending involved can be carefully titrated so that it uses just enough public funds to enrich the company but not enough to do serious harm to the federal budget.

That said, I would hesitate to elect the current Senator from any MIC Big Company to the presidency.

[Myrina]

3. ... and nobody, ever, in government, anywhere, with the last name of BUSH

:yourock:

[happygoluckytoyou]

4. JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB JEB

BUSH SENIOR..... "JEB SHOULD RUN FOR PRESIDENT"
REPORTER........."WHY DID HE NOT RUN IN 2008"
BUSH SENIOR..... "IT WAS NOT THE RIGHT TIME"
REPORTED........."WHEN WILL IT BE THE RIGHT TIME?"
BUSH SENIOR......"8 YEARS AGO"

[4lbs]

5. Hey, we had a President from California (Ray-Gun) who liked to go to war with "brown" people.

War in Grenada

The Falklands War

War in Panama

Bombing Ghaddafi in Libya

[NoPasaran]

31. He didn't like it that much

The Falklands War was Britain and Argentina. And Panama was invaded under Bush 41, not Reagan.

[ThoughtCriminal]

6. Read My Lips!

No New Texans!

[4lbs]

7. Or Republicans from California!

n/t

[OVERPAID01]

20. Mexico

Can we give Texas BACK to mexico?

[CTyankee]

22. You know, I actually agree with that! I am a 3rd generation Texan , relocated to New England

on purpose.

I agree with the general tone of the OP. But I will say that I remember stories as a kid in the 50s about the war economy in Texas. It must have been something great! We had factories that made the airplane engines that helped win the war in Europe. Eventually it spawned a private airline industry, such as Braniff, in Dallas that was critical in the development of commercial airlines. My father's business, hotels, prospered as more business travel went in and out of the city.

It was a heady time for Texas, a backwater state to many of the people of the NE when I arrived as a dewy eyed college grad in New York City. When I would visit my parents back in Dallas I couldn't find ricotta cheese in the supermarket so I could make them lasagna!

It's been a different story for many years now (I haven't been back since my mother died in 2005). But I think the stamp of individualism has left Dallas in a sad place. This dream of every one for him/her self has just about played out -- in assisted living, nursing homes, hospice care, hospitals as the aging Texans and their individualistic bullshit hits the fan of the reality of aging and the costs of just being kept alive...I saw this with such illuminating clarity with my own family, my brother and my mother. Sad to say, they are gone and their final days were helped thru the good ministrations of Medicaid (brother) and Medicare (mother).

My ruminations on this thread...

[mentalslavery]

8. LBJ hated the war. According to the book,

Great Society, American in the 1960's, LBJ considered the war to be the downfall of his great society programs. The book is compiled from a series of interviews with high ranking officials, internal documents, and media accounts. The author reports that according to those around them and transcripts from cabinet meetings, the war was escalated in return for the passage of great society programs. Which is pretty lame. He believed that it would be an easy war to win because of superior American technology. He did not think about the history of Vietnam, who was fighting of a foreign invader of some type since the time of Christ. He under-estimated the countries desire to be free and was far to comforted by the weak alliance of US soldiers and south Vietnamese troops.

We are suffering from WWII disease, convinced that we will save the world and be cheered as the champion of freedom and justice. Each war is an extension of the mythical superpower legend that arose out of the ashes of some of the most horrific actions ever conducted by man.

[BrightKnight]

9. Bush is from Connecticut. - n/t

[TroglodyteScholar]

18. THANK you!

This thread really should be about "no more presidents who are super-rich, spoiled, clueless, arrogant fucks." I can't really see anything wrong with Texas/Texans at all.

[CTyankee]

23. He would never acknowledge it unless he HAD to. I was just as happy he didn't.

I think he is the ONLY U.S. President born in New Haven, CT, my home city.

That makes me want to throw up....

[Blue_Tires]

36. i was about to mention that...

[BrklynLiberal]

10. All the makings of an historical tome with everything needed for a Greek tragedy.

[The Wizard]

11. Presidents from Texas

who take office under unusual circumstances should be impeached upon taking the oath of office. Let's just give Texas back to Mexico for a truckload of high quality tequila and a taco.

[warren pease]

12. Killing us over there; warehousing us over here...

According to this NY Times piece, KBR's master journeymen union electricians have killed at least a dozen US troops because they don't know a ground wire from a ground ball to short.

Ohhh... They're not union? So they haven't been through mandatory training courses and served a few years as apprentices learning directly from people who actually know what the hell they're doing?

Well then... At least the feds aren't knuckling under to the extreme pressure exerted by the resurgent organized labor movement in the US. Hell... that 8 percent of uppity workers who think they actually deserved a middle class lifestyle just for cranking down lug nuts for 20 years.

But there's no such thing as a corrupt, war profiteering, non-union contractor the Bushies weren't in drooling lust with. So they seized every possible opportunity to privatize their imperialist campaigns of organized mass murder, handing out contracts to companies with zero expertise in the processes and technologies they were hired to perform.

