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

[Octafish]

Among the 3,096 United States service personnel killed in Iraq is Col. Ted Westhusing. The U.S. Army’s top military ethicist and a full-time professor at West Point, Col. Westhusing volunteered for service in Iraq in order to better teach his cadet charges. He died on June 5, 2005, the victim of a gunshot wound to the head.



In Iraq, Col. Westhusing was charged with oversight of the training of Iraq’s new security forces. Among his responsibilities were the investigation of reported contract irregularities by U.S. Investigations Services (USIS) and human rights abuses by its civilian employees.

Once a federal agency, USIS became a privatized government contractor growing fat off the trough of Uncle Sam while executives lined their numbered Swiss bank accounts with big bucks off the American taxpayer. The average American would probably never guess who is a Big Time investor in USIS—The Carlyle Group.

West Point professor dies in Iraq

Army Col Theodore S. Westhusing

44, of Dallas; assigned to the United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.; serving with the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq; died June 5 of non-combat-related injuries in Baghdad.

By Shaun Schafer
Associated Press

TULSA, Okla. — A West Point professor who volunteered to serve in Iraq has been killed in action, family members said Monday.

Col. Ted S. Westhusing, 45, was killed in action on Sunday, family members said Monday. They did not release specifics on how he was killed. Family members received official notification of the death from the military late Sunday.

Westhusing, a 1979 graduate of Jenks High School, had doctorates in Russian, philosophy and military strategy, his eldest brother Tim Westhusing of Broken Arrow, said Monday.

“He wanted to go over there and make things better,” Tim Westhusing said. “He has a wife and three children. He didn’t have to go…”

SNIP…

Westhusing graduated from West Point in 1983. He left for Iraq near the end of 2004 and was helping train the Iraqi army, working as counter-terrorism and special operations director under Lt. Gen. David Petraeus.

CONTINUED…

http://www.militarycity.com/valor/900007.html

Some say he committed suicide, but those who know him best say the Colonel would never do that.



One thing’s for certain: Col. Westhusing WAS bothered by certain companies making Big Bucks off the war in Iraq.

A Journey That Ended in Anguish

Col. Ted Westhusing, a military ethicist who volunteered to go to Iraq, was upset by what he saw. His apparent suicide raises questions.

by T. Christian Miller
The Los Angeles Times
November 27th, 2005

"War is the hardest place to make moral judgments."
- Col. Ted Westhusing, Journal of Military Ethics

EXCERPT…

Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.

In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

SNIP…

The colonel began to complain to colleagues about "his dislike of the contractors," who, he said, "were paid too much money by the government," according to one captain.

"The meetings were never easy and always contentious. The contracts were in dispute and always under discussion," an Army Corps of Engineers official told investigators.

SNIP…

"I heard something in his voice," (his wife, recalling a phone conversation,) told investigators, according to a transcript of the interview. "In Ted's voice, there was fear. He did not like the nighttime and being alone."

SNIP…

"He was sick of money-grubbing contractors," the official recounted. Westhusing said that "he had not come over to Iraq for this."

CONTINUED…

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9312

Col. Westhusing wasn’t just any old officer. He was the U.S. Army’s top ethicist, a full-time professor at West Point, the United States Military Academy. Colleagues and comrades-in-arms are on-record as saying he was the last person they believed would ever take his own life.

Something must have really bothered this man, for him to consider suicide.

Perhaps there is something more sinister. Col. Westhusing is reported to have expressed concerns for his life. I’m not sure if it’s mere coincidence that his bodyguard was off on a week’s worth of R&R when the shooting occurred.



A few prominent members of the Carlyle Group…

Pentagon, Inc.

Lambert at Corrente points out the dearth of military honor in Iraq, replaced by profit motive. Quoting from an L.A. Times piece,

(Col. Ted) Westhusing, 44 was one of the Army’s leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

In Iraq, Col. Westhusing encountered the sort of corruption we've all been talking about since the first bombs dropped.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. … Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.

In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

In January, Westhusing began work on what the Pentagon considered the most important mission in Iraq: training Iraqi forces to take over security duties from U.S. troops.

Westhusing’s task was to oversee a private security company, Virginia-based USIS, which had contracts worth $79 million to train a corps of Iraqi police to conduct special operations.

Carlyle Group = George H.W. Bush, plus other Establishment luminaries, always perfectly placed to profit from war.

In May, Westhusing received an anonymous four-page letter that contained detailed allegations of wrongdoing by USIS.

The writer accused USIS of deliberately shorting the government on the number of trainers to increase its profit margin. More seriously, the writer detailed two incidents in which USIS contractors allegedly had witnessed or participated in the killing of Iraqis. (Hmmm; reminds me of CACI)

In a second incident, the letter says, a USIS employee saw Iraqi police trainees kill two innocent Iraqi civilians, then covered it up. A USIS manager “did not want it reported because he thought it would put his contract at risk.”

SNIP...

About 1 p.m., a USIS manager went looking for Westhusing because he was scheduled for a ride back to the Green Zone. After getting no answer, the manager returned about 15 minutes later. Another USIS employee peeked through a window. He saw Westhusing lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

The manager rushed into the trailer and tried to revive Westhusing. The manager told investigators that he picked up the pistol at Westhusing’s feet and tossed it onto the bed.

“I knew people would show up,” that manager said later in attempting to explain why he had handled the weapon. “With 30 years from military and law enforcement training, I did not want the weapon to get bumped and go off.”

Sure thing, buddy.

After a three-month inquiry, investigators declared Westhusing’s death a suicide. A test showed gunpowder residue on his hands. A shell casing in the room bore markings indicating it had been fired from his service revolver.

Then there was the note.

Investigators found it lying on Westhusing’s bed. The handwriting matched his.

