How to Recognize a Human Scumbag

[Octafish]

How to Recognize a Human Scumbag

by Daniel Geery
OpEdNews.com January 12, 2007 at 06:34:34

Oftentimes you just have to listen to what they say. They say things like, "We need more young people like you to go halfway around the world and kill other young people like you." Human scumbags can also be detected because they frequently use words like honor and valor and courage, heroism and patriotism and sacrifice, to make you feel less than human if you don't want to go get your ass blown off, or have fun blowing someone else's off, even those of totally innocent women and children.

The scumbags might go so far as to tell you you'll be "in harm's way," which means someone will most definitely be trying to blow your ass off. If it's someone on your own side, it's not so bad though, because then it's called "friendly fire," and they probably didn't really mean to blow your ass off.

Of course, these scumbags don't really care one way or the other. The truth is they couldn't care less. They just need to keep the killing going, so more weapons can be produced, and then large military contracts can be handed out to Big Scumbag Companies. Like Halliburton, Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, Bechtel, and a whole bunch of others.

Human scumbags are in the pockets of these companies, you see, and their job is to pretty much wreck the world, so Big People in those companies can buy their own planes, fancy boats, large mansions, and send their kids to big name schools. And the scumbags might later get good jobs with those Big Companies when they get out of office, so they can lean on the new scumbags in office to drum up more trouble somewhere else in the world, and keep the Money Machine rolling along. Or it could go the other way-a scumbag might start in one of those companies and end up in public office, and send lots of money towards his old Big Company. Dick Cheney is a good example of this kind of scumbag.

Young people like you are very important because the scumbags don't dare go fight any battles of their own. Hell, no! They wouldn't dare! They'd much rather take someone like yourself and have you maimed for life, or blown to bits by a hand grenade, or dead and buried in any number of possible ways. Then they'll cry even more, and holler louder that they need more strong young men and women to go trash their lives, and as many others as possible, so the scumbags who run these Big Companies can fatten up their bank accounts. They'll even pay uneducated scumbags with Big Mouths, like Sean Hannity, millions of dollars a year to drum up business from young people willing to listen to them.

CONTINUED...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_daniel_g_070112_how_to_recognize_a_h.htm

A darn good writer, the author understands who "They" are.

[bobthedrummer]

1. Richard Cheney, Tony Blair...K&R

[Octafish]

2. The Nightmare Weaponry of Our Future

The Nightmare Weaponry of Our Future

The Armed Forces can't adequately equip those already in uniform, but the Pentagon is committing itself to massive corporate contracts for new high-tech weapons systems slated to come on-line decades from now.

By Frida Berrigan, Tomdispatch.com. Posted January 13, 2007.

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 20 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; and 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."

http://www.alternet.org/story/46545/

Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich.

[PerfectSage]

15. The raison d'etre of the army is too piss away money...

...to enrich defence contractors. FCS won't amount to shit fuck all.

The network, 18 combat systems and the soldier is third.
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/ic/fcs/bia/index.html

In the wonderful world of manuever warfare the soldier comes first. ;)

http://www.amazon.ca/Maneuver-Warfare-Handbook-William-Lind/dp/086531862X/sr=1-3/qid=1168758017/ref=sr_1_3/702-4224215-5381648?ie=UTF8&s=books

The Marine Corps adopted manuever warfare doctrine, but they don't practice it.
http://www.clausewitz.com/CWZHOME/Warfit1.htm

What is Manuever Warfare?
http://www.d-n-i.net/richards/sword_4_boyd.pdf

When it comes to manuever warfare, nobody has bettered Genghis Khan and the Mongols. The US thinks it has the greatest military the world has ever seen, but it ain't. ;)

[Octafish]

5. Did Tony Blair do a "Warren Commission" on Dr. David Kelly?

Dr. Kelly said the intelligence was "sexed up" regarding Iraq as a threat to the U.K. and that he feared he would be found "dead in the woods." He was right on both counts.

Weapons expert had slashed wrist

Police have confirmed that the expert at the centre of the Iraq dossier row bled to death from a cut to his wrist, as Tony Blair comes under increasing pressure over the affair.
Dr David Kelly, 59, was named as the possible mole behind a BBC report that Downing Street communications director Alastair Campbell "sexed up" a dossier setting out the case for war.

