The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke

[Octafish]

American historian Chalmers Johnson makes things clear:

The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke

By Chalmers Johnson
Le Monde diplomatique
Posted on April 26, 2008

EXCERPT...

Fiscal disaster

It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense's planned expenditures for the fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations' military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defense budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China. Defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. The U.S. has become the largest single seller of arms and munitions to other nations on Earth. Leaving out President Bush's two on-going wars, defense spending has doubled since the mid-1990s. The defense budget for fiscal 2008 is the largest since the second world war.

Before we try to break down and analyze this gargantuan sum, there is one important caveat. Figures on defense spending are notoriously unreliable. The numbers released by the Congressional Reference Service and the Congressional Budget Office do not agree with each other. Robert Higgs, senior fellow for political economy at the Independent Institute, says: "A well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon's (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it." Even a cursory reading of newspaper articles about the Department of Defense will turn up major differences in statistics about its expenses. Some 30-40% of the defense budget is 'black,'" meaning that these sections contain hidden expenditures for classified projects. There is no possible way to know what they include or whether their total amounts are accurate.

There are many reasons for this budgetary sleight-of-hand -- including a desire for secrecy on the part of the president, the secretary of defense, and the military-industrial complex -- but the chief one is that members of Congress, who profit enormously from defense jobs and pork-barrel projects in their districts, have a political interest in supporting the Department of Defense. In 1996, in an attempt to bring accounting standards within the executive branch closer to those of the civilian economy, Congress passed the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. It required all federal agencies to hire outside auditors to review their books and release the results to the public. Neither the Department of Defense, nor the Department of Homeland Security, has ever complied. Congress has complained, but not penalized either department for ignoring the law. All numbers released by the Pentagon should be regarded as suspect.

In discussing the fiscal 2008 defense budget, as released on 7 February 2007, I have been guided by two experienced and reliable analysts: William D Hartung of the New America Foundation's Arms and Security Initiative and Fred Kaplan, defense correspondent for Slate.org. They agree that the Department of Defense requested $481.4bn for salaries, operations (except in Iraq and Afghanistan), and equipment. They also agree on a figure of $141.7bn for the "supplemental" budget to fight the global war on terrorism -- that is, the two on-going wars that the general public may think are actually covered by the basic Pentagon budget. The Department of Defense also asked for an extra $93.4bn to pay for hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007 and, most creatively, an additional "allowance" (a new term in defense budget documents) of $50bn to be charged to fiscal year 2009. This makes a total spending request by the Department of Defense of $766.5bn.

But there is much more. In an attempt to disguise the true size of the U.S. military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related expenditures in departments other than Defense. For example, $23.4bn for the Department of Energy goes towards developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3bn in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt and Pakistan). Another $1.03bn outside the official Department of Defense budget is now needed for recruitment and re-enlistment incentives for the overstretched U.S. military, up from a mere $174m in 2003, when the war in Iraq began. The Department of Veterans Affairs currently gets at least $75.7bn, 50% of it for the long-term care of the most seriously injured among the 28,870 soldiers so far wounded in Iraq and 1,708 in Afghanistan. The amount is universally derided as inadequate. Another $46.4bn goes to the Department of Homeland Security.

Missing from this compilation is $1.9bn to the Department of Justice for the paramilitary activities of the FBI; $38.5bn to the Department of the Treasury for the Military Retirement Fund; $7.6bn for the military-related activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and well over $200bn in interest for past debt-financed defense outlays. This brings U.S. spending for its military establishment during the current fiscal year, conservatively calculated, to at least $1.1 trillion.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/83555/

Gee. That was published by the French. I've never seen this mentioned in my city's two major dailies, let alone on the tee-vee.

[MidwestTransplant]

1. Beware the Military Industrial Complex

Any country that has to spend more than the rest of the world combined does not have an effective foreign policy.

[lonestarnot]

5. And the industrial prison complex.

[DemReadingDU]

26. Cornell Corrections by Catherine Austin Fitts

Fascinating, here is one paragraph from chapter 9...

For example, in 1996, when Cornell went public, based on the financial information provided in the offering document provided to investors, its stock was valued at $24,241 per bed. This means that for every contract Cornell got to house one prisoner, at that time, their stock went up in value by an average of $24,261. According to prevailing business school philosophy, this is the stock market’s current present value of the future flow of profit flows generated through the management of each prisoner. This, for example, is why longer mandatory sentences are worth so much to private prison stocks. A prisoner in jail for twenty years has a twenty-year cash flow associated with his incarceration, as opposed to one with a shorter sentence or one eligible for an early parole.<47> This means that we have created a significant number of private interests — investment firms, banks, attorneys, auditors, architects, construction firms, real estate developers, bankers, academics, investors among them— who have a vested interest in increasing the prison population and keeping people behind bars as long as possible.

more...
http://www.dunwalke.com/9_Cornell_Corrections.htm

[BREMPRO]

38. the PIC is a growth industry...