Most of the letter is a wrenching account of a struggle for honor in a strange land.

“I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied,” it says. “I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored.

“Death before being dishonored any more.”

CONTINUED...

http://adreampuppet.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_adreampuppet_archive.html

MI Complex makes money off of war. Hmmm. What name immediately jumps to mind?

Of curse, the Bush Family Evil Empire also kills members of the United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, the United States Air Force, the United States Coast Guard and just about every other service, agency and arm of We the People for profit.

“Hey!” Poppy Doc and Baby Doc Bush and their cronies say, “It’s your duty.”



They think we are nothing more than their cannon fodder. Gee. That’s how kings and NAZIs think, not American Presidents and real Americans. Real Americans think all people are created equal and have equal rights under the law, especially in times of war.

[fooj]

1. Know your BFEE.

All in the family.:grr:

[Octafish]

5. Hey, Smirko! DU’s on to your gangster ass!

Know your BFEE: War Profiteers

“George Bush is a satanic, sadistic, brutal monster.
Compared to George Bush, Adolf Hitler was a true gentleman.”

– Michael Boren Williams, former Campaign Manager for Senator Gary Hart
and Bush murder attempt victim.

Beware the Bush Family Evil Empire. Despite what their fine PR agencies say about a “culture of life,” these people make money off of death. It’s nothing personal – it’s strictly business. In World War I, a Bush was head of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition section of the War Industries Board. GOOGLE SAMUEL-PRESCOTT-BUSH for more.

The Bush Empire

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:Jwa-0s82ragJ:www.newtopiamagazine.net/content/issue12/features/bushempire.php+bush-family+civil-war+profiteers&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Of course, these predecessors of what today is termed the BFEE – the owners and operators of the Global Military-Intelligence-Industrial-Financial Complex – helped bring about World War II by helping arm Hitler:

Timeline of Treason:

The Bush Family Connections to the Nazis

http://www.country-liberal-party.com/pages/Bush-Nazi-links.htmhttp://www.country-liberal-party.com/pages/Bush-Nazi-li...

From: http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/timeline.html

During Vietnam, the nation’s military industrial complex helped heat up the Cold War, all around the world. From…Africa.

The Angolan Civil War and U.S. Policy

http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/history/2002/0413angola.htm


During the Cold War, they backed Team B and those intelligence analysts who called the Soviet Union a colossus ready to destroy America, even when knowing the USSR was bankrupt and corrupt.


Team B: The Trillion Dollar Experiment

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=apr93cahn


Reflections on the GAO Triad Report on the Nuclear Triad

http://www.calpoly.edu/~dhafemei/triaddh.html


BFEE underlings like un-Admirable Poindexter and the Traitor Oliver North dealt with the terrorist loving Ayatollah Khomeini (bankrolled the murder of 241 US service members in Beirut) while helping arm Saddam Hussein during Iran-Iraq war.

The crisis in Washington: what history tells us

http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/apr1998/scan-a4.shtml


Gave green light to Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait, then declared war on the guy, even though he said he'd withdraw from Kuwait.


Excerpts From Iraqi Document on Meeting with U.S. Envoy

http://www.dvmx.com/glaspie.html


BFEE-linked turds like Richard "PNAC" Perle are friends with Iran-Contra/October Surprise Action Figure Adnan Khashoggi (who even turns up in Selection 2000, but that's another story).


Lunch with the Chairman

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030317fa_fact


BFEE, likewise, has its mits in money to be made off of the Iraq war. The little turd from Crawford had the gall to warn other countries off of the idea of making money off rebuilding and looting Iraq: “If you don’t send troops, you can’t expect to do bidniss.”


Nader: Bush family profited from Iraq War

http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050224-052103-7928r.htm


The Smoking Gun? Oil in Iraq as a Motive for War.

http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/threemon_articlesmoking%20gun%20-%20oil%20and%20the%20war%20in%20iraq.htm


Now where does that leave us today? The BFEE really are – not the nation’s super-wealthy – but the world’s super-wealthy: The Military-Industrial Complex, Wall Street, the Petro-States, the NAZIs, the Mafia, Drugs, Inc., and assorted scum who give satan worshippers a bad name, the BFEE really don’t care what happens to the world and its people, as long as they got theirs.

A Government of Thieves

http://www.e-book.com.au/electionspecial04.htm


Ever hear of the Carlyle Group? The Bushes and the bin Ladens BANKED there, together – investing MILLIONS we know about, the tip of what Greg Palast calls the cashberg:

Bush Watch: Bush Money

http://www.bushnews.com/bushmoney.htm

http://www.gregpalast.com /



Thanks, fooj! Appreciate your friendship and all you do to get the truth out to We the People.

Original DU Thread with loads of excellent responses...

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

[babylonsister]

2. Thank you, octafish. Because I know better, I really wonder.

Gawd, this makes me ill.

[Octafish]

6. You're welcome, babylonsister. What Nietzsche said...

...helps me focus:

"When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Monstrous to contemplate, their crimes and murders and treasons are so many that we need computers to just number them.

Thanks for caring, babylonsister. Truly appreciate all you do.

[H2O Man]

14. Good quote.

Great thread. Thank you.

[bridgit]

28. yep, enter the heart of darkness...

[Straight Shooter]

3. A man like Westhusing would not kill himself. It would go completely against his grain.

It would absolutely violate his sense of honor, duty, and ethics. He would never abandon his family, nor his country.

We all know to whom the modus operandi of "unexplained suicide" is a tried-and-true standby.

Thank you, Octafish, for relentlessly shedding light on the darkness which threatens to overtake our country, if not the world.