A senior officer said a knife and a packet of painkillers had been found close to where his body was discovered in woodland near his home in Oxfordshire on Friday.

Dr Kelly's family said he was a "loving, private and dignified" man, adding that recent events had made his life "intolerable".

In an e-mail reportedly sent to a New York Times journalist hours before his death, Dr Kelly had apparently warned of "many dark actors playing games".

CONTINUED...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3079787.stm

Another odd thing: One of the last people we know to communicate with Dr. Kelly was "Steno" Judy Miller of The New York Times.

Too late he recognized the warmongers for what They are.

Details on Hutton Report:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/hutton/0,,1021216,00.html

[Swamp Rat]

3. kick

Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?! WHO DAT?!!!!

[Octafish]

4. Dick Cheney: War Profiteer

Let's put a face on Them and their Thing.

Dick Cheney: War profiteer

Posted on Friday, November 18 @ 09:38:22 EST
Tom Turnipseed, Common Dreams

Questions persist about Vice-President Cheney's role in the ongoing investigation and scandal swirling about the White House. His chief of staff and confidante Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. Let's take a look at some personal incentives for Cheney's selling war to our country.

Cheney has pursued a political and corporate career to make himself very rich and powerful. He is the personification of a war profiteer who 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 should 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 with them 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."

The Bush administration has dished out lucrative reconstruction contracts in Iraq to favored U.S. based corporations including Halliburton and denied contracts to many Iraqi and foreign based companies. To the conquerors go the spoils was the message on December 11, 2003 when Bush said, "The taxpayers understand why it makes sense for countries that risk lives to participate in the contracts in Iraq, It's very simple. Our people risk their lives, friendly coalition folks risk their lives, and therefore the contracting is going to reflect that."

Bush's statement is a stunning admission of how much corrupt corporations control our foreign policy. Under Cheney's leadership Halliburton out did Enron in using offshore subsidiaries as tax shelters to hide profits to bilk U.S. taxpayers. Halliburton also utilized off-shore subsidiaries to contract for services and sell banned equipment to rogue states like Iran, Iraq and Libya. This would be illegal if done directly by Halliburton.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1117-22.htm

Just let my 9-year-old stay up late to watch dat. Two great running backs and a QB who knows how to hit a receiver in stride. What's not to like? He went to bed very happy.

[Swamp Rat]

6. The Face

Oops, I forgot to attach a 'Face of a Thing'



Mientras tanto, el tiempo en Madrid ha sido agradable. Acabo de volver de Toledo... ¡ostia!

[Octafish]

9. The five pillars of the U.S. military-industrial complex

This is a remarkable article, for those interested in Chimpageddon.

The five pillars of the U.S. military-industrial complex

By Rodrigue Tremblay
Online Journal Guest Writer
Sep 25, 2006, 00:56

"Over-grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty." --George Washington (1732-1799), 1st US President

"(The) conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." --Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th US President, Farewell Address, Jan. 17, 1961

"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." --General Douglas MacArthur, Speech, May 15, 1951

In the 1920s, President Calvin Coolidge said, "the business of America is business." Nowadays, it can be said that the arms industry and permanent war have become a big part of American business, as the offshoot of a well-entrenched military-industrial complex. This is a development that previous American men of vision, men like President George Washington and President Dwight Eisenhower, have warned against as being intrinsically inimical to democracy and liberty. However, the current Bush-Cheney administration is not afraid of such a development; its principal members are part of it and are instead very busy promoting it.

Wars, especially modern electronic wars, are very murderous, but they are also synonymous with big cost-plus contracts, big profits and big employment for those who produce the required military gear. Wars are the paradise of profiteers.