I read recently that we have roughly 5% of the world's population, and 25% of the world's prisoners! WTF! sound's eerily like our oil consumption numbers. Why aren't we doing something about this? We need to address the "why?" and reduce the number. We are not seen as the land of liberty anymore, but the land of torture and prisons.

[Octafish]

6. How would you spend $3 trillion?

Imagine what kind of world we could have if we spent the money to do something to make it better.

Here's a website where they pose that very question, regarding the money we figure to blow on blowing up Iraq and Afghanistan:

http://3trillion.org/

Thanks for understanding, MidwestTransplant. I know you can better spend the money.

[kestrel91316]

2. The US has gone broke because it has been waging unprovoked

war on an imaginary enemy for five years.

I am reminded of Romans 6:23 in the KJV bible: "For the wages of sin is death....." - in this case the death of our economy and standard of living.

There are a few words of wisdom in that book (along with some pure poppycock, but that's for another day).

[Octafish]

8. The Real Eisenhower: Planning to Win Nuclear War

It goes back to the years after World War II.

Ike warned us. And Ike wanted it...

The Real Eisenhower: Planning to Win Nuclear War

by Ira Chernus
CommonDreams.org
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Peace activists love to quote Dwight Eisenhower. The iconic Republican war hero spoke so eloquently about the dangers of war and the need for disarmament. He makes a terrific poster-boy for peace. But after years of research and writing three books on Ike, I think it’s time to see the real Eisenhower stand up. The president who planned to fight and win a nuclear war, saying “he would rather be atomized than communized,” reminds us how dangerous the cold war era really was, how much our leaders will put us all at risk in the name of “national security,” and how easily they can mask their intentions behind benign images.From first to last, Eisenhower was a confirmed cold warrior. Years before he became president, while he was publicly promoting cooperation with the Soviet Union, he wrote in his diary: “Russia is definitely out to communize the world….Now we face a battle to extinction.” On the home front, he warned that liberal Democrats were leading the U.S. “toward total socialism.”

Everyone knows that, in his Farewell Address, he warned about the military-industrial complex (MIC). But few recall the words that immediately followed: “We recognize the imperative need for this development . … Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action,” because the danger of the communist foe, “a community of dreadful fear and hate<,> … promises to be of indefinite duration.”

This was not merely rhetoric for public consumption. Eisenhower never saw any hope of rapprochement with the Soviets. He always saw them as irredeemably treacherous, “implacably hostile and seeking our destruction,” as he wrote to Winston Churchill. “Where in the hell can you let the Communists chip away any more? We just can’t stand it,” he complained to a meeting of Congressional leaders in 1954, as he considered intervening in Vietnam. (He held back only because Britain and France refused to support him.)

Ike wanted to avoid nuclear war, but not at all costs. He told his National Security Council (NSC): “If the Soviets attempt to overrun Europe, we should have no recourse but to go to war.” The U.S. must be “willing to ‘push its whole stack of chips into the pot’ when such becomes necessary,” he told Congressional leaders, adding, “We are going to live with this type of crisis for years.” If World War III erupted during his term in office, he boasted, “he might be the last person alive, but there wouldn’t be any surrender.”

In private conversations with foreign leaders he said: “To accept the Communist doctrine and try to live with it” would be “too big a price to be alive. He said he would not want to live, nor would he want his children or grandchildren to live, in a world where we were slaves of a Moscow Power.” “The President said that speaking for himself he would rather be atomized than communized.”

Eisenhower signed NSC 5810/1, which made it official U.S. policy to treat nuclear weapons “as conventional weapons; and to use them whenever required to achieve national objectives.” “The only sensible thing for us to do was to put all our resources into our hydrogen bombs,” he told the NSC. He found it “frustrating not to have plans to use nuclear weapons generally accepted.” He and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, were “in complete agreement that somehow or other the taboos which surround the use of atomic weapons would have to be destroyed.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/18/7742/

Agree with you 100-percent, kestrel91316. How great it would be if those who claim to follow the Good Book actually did.

[dysfunctional press]

11. one thing to remember about the times- hitler and ww2 were still very fresh in their minds...

the thought of the soviets "over-running" europe at the time was very concievable.

[Octafish]

13. True. The thing was that picture was painted by NAZIs rescued by Dulles and CIA.

The Nazis knew what awaited them at the hands of the Soviets. So, they cooked up plans to surrender to the United States. They reasoned: If they promised to help in the fight against the Soviets, they would be welcomed by the West, find shelter and sooner rather than later, and in direct contradiction to the orders of President Harry S Truman, these Nazis would be welcomed in the West, or at least in High Society, as “ex-Nazis.”

The CIA's Worst Kept Secret

(Gehlen Org)

by Martin A. Lee

EXCERPT...