[Octafish]

7. Agree 100 percent, Straight Shooter. Here's the Army's spin...

Col. Westhusing was due home in three weeks. He told others he was worried for his personal safety. He was shocked at what he discovered, but could not talk about. His bodyguard was relieved just when he needed him most. So, of course the Pentagon said he was not going nuts, just thinking too rigidly.

Patriots and profiteers: the case of Ted Westhusing

December 02, 2005

Journalist John Rapley has an important insight on the rise of Private military companies:

Scholars have been watching Iraq carefully as a test-case for what many see as a new form of warfare. Up until the late eighteenth century, fighting in Europe had been a business. Noblemen ran mercenary armies whose services they would sell to kingdoms whenever the latter went to war. But in the nationalist period - widely seen to have begun in the French Revolution - things changed. A new doctrine emerged. It held that armies should henceforth be patriotic. That is to say, they would be drawn from among the citizens of the nation, who should be motivated by duty rather than profit. (Jamaica Gleaner)

Rapley notes the recent death of Colonel Ted Westhusing, a soldier and scholar who had written about military honour, and who had been assigned to oversee a private military company. The Los Angeles Times has more on the case:

A psychologist reviewed Westhusing's e-mails and interviewed colleagues. She concluded that the anonymous letter had been the "most difficult and probably most painful stressor."

She said that Westhusing had placed too much pressure on himself to succeed and that he was unusually rigid in his thinking. Westhusing struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war. This, she said, was a flaw.

"Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited," wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. "He could not shift his mind-set from the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator for businesses." (La Times)

SOURCE:

http://tomgriffin.typepad.com/the_green_ribbon/2005/12/patriots_and_pr.html

The Lt. Col.above sure knows what side of the bread gets the MI Complex butter. For the lesser spirited, to get along, they gotta go along.

Thanks for giving a damn, Straight Shooter. Really appreciate all you do.

[Karenina]

9. "This, she said, was a flaw."

Pardon me, I think I'm gonna :puke:

[Straight Shooter]

19. I will always give a damn about people like Westhusing, Octafish.

This case really bothers me. It's much worse than the Pat Tillman "friendly fire" incident, which I also find suspicious. There is nothing quite like the theater of war to cover up crimes, especially when it is one individual homicide at a time.

Breitenbach may well learn what little use money is one day, if poetic justice ever comes knocking on her door.

The thanks goes to you, Octafish, for all you do.

[countmyvote4real]

4. Where is the 'in the pocket' MSM on this story?

Safely hidden 'in the pocket.'

[Octafish]

8. Certainly haven't been too many reports...

...Going by how few people I know who've even heard of Col. Westhusing it's a good bet ABCNNBCBSFixedNoiseNutwork and NYTWaPoTribGannett haven't been doing much real journalism these days.

Here's what passes for news:

Washington Whispers USN&WR

Almost as Good as Being in Baghdad

When Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus got the Iraq assignment, it meant another star, and his wife had a very special plan. The daughter of a four-star herself, she'd pin her dad's fourth star on her hubby. One prob: The change-of-command ceremony happens in Baghdad. Well, thanks to a suggestion from the previous Iraq team of Gens. John Abizaid and George Casey, Petraeus has crafted a pretty good backup plan: a video link of the promotion ceremony, the morning of the change of command, with his family back home. "They can share the occasion," Petraeus tells us, "and that will be nice."

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/whispers/articles/070204/12whisplead.htm

Of course, Gen. Petraeus, briefed about what Col. Westhusing found, was later surprised to hear he was mentioned in the alleged suicide note.

EDIT: Forgot to say, "Thanks, countmyvote4real!" Really appreciate you caring and all you do to get the word out about these traitors.

[blm]

23. They always fail to give coverage to BushInc's underlying crime network.

This is standard procedure for them.

[rman]

10. k&r

[Octafish]

32. From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil

All the oil in the world isn't worth one human life.

From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil

An in-depth look at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the events leading up to them, and the players who made them possible.

By Richard W. Behan, AlterNet
Posted on February 5, 2007, Printed on February 5, 2007

In the Caspian Basin and beneath the deserts of Iraq, as many as 783 billion barrels of oil are waiting to be pumped. Anyone controlling that much oil stands a good chance of breaking OPEC's stranglehold overnight, and any nation seeking to dominate the world would have to go after it.

The long-held suspicions about George Bush's wars are well-placed. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not prompted by the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. They were not waged to spread democracy in the Middle East or enhance security at home. They were conceived and planned in secret long before September 11, 2001 and they were undertaken to control petroleum resources.

The "global war on terror" began as a fraud and a smokescreen and remains so today, a product of the Bush Administration's deliberate and successful distortion of public perception. The fragmented accounts in the mainstream media reflect this warping of reality, but another more accurate version of recent history is available in contemporary books and the vast information pool of the Internet. When told start to finish, the story becomes clear, the dots easier to connect.

Both appalling and masterful, the lies that led us into war and keep us there today show the people of the Bush Administration to be devious, dangerous and far from stupid.

The following is an in-depth look at the oil wars, the events leading up to them, and the players who made them possible.

http://www.alternet.org/story/47489/

Thanks, rman! Appreciate very much you giving a damn.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

11. Thank you Octafish for bringing this to the light of DU. I didn't know about this.

Another brave person suicided... Of course recommended.

[Octafish]

35. Col. Westhusing was an expert on military ethics -- the furthest thing from Bushco possible.

Col. Westhusing also was concerned about privatization of jobs once performed by the military:

An American Death: Col. Ted Westhusing

RJ Eskow
HuffingtonPost.com

The apparent suicide of Col. Ted Westhusing, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, resonates with loss, tragedy, and meaning. He was a professional ethicist, specializing in the concept of a soldier's honor, who was assigned to supervise a civilian military contractor in Iraq. Col. Westhusing saw everything he believed in trashed by civilian leadership that understood neither ethics nor honor, under a Republican government that disrespects and mistreats its military.