Wars are also a way for mediocre politicians to monopolize both the news and the media in their partisan favor by whipping up patriotic fervor and by pushing for narrow-minded nationalism. Indeed, to inflame patriotism and nationalism is an old demagogic trick used to dominate a nation. When that happens, there is a clear danger that democracy and freedom will be eroded, and even disappear, if that development leads to an exacerbated concentration of power and political corruption.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a bonanza for the American military-industrial complex. This was an event, a "New Pearl Harbor," that some had openly been hoping for. The reason? These attacks gave the perfect pretext to keep military expenses, which had been expected to fall after the demise of the old Soviet Empire, at a high level. Instead, they provided the rationale for dramatically increasing them, by substituting a “War on Terror” and a "War against Islamists" as a replacement for the “War against Communism,” and the "Cold War against the Soviet Union". In this new perspective, the gates of military spending could be open and flowing again. The development of ever more sophisticated armaments could go forward and thousands of corporations and hundreds of political districts could continue to reap the benefits. The costs would be born by the taxpayers, by young men and women who die in combat and by remote populations who happen to lie under the rain of bombs about to fall upon them and their homes.

Indeed, in September 2000, when the Pentagon issued its famous strategy document entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the belief was expressed that the kind of military transformation the planners were considering required "some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor,” to make it possible to sell the plan to the American public. They were either prescient or lucky, because one year later, they had the "New Pearl Harbor" they had been hoping for.

The military-industrial complex needs wars, many and successive wars, to prosper. Old military equipment has to be repaired and replaced each time there is a hot war. But to justify the enormous costs of developing ever more deadly weapons, there needs to be a constant climate of fear and vulnerability. For example, there are many reports, originating from medical and international observers, that the Israeli attacks against Lebanon and Gaza during the summer of 2006, allowed for the use of 'new American-made weapons.' Such weapons are reported to include depleted uranium (DU) bombs, 'direct energy' weapons and new chemical and biological weapons. These weapons not only make the act of homicide easier but they also contaminate the environment with radioactive DU particles for decades to come.

But, to build a compact strong enough to steer a democratic country on the path of a permanent war economy takes an alliance of interests between militarists, industrialists, politicians, sycophants and propagandists. These are the five pillars of the military-industrial complex, as can be found in the United States.

CONTINUED...

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1241.shtml

Bien, Compay. Echando te de meno. Bueno verte, Hermano.

Great picture of Sneer, BTW. His vision for earth looks absolutely infernal.

[Swamp Rat]

21. kick ... Chimpageddon

[femrap]

30. Many forget that an important part of this 'complex'

are the Congressional Districts (military-industrial-congressional complex).

A piece of the War Machine is located in EACH Congressional District. Last I read was approximately 60 million jobs in the US are tied to The Complex.

ETA: It was planned that way.

[bleever]

23. 'When asked about the money he received from Halliburton,

Cheney said. "I tell you that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it."'

This happened during the VP debate with Joe Lieberman. At the time, I was appalled that Lieberman didn't call him on this monstrous lie. Of course now I know that I shouldn't have been surprised.

[fooj]

7. I refer to them as WAR CRIMINALS.

[Octafish]

10. Again, Why George W. Bush Must be Tried as a War Criminal

Fitrakis is one righteous and right-on man...

Again, Why George W. Bush Must be Tried as a War Criminal

by Bob Fitrakis
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 22, 2004
First Published in The Free Press

The new revelations in Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, provide further evidence to convict President George W. Bush of war crimes.

As one of the 49 original signers of the UN Charter, the United States committed itself to the ideals and practices of the norms of international law. Only two U.S. senators voted against the treaty, which includes Article 2(4) that specifically prohibits “…the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independent of any state….” In a September 23, 2003 speech to the United Nations, President Bush noted that both the UN Charter and American founding documents “recognize a moral law that stands above men and nations, which must be defended and enforced by men and nations.” Following World War II, just such action was taken at the Nuremberg trials and American, British, French and Soviet jurists established Article VI of the Nuremberg Charter, which legally defines “Crimes Against Peace.”

To commit a crime against peace, one must engage in “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties . . . or participation in a common plan or conspiracy . . . to wage an aggressive war.” Bush is guilty on all these counts. The most damning evidence coming not from the liberal left, but in a series of well-documented books providing revelations by people in his own administration or party. Now, with Woodward’s work, the President is condemned with his own words.

Author Ron Susskind’s book about former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, The Price of Loyalty, reveals that from the very beginning of the Bush administration, the President was plotting and conspiring to wage aggressive war against Iraq. In Against All Enemies, Bush’s counter-terrorism expert, Richard Clarke, not only confirmed O’Neill’s account of the Bush administration’s obsession with attacking Iraq, yet also shows us an insider’s view on the illegal planning, preparation and initiation of the war through the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. President Nixon’s strategist, Kevin Phillips, documents four generations of war profiteering and deception by the Bush/Walker clan in American Dynasty.