Sitting Ducks

It's long been known that top German scientists were eagerly scooped up by several countries, including the United States, which rushed to claim these high-profile experts as spoils of World War II. Yet all the while the CIA was mum about recruiting Nazi spies. The U.S. government never officially acknowledged its role in launching the Gehlen organization until more than half a century after the fact.

Handling Nazi spies, however, was not the same as employing rocket technicians. One could always tell whether Werner von Braun and his bunch were accomplishing their assignments for NASA and other U.S. agencies. If the rockets didn't fire properly, then the scientists would be judged accordingly.

But how does one determine if a Nazi spy with a dubious past is doing a reliable job?
Third Reich veterans often proved adept at peddling data - much of it false - in return for cash and safety, the IWG panel concluded. Many Nazis played a double game, feeding scuttlebutt to both sides of the East-West conflict and preying upon the mutual suspicions that emerged from the rubble of Hitler's Germany.

General Gehlen frequently exaggerated the Soviet threat in order to exacerbate tensions between the superpowers.
At one point he succeeded in convincing General Lucius Clay, military governor of the U.S. zone of occupation in Germany, that a major Soviet war mobilization had begun in Eastern Europe. This prompted Clay to dash off a frantic, top-secret telegram to Washington in March 1948, warning that war "may come with dramatic suddenness."

Gehlen's disinformation strategy was based on a simple premise: the colder the Cold War got, the more political space for Hitler's heirs to maneuver. The Org could only flourish under Cold War conditions; as an institution it was therefore committed to perpetuating the Soviet-American conflict.

"The agency loved Gehlen because he fed us what we wanted to hear. We used his stuff constantly, and we fed it to everyone else - the Pentagon, the White House, the newspapers. They loved it, too. But it was hyped-up Russian bogeyman junk, and it did a lot of damage to this country," a retired CIA official told author Christopher Simpson, who also serves on the IGW review panel and was author of Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Gehlen_Org.html

Dulles. Helms. Shaw. Kissinger. Some of the names in the story.

[dysfunctional press]

17. lil' poppy bush was also getting his feet wet in the spy game at the time

some of prescott's nazi connections probably came in handy.

[Mnemosyne]

20. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

You have the best, most simple answer I've heard, kestrel.

Unprovoked and Imaginary sums it up perfectly.

One I especially enjoy:

1 John 4:20. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

[kestrel91316]

24. "Sow the wind; reap the whirlwind."

How is it I know all this stuff and I'm not even technically a Christian????

[Mnemosyne]

51. I'm not either, but was raised as one.

Recovered though. :)

[Cresent City Kid]

3. They have no shortage of ways to spend it

In 1981, when calculating the budget, Reagan's budget director made a mathematical error which resulted in $1.3 TRILLION going to defense, a slight over payment. When they realized the error, and informed the Secretary of Defense, they were stunned to find he had already spent it. And that was before the Star Wars boondoggle.

[Octafish]

9. Wall Street is always looking for a good investment, such as the Bush Crime Family.

Know your BFEE: Scions of the Military Industrial Complex

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1766663

A hearty welcome to DU, Crescent City Kid!

[lovuian]

4. We are seeing the last gasp of capitalism

the Military complex is running up against competition from China and other countries

the party is over the piggy bank is empty

Greed is like a virus it kills itself by killing the patient

[Octafish]

12. China got lots of economic help from the Bush family.

Poppy's brother Prescott headed the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce.

Lots of business opportunities sending jobs -- and capital -- overseas.

President's uncle shares Bush family ties to China

By Debbie Howlett, USA TODAY
2/18/2002 - Updated 10:33 PM ET

CHICAGO — When President Bush arrives in Beijing on Thursday, he'll embrace a policy that's something of a family tradition.

Bush's approach centers on promoting U.S.-China economic ties. That's a course favored not only by his father, the first President Bush, but also by his uncle, Prescott Bush Jr., a longtime acquaintance of Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

The Bush family's ties to China go back to 1974, when President Nixon named George Bush ambassador to China. The college-age George W. Bush spent two months in China visiting his parents during his father's two-year stint.

Seven years after his brother left the ambassadorial post, Prescott Bush made his first trip to China. He later joined with Japanese partners in 1988 to build a golf course in Shanghai, the first in China. He met Jiang, who was then the mayor of Shanghai.

Prescott Bush, now 79, also developed a close working relationship with Rong Yiren, a former trade minister and vice president, who in 1993 introduced Bush to a group of Chinese business leaders as "an old friend." In 2000, Forbes publications reported that Rong, who has retired from government, was the richest man in China.

The president's uncle concedes that he sometimes relied on his name to open doors, but he says any deals he made were the result of his own hard work.

CONTINUED...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002/02/19/usat-prescott-bush.htm

And, again, Poppy and Smirko looted the Treasury and bankrupted the nation.