Sound like a facile interpretation? Then listen to the facts.

Westhusing, reports the Times, "was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics ... His dissertation (for a Ph.D. in philosophy) was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor." Once in Iraq, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that the contractor he oversaw, USIS, had been cheating the government - and that it concealed gross human rights violations to protect its contracts.

Writes the Times:

"In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military."

CONTINUED...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/an-american-death-col-_b_11373.html

This throws into a new light the reports of Halliburton and friends charging the Pentagon $45 for a case of soda pop and who knows how much for what else.

Thank you for caring, OmmmSweetOmmm. Thanks also for all you do to oppose these traitors.

[conscious evolution]

12. K & R

More must read Octafish.

[Octafish]

37. The Bush Family's War Profiteering

Thanks, my Friend. Here's a bit of light on a few other members of the Family:

The Bush Family's War Profiteering

Written by Administrator
Thursday, 24 February 2005

The extent of Iraq contracts going to corporations which involve members of President George W. Bush's family is widespread and extensive involving hundreds of millions of dollars. Often these firms receive contracts where the corporations have no expertise and certainly the Bush family members have no expertise or experience in these areas. It is a world not of know how but of know who, marinated in campaign contributions. It seems like Bush family and friends are trading on their relationship to the President. The matrix of government contracts and Bush related corporations invites further investigation by the media and Congress - inquiries that are long overdue.

Below are examples of Bush Family members who have profited from the war and occupation of Iraq. These issues have not been examined or reported by the mainstream media.

Neil Mallon Bush the younger brother of the President, infamous for his involvement in the Silverado S and L scandal, has been hired by Crest Investment Company as a consultant for $60,000 per year to assist with their efforts to serve as a middleman to advise other companies that seek taxpayer-financed business in Iraq. Working with Crest puts Neil Bush at the center of multiple organizations profiting from the war and occupation in close alliance with long-term Bush Family allies.

SNIP...

William H.T. ("Bucky") Bush, an uncle of George W. Bush, joined the board of directors of the St. Louis based company Engineered Support Systems in March 2000. (See: http://www.engineeredsupport.com/) Bucky Bush was one the Bush “Pioneers,” the campaign contributors who raised more than $100,000 in the 2000 presidential election. Engineered Support Systems has three areas: light military support equipment, heavy military support equipment, and electronics/automation systems. Since 2000, following the presidential election and the 9-11 attacks, the company's federal contracts, revenues and its stock value have all gone up. Engineered Support Systems has been in the top 100 contractors with the DoD since 2001. It’s contracts with the U.S. military have totaled over $1 billion.

SNIP...

Marvin P. Bush, the youngest brother of George W. Bush, shares an interest in federal contracts held by companies in his firm's portfolio. Marvin Bush is also an adviser at HCC Insurance, formerly called the Houston Casualty Company, one of the biggest insurance carriers for the World Trade Center. Bush was a director at HCC, which has benefited financially from the 9-11 insurance bailout legislation passed by Congress at the instigation of the White House. The departure of Marvin from the HCC board was announced the same day, November 22, 2002, as the passage of the bill.

SNIP...

http://www.democracyrising.us/content/view/57/81/

Thank you, conscious evolution for caring, and for all you do to fight these treasonous warmongers.

[conscious evolution]

46. no problem octafish

Have you ever looked into the bfee involvment in State Street Bank?Acording to a couple of other DUers they are supposed to be a very bushy bank.Definitely worthy of your attention.

[mod mom]

13. I remember hearing this on AAR, but never knew about the privatized USIS w ties

to The caryle Group.

There can not be an honorable man/woman who supports these evil bastards! This is such a horrible story. They squash honorable men, like Col Westhusen, with no remorse. His final note:


“I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied,” it says. “I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored.

“Death before being dishonored any more.”

How heart wrenching. This is what McCain and other Republicans support? Shame on them.

Thanks Octafish for these EXCELLENT posts. I share these with my networks. I also post this information w links on different OH political blogs, so that it reaches more people. I really think you should write a book. Two words, my friend:

:yourock:

[Octafish]

39. Bush Sr lobbies China for Citigroup (with Carlyle) bid

It gets worse. The Bush Family Evil Empire IS America's foothold in China:

Bush Sr lobbies China for Citigroup bid

Former US president George Bush has pressed Beijing to support a bid by a consortium to purchase a stake in the country's Guangdong Development Bank.

A consortium, led by Citibank and including venture capital firm the Carlyle Group, is keen to buy a 24.1 billion yuan ($3 billion) share of the bank, the Chinese 21st Century Business Herald reports.

If ministers in Beijing approve the deal, the consortium will own 85 per cent of the troubled Guangdong Development Bank. Current Chinese rules state that no single foreign investor can own more than 20 per cent of any domestic bank and there is a 25 per cent cap on combined foreign investment.

George Bush Senior addressed a letter to the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs, stating: "On my personal behalf, I vigorously ask the Chinese government to support the US companies' efforts to buy into Guangdong Development Bank.

"I sincerely believe that the deal would be conducive to the overall development of the Sino-US relationship."

CONTINUED...

http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/12910.html

Guess which bid got the bank?

Thank you for understanding, Mod Mom. I am honored you share the truth about these gangsters.

[wildbilln864]

15. Another excellent post Octafish!

Thanks!
:hi:

[Octafish]

40. Dick Cheney: War Profiteer

These guys are the worst.



They are warmongers:

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.

SNIP...