Finally, in the latest blockbuster, Pulitzer Prize-winning Watergate reporter Bob Woodward outlines Bush’s illegal attack plan. Woodward establishes that five days after 9/11, the President was secretly scheming to go after, not bin Laden –- the man responsible for the 9/11 attack –- but rather bin Laden’s arch enemy Saddam Hussein. Specifically, 72 days after 9/11, Bush gave Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the orders to draw up the secret war plans. Once enacted, these plans made George W. Bush a war criminal, just like the Nazi generals at Nuremberg.

CONTINUED...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/April2004/Fitrakis0422.htm

...You, too, fooj!

[Wilma5]

8. Is greed good?

This is one way to determine if someone is a "human scumbag" or not. Be careful though, some people confuse greed with ambition. Greed is more stingy. Greedy people refuse to share and would rather see something destroyed if they can not possess it.

[northofdenali]

12. Wilma, I prefer to think of them as evil instead of greedy -

but you've got the right of it, they'd rather NO ONE have it if they can't.

Welcome to DU :hi:

[Octafish]

13. Take From the Poor, Give to the Military? Where would Bush be without terrorism?

Greed is bad.



Scumbaggery is hypocrisy metamorphosing into warmongery.

Whatever happened to the Peace Dividend?

Take From the Poor, Give to the Military?

Where would the Bush administration be without terrorism?

By Robert Scheer, AlterNet
Posted on February 9, 2006, Printed on February 13, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/32042/

Like the Cold War before it, the "war on terror" is a conveniently sweeping rationale for all manner of irrational governance, such as the outrageous $2.77-trillion budget the president proposed to Congress on Monday.

Without terrorism, how could Bush justify to fiscal conservatives the whopping budget deficits that he has ballooned via his tax cuts for the wealthy that he now seeks to make permanent? Without terrorism, how could he convince government corruption watchdogs that the huge increases in military and homeland security -- 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively -- aren't simply payback to the defense contractors who so heavily support the Republicans every election cycle? Without terrorism, how could the president get away with blindly dumping $120 billion more into the war in Afghanistan and the bungled occupation of Iraq that the Bush administration had once promised would be financed by Iraqi oil sales?

In order to pay for the money pit that is Iraq, the Bush budget demands draconian cuts in 141 domestic programs, led by a $36-billion cut in Medicare spending for the elderly over the next five years. This from a president reelected after promising to expand rather than curtail healthcare services to seniors.

Many of the other proposed cuts are equally obscene, such as the termination of $1 billion in child-care funds over five years, and the complete elimination of the Commodity Supplemental Food Program that provides food assistance to low-income seniors, needy pregnant women and children.

These attacks on the social safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society are not only patently unfair, in light of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, but the simultaneous blank check for the Pentagon cannot be honestly justified by the fight against terrorism. And although the president insists that it is unpatriotic to question his strategies in fighting terrorism, let me risk his opprobrium, and that of the pseudo-conservative bully boys that shill for him in the media, by doing just that.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/32042/

Who spent it?

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/

Here's something else: A most hearty welcome to DU, Wilma5!

[bobthedrummer]

16. When it comes to WMD's the BFEE is really out there

totally beyond MAD/Mutually Assured Destruction-and the people that kept US out of nuclear war are now political enemies of the crazies that are into everything from 10 1/2 ton Fuel Air Explosives like the Massive Ordnance Aerial Burst/MOAB to Dense Inert Metal Explosive/DIME to cluster bombs, mini-munitions, aerosol vectored ethnic specific chemical and biological weapons, directed energy weapons, and much more.

Nobody else can have any of it except by franchise with BFEE. Who the hell wanted it to begin with except Daddy War Bucks-that's why when Reagan and the supply siders of death began spending what had been set aside for those of US known as the baby boomers, as well as all the social programs of the New Deal to care for those that need assistance-well these RW fruitcakes kept investing it with the corporations that President Eisenhower warned US about into weapons and a fake arms race that defeated godless communism so that it's own godless evil network aka the world's sole military superpower, would control a new world that it would make out of the old one it intends to destroy-that's what we call the BFEE.