No matter; the whole bloody game is about transferring all remaining wealth and assets upward from the peasantry to the massuh classes. A dozen electrocutions don't even make the faintest blip on the radar screen when there's billions to be stolen, here and abroad.

Closer to home -- according to this article in that bastion of radical left ideology and capitalism bashing, The Wall St. Journal -- in 2006 KBR slithered its way into a $385 million contract from FEMA/DHS to build or refurbish dozens, maybe hundreds, of detention camps in remote areas throughout the country, those that just happen to lie adjacent or within a mile of some abandoned or little-used railroad spurs.

This soothing, cleverly worded sentence is written in code rich people understand:

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs, KBR said.

Which, though nauseating, is actually true because their wealthy white male audience is generally exempt from any interference by zealous rookies at the DoJ. The ones who had no idea that the most important rule in the universal code of behavior concerns international prohibitions against violating the boundaries that keep the peasantry from slitting the throats of the rich.

Torches and pitchforks anyone?


wp

[Mr Rabble]

13. What about Kennedy?

He attacked South Vietnam, and was not from Texas.

To blame LBJ for starting the Vietnam war is disingenuous.

[grantcart]

14. 'attacked' South Vietnam?

Kennedy introduced 800 advisers into Vietnam for anti Guerrilla tactics to curb Viet Minh's attack on the South. This did escelate to 16,000 but Kennedy is well documented as having seen this 'surge' as not being effective and had already initiated orders to reduce that number.

Kennedy's National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) #263 on October 11, 1963 that gave the order for withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963

McNamara and Johnson both indicated that Kennedy was going to reduce the number of advisers and they overturned that after his assissination which Johnson did on November 26th

After Kennedy's assassination, new President Lyndon B. Johnson immediately reversed his predecessor's order to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963 with his own NSAM #273 on November 26, 1963.

Kennedy's interest in having a limited military involvement to fight guerrilla insurgency was almost certainly based on the successful tactics used in the Malayan Emergency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Emergency which used the same tactics used that Kennedy was interested in by using the special forces he was so fond of.

Even more telling is Kennedy's handling of Laos

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/JFK+in+History/Laos.htm

Kennedy moved cautiously. He rejected a variety of proposals to send American forces and concluded that a negotiated settlement with the Soviet Union and other interested parties was the best he could achieve. A 1962 peace conference in Geneva produced a Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos and a three-part coalition government divided between pro-American, pro-Communist and neutralist factions. From Washington's standpoint, the arrangement was flimsy, but it was the best of unattractive options.




There is nothing in any existing literature that shows Kennedy had any interest in Johnson's involvement of a large ground military force in Vietnam or that he would have approved of a bombing campaign in Laos that would average a B 52 bombing every 8 minutes 24 hours a day for 9 years depositing more bombs in Laos than that of WWII.

LBJ is solely responsible for the massive escalation in Vietnam and Laos, although it was left to Nixon to initiate the bombing of Cambodia.

In any case at no time did Kennedy attack 'South Vietnam'.

[Mr Rabble]

25. "defense against internal aggression" Yes he clearly did.

While NASM 263 may indeed have taken advisers out, that was way after the bombing begun by JFK.

I would suggest that you have a read through this article which lays out the facts pretty clearly:

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/chomskyin1282.html

[underseasurveyor]

15. I'm not so sure. First of all Bush isn't from Texas

And if Molly Ivins were still with us I'd vote for her for president and then there's Jim Hightower. There are many good and great people everywhere including Texas.

Disparage the individual and their actions not an entire state.

[McCamy Taylor]

16. Anyone that people with money in Texas would back for president...watch out for them.

Unless it is someone who is a self made billionaire who made their fortune doing something innocuous. There are always exceptions. But any of the usual bought and paid for by the local establishment of that state's elite power/money base politician that comes out of Texas nowadays will owe half of his soul to Big Energy and the other half to....

Big Energy by way of Halliburton and its MIC offshoot KBR. Name anything else in this state that matters to the scum in Austin. Anything?

[fudge stripe cookays]

28. There ya go.

Barbara Jordan, Lon Burnam, Ann Richards, Cecile Richards, Letitia Van De Putte, David Van Os....there are plenty of awesome people from Texas.

These types of posts are utterly fucked up, because then all the cheerleaders all chime in to say we should give the state back to Mexico.

Might want to check this thread before celebrating how awful our state is:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=180x56062

Here's a big fat "fuck you" to the haters.

[Behind the Aegis]

30. Big smile!

I read that tripe and was going to post "Ann Richards" and say nothing else, but then I saw your post. I don't know the others, except for the fantaboulous Barbara Jordan. It is amazing (well, not really) how many are prejudiced and even bigoted when it comes to certain places.