Halliburton has been more closely associated with the invasion of Iraq than any other corporation. Before the Iraq War began, it was 19th on the U.S. Army's list of top contractors and zoomed to number 1 in 2003. In 2003 Halliburton made $4.2 billion from the U.S. government. Cheney stated he had , "severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest."

SNIP...

Calling on Cheney to sever his financial ties to Halliburton, Lautenberg points out that the company has already raked in more than $10 billion for work in Iraq, and was handed some of the first Katrina contracts. The company has been criticized by auditors for its handling of no-bid contacts in Iraq, and there have been numerous allegations of over charging for services. Auditors found the firm marked up meal prices for troops and inflated gas prices in a deal with a Kuwaiti supplier. The company also built the American prison at Guantanamo Bay. Lautenberg said, "It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it."

CONTINUED...

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

Thanks for the kind words, wildbilln864. Thanks also for all you do to spread the word on these bedwetting merchants of death.

[lonestarnot]

16. Bloody bushitler!

[Octafish]

42. The Carlyle Group: Crony Capitalism without Borders

The writer asks, "How much are you making on the war, Daddy?"

Dick Cheney and the Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone

The Carlyle Group: Crony Capitalism without Borders

excerpted from the book

How Much Are You Making On The War Daddy?

A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration

by William D. Hartung
Nation Books, 2003, paper

EXCERPT...

p27

The revolving door between the government and weapons contractors isn't new, but it has reached new heights (monetarily) and depths (ethically), in recent years. Cheney's relationship with Halliburton is a perfect case study of all that is wrong with the relationship between our democratic form of government and the corporations that finance our elections and feed at the government trough on a daily basis.

p29

Halliburton's biggest "cash cow" during his tenure was definitely in the area of military support services, and the company's ability to earn so much in this area was directly tied to a decision Cheney had made back when he was secretary of defense in the first Bush administration. It was under Cheney's watch that the decision was made to privatize not only specific services in support of U.S. troops overseas-such as food services, or doing the laundry, or repairing vehicles-but to privatize the actual planning process that went into providing logistics for U.S. troops when they had to be sent into an inhospitable foreign hot spot on short notice.

In 1992, near the end of Cheney's tenure as defense secretary, Halliburton won a contract from the U.S. Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), which P.W. Singer has described as a deal to "work with the military in planning the logistical side of contingency operations." Singer notes that "it was the first time the U.S. military had ever contracted such global planning to a private organization." In a pattern that would mark both Halliburton's and Cheney's business paths, the firm got the LOGCAP contract after conducting a top secret $3.9 million report for the Pentagon on how private companies could essentially provide the bulk of the logistics involved in major U.S. contingency deployments, from transportation and base-building to cooking the food and doing the laundry. The initial study contract called for a plan for how a private company could bear the bulk of the logistical burden for deploying 20,000 troops to 5 separate bases overseas within a 1 80-day period. Later in the year, Halliburton got a $5 million follow-on study contract to outline how a private firm might supply logistics for a series of more specific contingencies. By the end of the year, Halliburton had been selected to receive a five-year contract to be the U.S. Army's "on call" private logistics arm.

The work started almost immediately. Halliburton was called upon to provide support services for U.S. forces deployed to Somalia as part of "Operation Restore Hope," an operation that began at the end of the Bush administration and carried over into the first Clinton term. As Singer notes, "Brown and Root employees arrived in Mogadishu just 24 hours after the first U.S. troops arrived and stayed until the final withdrawal in March 1995, when its employees left with the last U.S. marines." The company did everything from hiring local women to hand wash Army laundry to importing "a mortician to clean up the bodies of killed UN peacekeepers before shipping them out of the country." Singer notes that for a good portion of its time in country, Halliburton was "the largest employer in Somalia, with some 2,500 local employees."

The Somalia operation led to additional, more limited work on behalf of smaller U.S. deployments to Rwanda and Haiti. But the big payoff came in the Balkans, where Halliburton's Brown and Root Services unit started out supplying logistical support for Operation Deny Flight, the United Nations-mandated no-fly zone in Bosnia, and ended up building and operating bases and refugee camps in Croatia, Bosnia, and, most lucratively of all, in KOSOVO. The firm's Balkan adventures started during the same year that Cheney took over as CEO of the company, and accounted for a good deal of the company's growth on the military side of its operations during his five-year tenure at the head of the firm.

The Army contract to provide logistical support for 20,000 U.S. troops deployed as part of the NATO IFOR forces in Bosnia came in at a cool $546 million, and it resulted in Halliburton doing work on behalf of U.S. and allied forces in Hungary, Bosnia, and Croatia. Just as it seemed that Halliburton had struck pure gold, there was a setback in 1997 when the company lost in its bid to renew its overall LOGCAP contract with the Army to a competitor, DynCorp, who had underbid them for the next round of work. But the sting was taken out of the loss when the Army decided to remove the BaIkans work from the larger LOGCAP contract, allowing Halliburton to go full speed ahead on its lucrative support operations there.

The Bosnia work set the stage for an even bigger role for Halliburton in Kosovo, where the company was involved in everything from building make-shift refugee quarters to building two major Army bases from scratch. The company's contract for its first year in Kosovo alone ballooned from the base level fee of $180 million to $1 billion. During its first three months in Kosovo alone, Singer reports that the company did the following: "built 192 barracks . . . thirteen helipads, two aviation-maintenance facilities, twelve mess-kitchen dining facilities, two large base dining facilities, and 37 temporary bathing facilities," even as it was delivering over I million meals, providing more than 55 million gallons of water, supplying over 383,000 gallons of diesel fuel, collecting over 89,000 cubic meters of trash, and loading and off-loading over 4,200 containers with needed supplies.