Gee. It's almost like they work for someone else.



Courtesy of the Bartcop Collection

Who knows what kind of help beyond economic they got from the Bushes and their cronies?

[chill_wind]

7. Cost of War---

my sig since forever

[Octafish]

44. Raptors, Robots, and Rods from God - The Nightmare Weaponry of Our Future

There used to be no room for the "Build it and they will bomb mentality" in the nation's armed forces.

Now it's needed to have any kind of a post-military career.

Raptors, Robots, and Rods from God

The Nightmare Weaponry of Our Future

By Frida Berrigan

We are not winning the war on terrorism (and would not be even if we knew what victory looked like) or the war in Iraq. Our track record in Afghanistan, as well as in the allied "war" on drugs, is hardly better. Yet the Pentagon is hard at work, spending your money, planning and preparing for future conflicts of every imaginable sort. From wars in space to sci-fi battlescapes without soldiers, scenarios are being scripted and weaponry prepared, largely out of public view, which ensures not future victories, but limitless spending that Americans can ill-afford now or twenty years from now.

Even though today the Armed Forces can't recruit enough soldiers or adequately equip those already in uniform, the Pentagon is committing itself to massive corporate contracts for new high-tech weapons systems slated to come on-line years, even decades, from now, guaranteed only to enrich their makers.

Future Combat Systems

The typical soldier in Iraq carries about half his or her body weight in gear and suffers the resulting back pain. Body armor, weapon(s), ammunition, water, first aid kit -- it adds up in the 120 degree heat of Basra or Baghdad.

Ask soldiers in Iraq what they need most and answers may include: well-armored Humvees (many soldiers are jerry-rigging their own homemade Humvee armor); more body armor (an unofficial 2004 Army study found that one in four casualties in Iraq was the result of inadequate protective gear), or even silly string (Marcelle Shriver found out that her son was squirting the goo into a room as he and his squad searched buildings to detect trip wires around bombs).

The same Army that can't provide such basics of modern war is now promising the Future Combat Systems network (FCS), a "family of systems" that will enable soldiers to "perceive, comprehend, shape, and dominate the future battlefield at unprecedented levels." The FCS network will consist of a "family" of 18 manned and unmanned ground vehicles, air vehicles, sensors, and munitions, including:

* eight new, super-armored, super-strong ground vehicles to replace current tanks, infantry carriers, and self-propelled howitzers;

* four different planes and drones that soldiers can fly by remote control;

* several "unmanned" ground vehicles.

Put together these are supposed to plunge soldiers into a video-game-like version of warfighting. The FCS will theoretically allow them to act as though they are in the midst of enemy territory -- taking out "high value" targets, blowing up "insurgent safe houses," monitoring the movements of "un-friendlies"-- all the while remaining at a safe distance from the bloody action.

To grasp the futuristic ambitions (and staggering future costs) of FCS, consider this: The Government Accounting Office (GAO) notes that "an estimated 34 million lines of software code will need to be generated" for the project, "double that of the Joint Strike Fighter, which had been the largest defense undertaking in terms of software to be developed."

In charge of this ambitious sci-fi style fantasy version of war are Boeing and SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation). They are the "Lead Systems Integrators" of this extraordinarily complex undertaking, but they are working with as many as 535 more companies across 40 states. They promise future forces the ability to break "free of the tyranny of terrain" and "an agile, networked force capable of maneuver in the third dimension" in the words last March of retired Major General Robert H. Scales in a Boeing PowerPoint presentation entitled "FCS: Its Origin and Op Concept."

CONTINUED...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=155521

Love your sig line, chill_wind. Also appreciate that you understand what we must do to preserve our nation and all it stands for.

[bobthedrummer]

60. "Electromagnetic Radiation (emr) Weapons: As Powerful As The Atomic Bomb" by Cheryl Welsh

(February 2001, Mind Justice)
http://www.mindjustice.org/emr13.htm

All these things were funded with the people's $$$.

:mad:

[Fireweed247]

10. Sept 10, 2001 Rumsfeld announced the pentagon could not account for 2.3 trillion

and the auditor who tried to track it down was reassigned.
http://peacecandidates.com/blog/ben/01/25/ask_candidates_about_lost_trillions

[Octafish]

46. leveymg should lead the investigation.

The Bush Crime Family uses the Pentagon budget as their own private ATM.

Larger CIA and DoD Privatization Scandal Emerging from Walter Reed Story, US Attorneys Firing

Rumsfeld and Top GOP Figures Profited from Privatization of VA Hospital, CIA Contractors

by leveymg
Sat Mar 10, 2007 at 03:58:42 AM PDT

A large global hedge fund, Cerberus Capital Management (dba, Cerberus-Gabriel), is at the center of an emerging Pentagon and CIA contracting scandal that has the attention of three Congressional Committees.