[fudge stripe cookays]

32. Lon Burnam...

is a state senator from Fort Worth, and a real peacenik. Cecile is Ann's daughter, and runs the Texas Freedom Network (fighting the "Religious Right"). Letitia is a state legislator from San Antonio. David is also from San Antonio and posts on this board quite frequently. His runs so far have been unsuccessful, but I think he's one of the best potential candidates Texas has. He doesn't take crap from anybody.

You never hear anybody bitch about Utah or Wyoming. Freaking Dick Cheney came from Wyoming. Look at how screwed up Florida is. Now they want to foist Jeb on us next. But, yeah. Point at Texas and laugh. Idiots. A lot of people who know anything about the state (other than spending a short vacation or basic training here) love it.

There's more than crooked politics. Incredible music, culture, culinary tradition, quirkiness, scenery... like I said....fuck the haters.

[underseasurveyor]

35. I'm such a dork

Ann Richards totally slipped my mind and I ADORE that woman.

Sorry there's so many Texas haters around here. California gets its share of misplaced blame and ridicule too. Really makes one miss the younger, kinder, broader minded days of DU.

cheers:toast:

[baldguy]

17. Texas - It's like a whole 'nother country.

One that's bent on destroying the American way of live.

[kimmerspixelated]

37. Stereotyping!

And you know it's BS!

[MilesColtrane]

19. Ridiculous conclusion to a factually flawed essay.

[grantcart]

21. It is ironic that Johnson's fear of how he would be percieved led to his

greatest triumph and greatest tragedy.


His fear of being labelled an ignorant racist cracker led him to a great fight on poverty and civil rights.


His fear of being considered soft on communism and not 'manly' enough on the international stage led him to follow the generals blindly.



Unfortunately many of his achievements will never be remembered in history. For example Johnson, more than any other person, was responsible for universal electrification of America and the idea that the country should subsidize rural areas where electrification would never return profit on investment. Of course many of those rural folks who benefitted from this 'socialized' program of universal electrification now vote overwhelmingly on their fears for the Republicans.

[derby378]

24. Yeah, and KBR has their hands in the pocket of every Dem precinct chair in Texas

Look, I know that you know that I know that KBR is seriously bad news. But don't throw your home state under the bus because of these jackals.

[McCamy Taylor]

27. Making a point. Every Texan needs to be closely scrutinized. If they are not against KBR in Texas

then they will be for KBR in Washington. It is one thing to send a guy to DC who has interests in corn or in fishing. Another to send a guy to the WH who has a stake in logistical support for a long term military campaign/occupation. That can lead to only one thing---often on many fronts.

Brought to you by Brown and Root

[tbyg52]

26. Well, well, I was getting my kneejerk response ready,

but you're sure right about Brown and Root.

[Le Taz Hot]

29. Or California.

We gave you Reagan. We gave you Nixon. Need I say more?

[Prophet 451]

33. Texas is weird

My abiding memories of Texas are firstly, that it's too damn hot! Climate of Calcutta, you can see why air conditioning was invented in the South. Secondly, neckerchiefs on dogs (I have no clue) and thirdly, that the accent is mystifying.

I actually quite like Texas (good music, great food) but I think it's true to say that Texans think differently. I presume that's due to the odd education system.

What I think would have more effect is two new rules:
- 1. The president and VP can't be from the same state. At one point, you had Bush, Cheney and Tom DeLay all holding positions of power at the same time. If that doesn't give one state disproportionate power, I'd like to know what does.

- 2. No more relatives of ex-presidents. If any relative of yours closer than, say, grandparent was a president, you can't be.

Certain Americans I know like to get very heated about our (British) monarchy and yet, you had W (elected largely on account of his name) as president; Hillary as NY senator and now SoS (don't misunderstand, she has the skills but it was her marriage that got her noticed); however many Kennedys and a massive number of second-generation senators and Representatives. At least here, we don't pretend that the Royals are where they are for any other reason than good fortune so we don't give them any actual power.

[kimmerspixelated]

38. I'm a native Texan!

DO you think I'm weird????


Now look, there are weird folks everywhere! Every state-every state!

You can find characters any place you choose to look. You don't need to stereotype Texans! Pshaw!

[fudge stripe cookays]

39. Lots of people put bandanas on dogs.

It's quintessentially American. NOT Texan. They look cute when you take them out to chase Frisbies or ride in the car.

THAT accent is actually about 3 or 4 different accents, since Texas is so big (kind of like how there are different English accents). The East Texas ones are obnoxious. But the western drawl is a beautiful and relaxing thing to hear. You have East Texas TWANGS, Western Texas drawls, Latino-tinged with twang and drawl (depending where they're from), Austin accents (which I've been told sound like California, since we eschew the twangy thing), and the broadcasters who try to sound intelligent but still have a bit of Texan in there. I'm sure the other Texans can add a few more.

You obviously didn't hear any cool people when you were there. Try checking youtube for an interview with Joe Ely and you'll see what I mean.

[Ganja Ninja]

34. I think a 50 year moratorium on Texas Republican's in any of the top

government positions is a good idea.