Halliburton's growth under Cheney's leadership is nothing compared to what it has done since he became vice president. In 2001, it won back the Army's LOGCAP contract, just in time to cash in on the logistical bonanza involved in providing facilities and provisions for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, and all the other far-flung outposts of the Bush administration's war on terrorism. The company is also in charge of making the cages used to house Taliban members and terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A late August 2003 analysis in the Washington Post estimated that Halliburton had raked in $1.7 billion in military contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond since the start of the Bush administration.

The company's biggest prize-which it was awarded on a no-bid basis by the Army Corps of Engineers after Halliburton officials had helped the Defense Department write the specs for the contract-was an open-ended, two year contract worth up to $7 billion for putting out oil fires and repairing oil infrastructure in Iraq.

It was only after dogged questioning from Rep. Henry Waxman that it was revealed that the no-bid Halliburton contract was not merely for putting out oil fires, but for rebuilding and operating Iraq's extensive oil infrastructure.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/CarlyleGroup_HMOWD%3F.html

Thanks for all you do, lonestarnot! Really appreciate you caring.

[lonestarnot]

44. kickiing!

[Swamp Rat]

45. Same here!

:hi: :hug:

:kick:

[lonestarnot]

65. King of the mountain again and you're it! Go Fish!

[bear425]

17. Thank you, Octafish. I wasn't aware of this.

Thank you for all you do to educate the willing! k/r

[Octafish]

43. Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper

When I heard what happened to Col. Westhusing, I couldn't believe it.

The guy was tops, in every way.

So are the rest of our men and women in uniform who are willing to give their life in defense of their country and Constitution.

Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper

by Derrick Z. Jackson
Published on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 by the Boston Globe

More than 2,600 US soldiers have died in Iraq. July's toll for Iraqi civilians was 3,500, the deadliest month of the US occupation. Iraq's civil war is on pace to kill 25,000 to 30,000 civilians by year's end. If you add in the tens of thousands of deaths from the 2003 invasion (we do not know the exact number because the Pentagon won't comment), researchers will inevitably say that the body count has crossed 100,000.

All of this madness to stop a madman, Saddam Hussein.

The litany of US mistakes and excessive force has the Pentagon commissioning at least two secret strategy studies in Afghanistan and Iraq. ``This is a struggle for the soul of the Army," said Colonel Peter Mansoor, the head of the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center.

Just as odorous, a mountain of corporate cash grows next to the piles of bodies. In this bizarre war where Iraqi civilians fear both suicide bombers and the United States, the biggest sacrifice that President Bush asked of American civilians was to get on a plane and show those terrorists a thing or two by going to Disney World.

Defense contractors took that request to a logical extreme. They built their own fantasy land.

There is no evidence of a contractor having a soul in the 13th annual Executive Excess CEO survey by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank, and the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy. The report found that 34 defense CEOs have been paid nearly $1 billion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

As soldiers have died in displaying personal patriotism, the pay gap between soldiers and defense CEOs has exploded. Before 9/11, the gap between CEOs of publicly traded companies and army privates was already a galling 190 to 1. Today, it is 308 to 1. The average army private makes $25,000 a year. The average defense CEO makes $7.7 million.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0830-26.htm

Thanks, bear425. I truly appreciate you caring and all you do to get the word out about these evil, warmongering turds.

[HughBeaumont]

18. Makes your blood curdle . . .

to think what these fucking murderers are capable of while people like us are labeled "conspiracy nuts" for even suggesting that the BFEE is nothing but a corporate mafia with the world as it's contracted hit.

Where is our media? Why do we have NO one with balls out there?

Possibly because they'd get "Wellstoned, Westhusing'd and Guerin'd"?

And all the while, NO one questions the dubious circumstances of these "suicides"; NO one stops to think "did this seem like a guy who would shoot himself"?

Great post once again. This is important stuff.

[Virginia Dare]

20. Where is our media?

owned by the same corporate thugs who ordered the hit on this true patriot. :cry:

Thanks Octafish, you are just one reason that DU is worth reading.

[blm]

24. You nailed it right there - media was coopted many years ago to further BushInc's agenda

Add a few powerful Dems to the mix, and they can rest assured that the coverups will continue.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/111106.html

[wildbilln864]

50. Where's the media?

Read about "operation mockingbird".
:hi:

[bobthedrummer]

51. Or review this archived thread from January 6, 2006

"Reality vs. perception management: the tinfoil controversy"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x71919

[wildbilln864]

67. Kick!

[Octafish]

54. Hubris Unbound

Carlyle enables warmongers.



We won't need to build more jails to handle all these traitors.

Let them double-bunk with the regular killers.

Hubris Unbound

by TIM SHORROCK



EXCERPT...

There, standing before an array of weapons used in Iraq, Bush made his stand for a $550 billion tax cut that Republicans pray will revive investment, cut the deficit and bring back thousands of jobs lost over the past eighteen months. He thanked the assembled United Defense workers for their products, especially the Bradleys, which he boasted "were responsible for a lot of tank kills" in Iraq.

But (New York Times reporter David) Sanger, along with every other reporter covering the speech, neglected to mention a crucial fact about United Defense. It is majority-owned and controlled by the Carlyle Group, the Washington, DC, merchant bank in which Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, has a direct financial interest and serves as a trusted adviser. Yet the American public was kept in the dark about this relationship by the newspaper of record, along with the Washington Post, CNN and every other major media outlet. To people who follow these things, the silence was deafening.

"It's not irony anymore; its just shameless and brazen," said Dan Briody, a New York journalist who broke one of the first stories about Bush's connection to Carlyle. His new book, The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group, tells the story of Carlyle's rise from a lowly buyout firm to the nation's tenth largest--and arguably most politically connected--military contractor.