In each case, the companies under investigation have links to prominent GOP figures, including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and several Republican Congressmen indicted for corruption involving kickbacks from defense contractors. The Republican Congressional Campaign Commitee (RCCC) has also received substantial contributions from conservative fund managers running Cerberus, a virually unregulated $30 billion hedge fund, which owns the second largest bank in Israel.

This scandal involves the mismanagement of VA hospital facilities privatized during the Bush-Cheney Administration, as well as intelligence abuses by private CIA contractors.

SNIP...

What a tangled web. One wishes Chairman Waxman’s staff and other Congressional investigators the strength of Hercules in taking down the Three-headed Dog, Cerberus, that guards the gates to Hell.

Mark G. Levey. Fair use applies. Acknowledgement: Some material compiled from a research thread at Democratic Underground.com, with particular thanks to "bobthedrummer" and "Emit", and other DU researchers: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x377023

CONTINUED...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/10/21556/5045

Excellent resource on the peace candidates, MartyL. Thank you for giving a damn, my Friend.

[bobthedrummer]

14. "Figures on defense spending are notoriously unreliable."

I've read Chalmers Johnson's trilogy about the rise and ongoing collapse of what we call the BFEE-with the comparison to historic empires that were unable to sustain their world wide military operations.

He's spot on.

In "Nemesis" Chalmers Johnson called people that pay close attention to information from open sources and then discuss it "amateur intelligence analysts"-that's people like us brother.

Thanks for starting this thread-here are a couple recent examples from that huge BFEE money trail that vanishes after being given to folks like J. Cofer Black, Erik Prince, and all the other black budget networks comprised of corrupted current and former military/intelligence/law enforcement folks that are loyal to their Decider first and foremost.

"Pentagon, FBI Probing Air Force Contracts" (CREW)
http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/31448

"U.S. Reconnaissance Satellites: Domestic Targets" (active Editorials and Other Articles thread started 4-11-2008 by this amateur intelligence analyst-goes into a lot of history because I know my BFEE)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x352054

Follow the yellow brick road-K&R

[Octafish]

47. Pentagon thievery: An interview with Jeffrey St. Clair

Unbelievable, yet true.

Pentagon thievery: An interview with Jeffrey St. Clair

By Joshua Frank
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Apr 11, 2006, 01:27

Jeffrey St. Clair is the co-editor of CounterPunch (online at CounterPunch.org) and the author of numerous books, most recently Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror (Common Courage Press 2006). He recently spoke with this reporter about his latest book.

Joshua Frank: Jeff, it's been three long years since the US invaded Iraq and there has been a mountain of speculation as to the real motives for the war and occupation: Was it for oil, Israel? No WMD have turned up, and there weren't any connections between Saddam and Bin Laden. After reading Grand Theft Pentagon, however, it's hard not to think that perhaps a larger reason the US invaded was to benefit economically. Can you talk about this a bit? Why the heck are we in Iraq anyway?

Jeffrey St. Clair: Josh, stop cribbing questions from Helen Thomas! The invasion of Iraq had a MIRV warhead full of motives, none of which had to do with eliminating Saddam's arsenal of WMD. They knew all he had at most were a few aging mustard gas bombs and the like that had been rusting away since the first Iran/Iraq war. (I believe we may be in the opening acts of the second Iran/Iraq war.) That's precisely why he felt so comfortable in launching the invasion with such a relatively small force. A lesson Iran and North Korea have taken to heart. Second, they knew Saddam the atheist and Osama the fundy loathed each other. But most Americans had no clue about this long-standing antagonism, so they were easily, and to some extent, willingly duped by this fictional alliance.

The neocon claque in the White House and in the salons of Washington had their own motives, some of which they publicized, such as imposing another US client state in the heart of the Middle East; some of which they kept relatively submerged, that is, annihilating a threat to Israel. But the neocons are zealots and even many inside the Bush White House recognize them as such. Useful zealots, just like Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson. But it's vital to understand that the key players in the Bush inner sanctum: Rove, Card, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and Armitage are not neocons. So they had other motives, some political, some strategic and, yes, some economic. Bush needed a scalp after 9/11. Toppling the pitiful Taliban wasn't going to be enough to mask the troubling questions about his administration's incompetence leading up to 9/11. Saddam was sitting out there as the perfect object of sacrifice. They could inflate this marginal regime into a threat the size of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloon, knock them down swiftly with minimal US casualties and then have access to a huge trove of oil, as a kind of tribute of war, which they could use to pipe money into the portfolio of private contractors who acted as a kind of second invasion force.