Confusing, scary, irrational sounding by design since that's one of their tactics (assymetry)-for instance the recently fired head of the nuclear weapons program, Linton F. Brooks,
http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/view.bg?articleid=175548
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1056
was into development of "mini-nukes" yet also chaired the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the former USSR for Poppy, yet the Decider and the crazies have disregarded all treaties, conventions, memoranda of understanding, agreements and other "pieces of paper" in their quest to project the power of the only military super-power geopolitically and ideologically by the doctrines of the Project for a New American Century and similar corrupt RW shitheads.

That is where a lot of the peace dividend went, what wasn't just stolen and laundered and unaccounted for went into what Daddy War Bucks needs to control the remnant of people with after the biggest class/ethnic cleansing possible imho.

They've got to GO NOW-they must resign/be removed from office and be prosecuted for their crimes before they start their 21st century version of a final solution aka the war on terror or Crusade or feudalistic fascism or whatever they believe in-it's a culture of death much like the NAZIS, Pol Pot, the Duvaliers, Stalin, or Caligula with 21st century tech.

[northofdenali]

11. Awesome. Bookmarked.

Thanks, octafish. :kick:

[Octafish]

14. When War is Swell: Bush's Crusades and the Carlyle Group

It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it.

When War is Swell

Bush's Crusades and the Carlyle Group

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Counterpunch Weekend Edition
May 22 / 23, 2004

Across all fronts, Bush's war deteriorates with stunning rapidity. The death count of American soldiers killed in Iraq will soon top 800, with no end in sight. The members of the handpicked Iraqi Governor Council are being knocked off one after another. Once loyal Shia clerics, like Ayatollah Sistani, are now telling the administration to pull out or face a nationalist insurgency. The trail of culpability for the abuse, torture and murder of Iraqi detainees seems to lead inexorably into the office of Donald Rumsfeld. The war for Iraqi oil has ended up driving the price of crude oil through the roof. Even Kurdish leaders, brutalized by the Ba'athists for decades, are now saying Iraq was a safer place under their nemesis Saddam Hussein. Like Medea whacking her own kids, the US turned on its own creation, Ahmed Chalabi, raiding his Baghdad compound and fingering him as an agent of the ayatollahs of Iran. And on and on it goes.

Still not all of the president's men are in a despairing mood. Amid the wreckage, there remain opportunities for profit and plunder. Halliburton and Bechtel's triumphs in Iraq have been chewed over for months. Less well chronicled is the profiteering of the Carlyle Group, a company with ties that extend directly into the Oval Office itself.

Even Pappy Bush stands in line to profit handsomely from his son's war making. The former president is on retainer with the Carlyle Group, the largest privately held defense contractor in the nation. Carlyle is run by Frank Carlucci, who served as the National Security advisor and Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Carlucci has his own embeds in the current Bush administration. At Princeton, his college roommate was Donald Rumsfeld. They've remained close friends and business associates ever since. When you have friends like this, you don't need to hire lobbyists..

Bush Sr. serves as a kind of global emissary for Carlyle. The ex-president doesn't negotiate arms deals; he simply opens the door for them, a kind of high level meet-and-greet. His special area of influence is the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia, where the Bush family has extensive business and political ties. According to an account in the Washington Post, Bush Sr. earns around $500,000 for each speech he makes on Carlyle's behalf.

One of the Saudi investors lured to Carlyle by Bush was the BinLaden Group, the construction conglomerate owned by the family of Osama bin Laden. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Bush convinced Shafiq Bin Laden, Osama's half brother, to sink $2 million of BinLaden Group money into Carlyle's accounts. In a pr move, the Carlyle group cut its ties to the BinLaden Group in October 2001.

One of Bush Sr.'s top sidekicks, James Baker, is also a key player at Carlyle. Baker joined the weapons firm in 1993, fresh from his stint as Bush's secretary of state and chief of staff. Packing a briefcase of global contacts, Baker parlayed his connections with heads of state, generals and international tycoons into a bonanza for Carlyle. After Baker joined the company, Carlyle's revenues more than tripled.

SNIP...