"I've been amazed at some of these arrangements that have taken place, like the Halliburton situation," Briody said, referring to the oil services company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney that won a government contract to stamp out oil fires in Iraq. "This Administration keeps making decisions that benefit themselves and their friends, and I don't see an end to it." The day we spoke, Representative Henry Waxman released a US Army document disclosing that Halliburton's no-bid contract was much broader than initially described, and included oil operations and distribution that could increase the cost of the contract to $7 billion.

Briody's book on Carlyle, published by John Wiley & Sons, is an excellent place to begin understanding the intertwining of business, lobbying and foreign policy that define the twenty-first-century version of the military industrial complex. A key chapter recounts Carlyle's 1997 acquisition of United Defense for the "fire-sale price" of $850 million and documents how Carlyle spent more than $1.2 million on lobbyists, who roamed Capitol Hill on behalf of United Defense and its weapons systems.

Among Carlyle's current holdings that Briody lists in an appendix are Composite Structures, which makes metal parts for the AH-64 Apache Helicopter; Lier Siegler Services, which provides logistics support and maintenance for Army vehicles and Air Force jets; and USIS, which performs background checks on millions of government and corporate employees and stands to make a killing in the booming homeland security business.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030526/shorrock

Thanks for giving a damn, HughBeaumont. I truly appreciate your friendship and all you do to spread the word on these psychotic warmongers. If we can get enough people awake, we have a real good chance of rounding Them up before We the People all get shipped to the exterminator's.

[kineneb]

21. thanks

RIP Col. W., you join others, in the circle of "the righteous who were killed for knowing the truth."

The BFEE make the Mafia look like amateurs.

[Octafish]

56. The wealth transfer scheme

We do live in gangster times.

And the people that benefit the most are:

1. The Ownership Class
2. The War Party

Gee. We're lucky to get the crumbs that fall out of the dog's mouth...

The wealth transfer scheme

EXCERPT...

Geov Parrish - WorkingForChange.com

EXCERPT...

But what (Bush's FY 2006 budget) does do is use the deficit, created in four short years by this administration, as an excuse for targeting all the programs Republicans don't like. The Department of Education -- which Republicans once wanted to abolish -- takes a $4.3 billion hit. Money for health care, $1.7 billion in reduced or eliminated programs. $2.5 billion in agriculture. Half a billion in federal housing expenditures. Even aid to local and state law enforcement gets a $1.5 billion reduction. Regulatory agencies from the EPA to the Forest Service will have to make do with less.

SNIP...

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

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

What would fiscal prudence look like? Consider Iraq, where $9 billion slated for Iraqi reconstruction vanished into thin air, and $20 billion remains unaccounted for by Coalition Provisional Authority audits. Consider the allegations of price gouging and corruption that have been dogging Halliburton and all the other various contractors and subcontractors employed by a steadily privatizing military effort. There has been virtually no call, either from Bush or his Republican allies in Congress, to rein in the wasteful spending there.

And that's just Iraq -- it doesn't take into account all the usual rounds of Pentagon pork, the weapons systems nobody needs, manufactured in the districts of key Congressional allies.

That's where the excess money is going -- not to school kids, welfare queens, or grizzly bears. Or to states and local governments, most of which are facing their own budget crises.

CONTINUED...

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

Thanks for all you do, kinebeb. We may yet see these bedwetting gangsters flood a C-5 full of Depends.

[nam78_two]

22. K&R.nt

[Octafish]

61. The Carlyle Connection: How the Pentagon Learned to Love the Weapon No One Wanted

In business and politics, it's not what you know. It's who you know.

The Carlyle Connection

How the Pentagon Learned to Love the Weapon No One Wanted

by Geoffrey Gray
Village Voice May 1 - 7, 2002

Frank Carlucci never trained much as a salesman. The former CIA spook turned Reagan defense secretary has been working as chairman for the Carlyle Group, the nation's 11th largest military contractor, and for the last five years, he's been championing the the production of 482 Crusader armored vehicles, over $11.2 billion dollars' worth of self-propelled Howitzer firepower.
He might as well have been going door-to-door with vacuum cleaners. Nobody seemed to want the damn things. They were bulky, outdated, expensive. "It looks like it's too heavy; it's not lethal enough," Bush said during a 2000 campaign debate. "There's going to be a lot of programs that aren't going to fit into the strategic plan for a long-term change of our military."

What a difference a war can make.

Late this March, as part of the post-9-11 military buildup, Donald Rumsfeld gave United Defense, Carlyle's subsidiary, the full monty: over $470 million to continue development on the problem-riddled Crusaders, puzzling some military analysts.

"The Crusader has been the GAO's poster child for bad weapons development," says Eric Miller, an analyst who watches defense for the Project on Government Oversight. "Influence is tough to measure, but it's certainly had a friend somewhere."

Make that a very close friend. Two internal Defense Department documents—letters between Carlyle and Rumsfeld—recently made available to the Voice show the intimate relationship between the Bush administration and the Carlyle Group.

"Dear Don," reads the first note, dated February 15, 2001, and signed by Carlucci on Carlyle stationery. "Thanks for the lunch last Friday. It was great seeing you in such good spirits even if you are 'all alone.' "

Rummy, all alone? The Defense Department declined to comment on that one. A spokesman for the Carlyle Group, Chris Ullman, explains that 'all alone' simply means Rumsfeld, fresh in office, felt overwhelmed by the duties of his new job. He invited Carlucci over to the Pentagon for advice—not as a Carlyle chairman, but as a former public servant—along with William Perry, former Clinton defense secretary. The letter, Ullman says, should not have been printed on Carlyle stationary. "It was an oversight."

CONTINUED...