After 12 years of nearly daily bombings and a vicious sanctions regime, the Bushies knew that the basic infrastructure of Iraq, from power plants to sewage plants, was broken. And what had survived the sanctions was slated for being destroyed in the invasion. Post-invasion Iraq was going to be the biggest reconstruction project in history. The contracts would largely go to companies hand-picked and vetted for loyalty to Bush by Douglas Feith, the former Undersecretary of Defense, Paul Bremer. And the funding was supposed to come from Iraq's oil revenues, once Halliburton and Parson's got the spigots opened, to the tune of 100s of billions. It was all meant to be a big feast and your ticket to the feeding frenzy was a big political contribution to the RNC. Guess who came to dinner?

JF: So, who is behind some of these monstrous reconstruction contracts?

JSC: The more difficult question is which unlucky corporation didn't win a seat at the table. Companies were being created on the fly to get a piece of the Iraq pie, from security firms formed by former Pentagon and CIA staffers to telecom companies who did little more than act as brokers and middlemen, where the heavy lifting was really just stuffing money into their accounts as fast as possible. Of course, the big ticket contracts, worth 100s of millions of dollars, went to an honor roll of contractors whose names are familiar to us all: Halliburton and its subsidiary Brown and Root, Bechtel, which has never seen a war it didn't profit from, Parsons Company (Halliburton's great rival), the Carlyle Group, naturally. Republican big wigs used to join elite country clubs to do their business, but now that they've begun admitting blacks they flock to the Carlyle Group instead. But there are hundreds of other corporations, from Blackwater Security to MZM, the CIA-connected company that took Duke Cunningham down, that have largely executed loot-and-run operations in Iraq with little attention from the press.

And you certainly don't have to slap a Bush/Cheney sticker on the back of your black Mercedes SUV to cash in. You've done excellent reporting, Josh, on the freshets of funds flowing into the accounts of Richard Blum, husband of Democrat icon Dianne Feinstein, through his company URS. That's not to say that the Bushies haven't made out like bandits. Neil Bush, who is nearly as incompetent in business as his bro, appears to have paid for his divorce and his new Houston mansion through "terror war" related contracts in the Middle East, including most curiously, Dubai. From there, Neil went on to loot New Orleans in the name of reconstruction. And President Bush's Uncle Bucky, an investment banker in St. Louis, sits on the board of what was once a struggling defense contractor called ESSI, Inc. With Bucky Bush on the board, W. in the White House, ESSI's fortunes took a fortuitous swing for the better, with Uncle Bucky chuckling all the way to the bank. If you didn't score during this orgy of contracts, you're likely to become a case study in business school classes across the country. The whole scandal reminds me of Mexico during the Salinas years when people close to the government became billionaires through their proximity to the country's corrupt leaders. The Mexican prosecutors had a great name for it: inexplicable enrichment. The corruption of the Bush years makes that look like minor league ball by comparison.

CONTINUED...

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_680.shtml

leveymg thanks bobthedrummer, as should we all.
Thank you, Bob! You are not a mere encyclopedia, you understand that underlying the universe is morality.

[EVDebs]

15. The key word: UNSUSTAINABLE nt

[Greyhound]

16. and you never will read/hear about the truly obscene amounts of our

national wealth that this abomination sucks from our future in any major medium. We have spent over $20 trillion on what is euphemistically called 'defense' over the last 30+ years. It has cost us our infrastructure, our social well-being, our international standing, our future, and our soul.

Even worse, way more than half of that mind-bending figure has gone straight into the pockets of rapacious and completely ineffective corporate leeches that have failed to deliver what they've been paid for, and all with no accounting nor consequence. More than a few people have been trying to bring this blatant looting before the national attention for decades, but we turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to it.

We are in just the very beginning phase of paying for our folly, and could very well be the end of The United States of America.

[G_j]

41. Kucinich

courageous enough to take on the military industrial complex,

ah well......

[Greyhound]

45. We just need 500 more of him in national office and another 1000 or so in state legislatures. n/t

[Horse with no Name]

18. You are one of the reasons I still come around here

Thank you for this!

[mikita]

19. Thanks for posting this n/t

[ogsbee]

21. Political power will always follow economic power (real power)

That's why we live in a milint psyoped democracy. They have the power to control what we are allowed, and what we can know. We should remember that the military allowed themselves to be used in the 2000 coup. They kept quiet while military absentee ballots ("supposed") were used by the RepubliCONs.

[seemslikeadream]

22. “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.”

She's present in our country right now, just waiting to make her - to carry out her divine mission




http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/27/1454229

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Nemesis was the ancient Greek goddess of revenge, the punisher of hubris and arrogance in human beings. You may recall she is the one that led Narcissus to the pond and showed him his reflection, and he dove in and drowned. I chose the title, because it seems to me that she's present in our country right now, just waiting to make her -- to carry out her divine mission.

By the subtitle, I really do mean it. This is not just hype to sell books -- “The Last Days of the American Republic.” I’m here concerned with a very real, concrete problem in political analysis, namely that the political system of the United States today, history tells us, is one of the most unstable combinations there is -- that is, domestic democracy and foreign empire -- that the choices are stark. A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.