Carlyle and its network of investors are well positioned to cash in on Bush Jr.'s expansion of the defense and Homeland Security department budgets. Two Carlyle companies, Federal Data Systems and US Investigations Services, hold multi-billion dollar contracts to provide background checks for commercial airlines, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. USIS was once a federal agency called the Office Federal Investigations, but it was privatized in 1996 at the urging of Baker and others and was soon gobbled up by Carlyle. The company is now housed in "high-security, state-of-the-art, underground complex" in Annandale, Pennsylvania. USIS now does 2.4 million background checks a year, largely for the federal government.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair05222004.html

You're welcome, northofdenali. Thank you for giving a damn, my Friend.

[zippy890]

17. kick - good post

:dem:

[Octafish]

24. The Conflict in Iraq: Footing the Bill

Here, in typical Bush Crime Family fashion, an explanation of who's left holding the bill...



First, a history lesson: Sen. Prescott Bush "tips" Sen. Richard Nixon's "bill."

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ: FOOTING THE BILL

War costs are hitting historic proportions

The price tag for the Iraq conflict and overall effort against terrorism is expected to surpass Vietnam's next year.

By Joel Havemann
Times Staff Writer

January 14, 2007

WASHINGTON — By the time the Vietnam war ended in 1975, it had become America's longest war, shadowed the legacies of four presidents, killed 58,000 Americans along with many thousands more Vietnamese, and cost the U.S. more than $660 billion in today's dollars.

By the time the bill for World War II passed the $600-billion mark, in mid-1943, the United States had driven German forces out of North Africa, devastated the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Midway, and launched the vast offensives that would liberate Europe and the South Pacific.

The Iraq war is far smaller and narrower than those conflicts, and it has not extended beyond the tenure of a single president. But its price tag is beginning to reach historic proportions, and the budgetary "burn rate" for Iraq may be greater than in some periods in past wars.

SNIP...

From the beginning of President Lyndon B. Johnson's troop buildup in 1965 to the fall of Saigon in 1975, the United States spent the equivalent of $662 billion in 2007 dollars, according to the Congressional Research Service. The war in Iraq is harder to measure because its costs tend to be mixed up with those of the war in Afghanistan and Bush's broader global war on terrorism, says Steven Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

Starting with the anti-terrorism appropriation enacted a week after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Kosiak figures the United States had spent $400 billion fighting terrorism through fiscal 2006, which ended Sept. 30.

For fiscal 2007, Congress has so far approved $70 billion. The president is expected to ask Congress for $100 billion more.

CONTINUED...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-warcost14jan14,0,3340422.story?coll=la-home-headlines

More fuel for the seventh circle's furnace.

Thanks, zippy890!

[XanaDUer]

18. K & R'd

Superb.

[Octafish]

27. A War Waged by Liars and Morons: What is Bush's Agend in Iraq?

Thank you XanaDUer.

Here's another good read from a former Assistant Secretary of Commerce.

A good Republican, although I disagree with his politics, because he is a man of integrity.

A War Waged by Liars and Morons

What is Bush's Agenda in Iraq?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
June 20, 2005

For what purpose has President Bush sent 1,741 US soldiers to be killed in action in Iraq (as of June 19, 2005)?

For what purpose have 15,000 - 38,000 US troops been wounded, many so seriously that they are maimed for life?

Why has the US government thrown away $300 billion in an illegal and pointless war that cannot be won?

These questions are beginning to penetrate the consciousness of Americans, a majority of whom no longer support Bush's war.

Bush's Iraq war is the first war for which Americans have not known the reason. The reasons they were given by their president, vice president, secretary of defense, national security advisor, secretary of state, and the sycophantic media were nothing but a pack of lies.

SNIP...

Why did Bush invade Iraq?

Cynical Americans say the answer is oil. But $300 billion would have bought the oil without getting anyone killed, without destroying America's reputation in the world and without stirring up countless terrorist recruits for al Qaida.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06212005.html

It's long past time our elected representatives found out WHY.

[leftchick]

19. Octafish, this is truly a beautiful thing!

I am in awe of this writer. This need to be passed all around, email, fax, mail. It is a must read for all congress people as well. We are on to the SCUMBAGS!

biggest scumbag on earth.....