I’ve spent some time in the book talking about an alternative, namely that of the British Empire after World War II, in which it made the decision, not perfectly executed by any manner of means, but nonetheless made the decision to give up its empire in order to keep its democracy. It became apparent to the British quite late in the game that they could keep the jewel in their crown, India, only at the expense of administrative massacres, of which they had carried them out often in India. In the wake of the war against Nazism, which had just ended, it became, I think, obvious to the British that in order to retain their empire, they would have to become a tyranny, and they, therefore, I believe, properly chose, admirably chose to give up their empire.

As I say, they didn't do it perfectly. There were tremendous atavistic fallbacks in the 1950s in the Anglo, French, Israeli attack on Egypt; in the repression of the Kikuyu -- savage repression, really -- in Kenya; and then, of course, the most obvious and weird atavism of them all, Tony Blair and his enthusiasm for renewed British imperialism in Iraq. But nonetheless, it seems to me that the history of Britain is clear that it gave up its empire in order to remain a democracy. I believe this is something we should be discussing very hard in the United States.

......

Over the ashes of blood marched the civilized soldiers,

Over the ruins of the french fortress of a failure

Over the silent screams of the dead and the dying

Saying please be reassured, we seek no wider war.



The treaties were signed, the country was split into sections

But growing numbers of prisons were built for protection

Rapidly filling with people who called for elections

But please be reassured, we seek no wider war.



Ngo dinh diem was the puppet who danced for the power

The hero of hate who gambled on hell for his hour

Father of his country was stamped on the medals we showered

But please be reassured, we seek no wider war.



Machine gun bullets became the bloody baptizers

And the falcon copters dont care if someones the wiser

But the boy in the swamp didnt know he was killed by advisers

So please be reassured, we seek no wider war.



And fires were spitting at forests in defoliation

While the people were pressed into camps not called concentration

And the greater the victory the greater the shame of the nation

But please be reassured, we seek no wider war.



While we were watching the prisoners were tested by torture

And vicious and violent gasses maintained the order

As the finest washington minds found slogans for slaughter

But please be reassured, we seek no wider war.



Then over the border came the bay of pigs planes of persuasion

All remaining honor went up in flames of invasion

But the shattered schools never learned that its not escalation

But please be reassured, we seek no wider war.



Were teaching freedom for which they are yearning

While were dragging them down to the path of never returning

But, well condescend to talk while the cities are burning

But please be reassured, we seek no wider war.



And the evil is done in hopes that evil surrenders

But the deeds of the devil are burned too deep in the embers

And a world of hunger in vengeance will always remember

So please be reassured, we seek no wider war,

We seek no wider war.

phil ochs

[nolabels]

28. Nice pictures but that's just more B.S too.

The capitalist were running a game when WWII finally broke out, they had already mostly bankrupted the British Empire and the U.S. was just convenient place to park their largess at the time

[seemslikeadream]

29. Could you explain what the other BS is?

Michael Parenti - Terrorism, Globalism & Conspiracy

"Coincidence Theory: By sheer chance things just happen repeatedly and coincidentally to benefit their interests without any conscious connivance by them, which is most uncanny. There is also: Stupidity Theory, Innocence Theory, Momentary Aberration Theory, Incompetence Theory, Unintended Consequences Theory and Innocent Cultural Proclivities Theory."

- Michael Parenti

[nolabels]

32. My mistake with the word "mostly" when is should of just of pointed this smaller point

I was just trying to point out that the piece with Chalmers Johnson as being a little narrow and it staying with tradition of letting the victors write the history. Frankly the cop-out of somehow the British Empire made a rational humanistic policy decision is even kind of ludicrous on it's face.

[Mr Rabble]

50. I think Dr. Parenti would agree with you.

There is little mention of "capitalism" in Professor Johnson's writings. While I largely agree with his analysis, his background as military historian tends to color his analysis, and generally excludes discussion of fiscal policy as a means of social control. Really, that is not what his books should be used for-
He has provided us with a highly detailed- yet easily accessible- account of the military aspect of US imperialism in the latter half of the 20th century. Read it understanding that context, and you will find the piece the Parenti and Chomsky tend to overlook.

[bluesmail]

23. K&R

I dialogue every chance I can. I have no other resources, I commend DU, take a bow.

[ColbertWatcher]

25. And, this is why...

...John McCain can imagine staying in Iraq for 100 years, but can't see how Social Security can survive beyond 2040.

[Wilms]

27. K&R n/t

[leftchick]

30. Mr. Johnson is one of my all time favorite authors

Thank you Mr. Octafish. Here is a little more on Chalmers....

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/2/27/chalmers_johnson_nemesis_the_last_days

Chalmers Johnson: “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”

In his new book, CIA analyst, distinguished scholar, and best-selling author Chalmers Johnson argues that US military and economic overreach may actually lead to the nation’s collapse as a constitutional republic. It’s the last volume in his Blowback trilogy, following the best-selling “Blowback” and “The Sorrows of Empire.” In those two, Johnson argued American clandestine and military activity has led to un-intended, but direct disaster here in the United States.


<snip>

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Nemesis was the ancient Greek goddess of revenge, the punisher of hubris and arrogance in human beings. You may recall she is the one that led Narcissus to the pond and showed him his reflection, and he dove in and drowned. I chose the title, because it seems to me that she’s present in our country right now, just waiting to make her—to carry out her divine mission.

By the subtitle, I really do mean it. This is not just hype to sell books—“The Last Days of the American Republic.” I’m here concerned with a very real, concrete problem in political analysis, namely that the political system of the United States today, history tells us, is one of the most unstable combinations there is—that is, domestic democracy and foreign empire—that the choices are stark. A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.

I’ve spent some time in the book talking about an alternative, namely that of the British Empire after World War II, in which it made the decision, not perfectly executed by any manner of means, but nonetheless made the decision to give up its empire in order to keep its democracy. It became apparent to the British quite late in the game that they could keep the jewel in their crown, India, only at the expense of administrative massacres, of which they had carried them out often in India. In the wake of the war against Nazism, which had just ended, it became, I think, obvious to the British that in order to retain their empire, they would have to become a tyranny, and they, therefore, I believe, properly chose, admirably chose to give up their empire.

As I say, they didn’t do it perfectly. There were tremendous atavistic fallbacks in the 1950s in the Anglo, French, Israeli attack on Egypt; in the repression of the Kikuyu—savage repression, really—in Kenya; and then, of course, the most obvious and weird atavism of them all, Tony Blair and his enthusiasm for renewed British imperialism in Iraq. But nonetheless, it seems to me that the history of Britain is clear that it gave up its empire in order to remain a democracy. I believe this is something we should be discussing very hard in the United States.

[seemslikeadream]

31. Hey there

I put a nice picture in my post and got weird reply :hi:

[scarletwoman]

33. "...this is something we should be discussing very hard in the United States."

Fat chance.

Great post! Thank you!

:loveya:
sw

[judasdisney]

34. Who will confiscate the heroin money-candy from the armed baby?

[Kurovski]

35. K&R. (nt)

[bonito]

36. Also the reason for the high cost of fuel

Watching a hearing on c-span this week on aviation issues on of the speakers mentioned they are now paying $153 for a barrel of aviation fuel opposed to $80 because of the falling dollar.

[JCMach1]

37. We also LOST the Cold War (meaning the American people), it's just the U.S. is Falling

almost 20yrs after the USSR. We may very well be in for a Russian style reordering of the economy.

Time to get the braintrust working to save us from that morass. :(


I am not hopeful.

[L. Coyote]

54. How Reagan lost the Cold War, by increasing military spending instead of seeking peace.

[snappyturtle]

39. K&R The election has covered up a lot. I wonder how this spending

would have been spun had it been reported.

[G_j]

40. too bad neither of the Dem candidates seem to acknowledge this

the largest elephant in the room

Kucinich has always addressed this head on, but apparently he was "unelectable"
:cry:

[Echo In Light]

49. Leftist = "unelectable" in America. By design, by choice.

[formercia]

42. Talk about Welfare Queens

The Cold War is over. Get over it.

[leftchick]

43. K&R!

Thank you Octafish

:loveya:

[Kurovski]

48. Kick. (nt)

[bobthedrummer]

52. this needs another kick bttt...

[L. Coyote]

53. BUDGET: "larger than all other nations' military budgets combined"

STOP it.

[Rex]

55. Happened to the Romans and we are stupid enough to repeat the process.

Neglect any super-infrastructure long enough and the entire house of card comes falling down. The mistake is always the same - overconfidence in situations that require negotiation and denial of living standards.

[Blue_Tires]

56. that can't be right

because all the repubs in my area KNOW FOR A FACT that it is the illegal mexicans eating up 99.999 percent of the budget!:sarcasm:

[bobthedrummer]

57. "MONEY TRUMPS PEACE SOMETIMES..." George Walker Bush

[bobthedrummer]

58. MAY DAY!....MAY DAY!...

:hide:

[bobthedrummer]

59. "Air Force Histories Released through Archive Lawsuit Show Cautious Presidents Overruling Air Force

Plans for Early Use of Nuclear Weapons" (4-30-2008 National Security Archive page)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb249/index.htm

"Ah suppose some of you have some pretty strong feelings about nukler combat-heck I reckon y'all wouldn't be human beans if you didn't..." Major Kong

:nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

$$$ $$$ $$$ $$$ $$$ $$$ $$$ $$$ $$$ $$$ $$$

A lot of our treasury has been "atomized"...