[Octafish]

32. Why the US Is Not Leaving Iraq: The Booming Business of War Profiteers

Hiya, leftchick! Agree 100-percent. Here's someone else on the to-read list:

Why the US Is Not Leaving Iraq: The Booming Business of War Profiteers

by Prof. Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Global Research, January 12, 2007

The military-industrial-complex cause military spending to be driven not by national security needs but by a network of weapons makers, lobbyists and elected officials. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. — General Smedley D. Butler

Neither the Iraq Study Group nor other establishment critics of the Iraq war are calling for the withdrawal of US troops from that country. To the extent that the Study Group or the new Congress purport to inject some "realism" into the Iraq policy, such projected modifications do not seem to amount to more than changing the drivers of the US war machine without changing its destination, or objectives: control of Iraq’s political and economic policies.

In light of the fact that by now almost all of the factions of the ruling circles, including the White House and the neoconservative war-mongerers, acknowledge the failure of the Iraq war, why, then, do they balk at the idea of pulling the troops out of that country?

Perhaps the shortest path to a relatively satisfactory answer would be to follow the money trail. The fact of matter is that not everyone is losing in Iraq. Indeed, while the Bush administration’s wars of choice have brought unnecessary death, destruction, and disaster to millions, including many from the Unites States, they have also brought fortunes and prosperity to war profiteers. At the heart of the reluctance to withdraw from Iraq lies the profiteers’ unwillingness to give up further fortunes and spoils of war.

Pentagon contractors constitute the overwhelming majority of these profiteers. They include not only the giant manufacturing contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing, but also a complex maze of over 100,000 service contractors and sub-contractors such as private army or security corporations and "reconstruction" firms.<1> These contractors of both deconstruction and "reconstruction," whose profits come mainly from the US treasury, have handsomely profited from the Bush administration’s wars of choice.

SNIP...

Such concerns are secondary to the booming business of war profiteers and, more generally, to the lure or the prospects of controlling Iraq’s politics and economics. Powerful beneficiaries of war dividends, who are often indistinguishable from the policy makers who pushed for the invasion of Iraq, have been pocketing hundreds of billions of dollars by virtue of war. More than anything else, it is the pursuit and the safeguarding of those plentiful spoils of war that are keeping US troops in Iraq.

The role of the Pentagon contractors,

The Pentagon contractors are both as a major driving force to the war on Iraq and a major obstacle to the withdrawal of US led forces.

The rise of the fortunes of the major Pentagon contractors can be measured, in part, by the growth of the Pentagon budget since President George W. Bush arrived in the White House: it has grown by more than 50 percent, from nearly $300 billion in 2001 to almost $455 billion in 2007. (These figures do not include the Homeland Security budget, which is $33 billion for the 2007 fiscal year alone, and the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are fast approaching $400 billion.)

Large Pentagon contractors have been the main beneficiaries of this windfall. For example, a 2004 study by The Center for Public Integrity revealed that, for the 1998–2003 period, one percent of the biggest contractors won 80 percent of all defense contracting dollars. The top ten got 38 percent of all the money. Lockheed Martin topped the list at $94 billion, Boeing was second with $81 billion, Raytheon was third (just under $40 billion), followed by Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics with nearly $34 billion each.(2)

CONTINUED...

Thanks for caring, leftchick! Every day, the warmonkey is that much closer to being in jail where he belongs.

[ClintonTyree]

20. Almost always the (R) after their name.....

is a dead giveaway to a person's "scumbagism". I'd say the percentage is pretty close to 99%. There are a few outliers but for the most part that rule of thumb will work almost every time. ;)

[malaise]

22. Great read

K &R

[bobbolink]

25. I guess it's my nonviolence history--I don't appreciate the term "scumbag"

I don't think it adds to the case against the scumbag. :rofl:

However, it's a good article about what this *#_$*!@#$!!! is about.

Thanks!! :thumbsup:

[me b zola]

26. k&r

[Hoping4Change]

28. Excellent read. Thanks for posting.

[John Gauger]

29. Ralph Nader once,

while discussing bribery, referred to, "the most craven of politicians, such as Mitch McConnell..."

[burythehatchet]

31. enthusiastic kick

McConnell has assumed his place bent over in front of Cheney

[flying_wahini]

33. Thanks for all these wonderful posts, you keep me sane

I love you guys,
DU rocks!