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0218,gray,34384,6.html

[]div]

Thank you for caring, nam78_two. Thanks also for all you do to keep us free.

[Joe Chi Minh]

25. Those principles of the Carlyle Group will have their own "Bohemian Grove"

in Hell. But they'll wish they'd never been born.

At least one of our former Tory ministers - I think it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, responsible for UK losses on Black Wednesday, and a friend of Pinochet, was/is a member.

[Octafish]

62. Government insiders who cashed in their positions by selling out their country.

In the process, they've killed millions and penured the planet.

Hell might be an upgrade from the places they are headed.

Might the Tory you are thinking of be the lowlife John Major, KCabotDullesMarxIII?

Carlyle Changes Its Stripes

By diversifying into a broad range of assets and deals, it aims to flourish long after the buyout boom fizzles

Feb, 12, 2007
Business Week

In the two decades since private equity firms first stormed the business world, they've been called a lot of things, from raiders to barbarians. But only one firm has been tagged in the popular imagination with warmongering, treason, and acting as cold-eyed architects of government conspiracies. The broadsides got to be more than David M. Rubenstein, William E. Conway Jr., and Daniel A. D'Aniello, founders of Washington's Carlyle Group, could take. "It was nauseating," Rubenstein says.

Carlyle, founded 20 years ago in the shadow of Washington's power centers, long went about its business far from the public eye. Its ranks were larded with the politically connected, including former Presidents, Cabinet members, even former British Prime Minister John Major. It used its partners' collective relationships to build a lucrative business buying, transforming, and selling companies--particularly defense companies that did business with governments.

Carlyle might have continued happily in that niche except for the confluence of three events. First there were the terrorist attacks of September 11. In the aftermath, conspiracy theorists seized on Carlyle's huge profits, intense secrecy, and close dealings with wealthy Saudi investors. The scrutiny reached a crescendo in Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which made Carlyle seem like the sort of company image-conscious investors like public pension funds might choose to avoid. The second factor was the tsunami of capital that has been sloshing around the globe for five years, providing almost limitless funding for the kind of dealmaking that is Carlyle's specialty. All that liquidity has brought with it immense opportunity as well as stiff new competition. Finally, there's the succession issue. Carlyle's baby boomer founders can see retirement around the corner. And they badly want the firm, their legacy, to outlast them.

At this make-or-break juncture, Carlyle's founders, billionaires all, decided to refashion their firm radically--to transform it into something more ambitious, more diverse, and more lasting.

Stage I of what some have dubbed the Great Experiment was largely cosmetic. The founders asked members of the bin Laden family to take back their money. They sat down with George H.W. Bush and John Major and discussed, improbable though it might seem, how the two were no longer wanted as senior advisers because they hurt the firm's image. Out went former Reagan Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci as chairman. In came highly regarded former chairman and CEO of IBM (IBM ), Louis V. Gerstner Jr., along with former Securities & Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt, former General Electric (GE ) Vice-Chairman David Calhoun, and former Time Inc. (TWX ) Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine, among others, to underscore Carlyle's commitment to portfolio diversification and upright corporate citizenship. Carlyle also pared back its defense holdings dramatically.

Stage II went much further and, indeed, might come to redefine the very nature of private equity. While other major buyout firms raise a few massive funds that hunt big prey--companies they can take private, rejigger financially, and, eventually, sell off or take public again--Carlyle has spread its money among no fewer than 48 funds around the world. Whereas the other giant firms--Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and Texas Pacific Group--manage just 14, 7, and 6 funds, respectively, according to Thomson Financial, Carlyle launched a mind-boggling 11 in 2005 and 11 more in 2006.

CONTINUED...

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_07/b4021001.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5

Carlyle's Founders: William E. Conway, Jr., Daniel A. D'Aniello, Stephen L. Norris, Greg A. Rosenbaum, and David M. Rubenstein. Norris and Rosenbaum left the firm years ago.

Really appreciate your giving a damn and friendship, KCDM3. Thanks to you bringing up Major, I found the latest on Carlyle Group's successes in Bidness Weak. Just you're name knocks the BFEE on its ass.

[robertpaulsen]

26. K & R! Thanks Octafish, for shining the spotlight on this evil.

:kick:

[Octafish]

63. War Is Swell

There is no other word for what these men do.

It is is evil.

When War is Swell

Bush's Crusades and the Carlyle Group

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

EXCERPT...

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...

Baker and Carlyle enjoy another ace in the hole when it comes to looking out for their Saudi friends. Baker prevailed on Bush Jr. to appoint his former law partner, Bob Jordan, as the administration's ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

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

Thank you for your kind words, robertpaulsen. I also truly appreciate all you do to chronicle and expose what these criminals do -- and have done. Because in no small part to what you have uncovered, we are closer to the day when their evil will be a thing of the past.

[bridgit]

27. Carlucci, now there's a served cold Carlyle fish dish entre...

x(

[Octafish]

66. Ask Carlucci about Patrice LUMUMBA...

Former DUer Wayne reminded me of Frank's connection to a certain assassination. A blast from the past:

"Carlucci" bleeped from HBO version of Lumumba

Ex-CIA official threatened lawsuit
By Joanne Laurier
15 March 2002
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

Home Box Office (HBO), the US cable television network, is currently broadcasting a censored version of Lumumba, the award-winning film about Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of independent Congo, assassinated by imperialist agents in January 1961.

Haitian-born director Raoul Peck’s work fictionally reconstructs Lumumba’s coming to power in 1960 and the intrigues which led to his brutal murder. The film shown on HBO is a version of the French-language original dubbed into English, which bleeps out the name of Frank Carlucci, a future deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and secretary of defense, in the dialogue and masks his name in the credits. At the time of Lumumba’s death, Carlucci was the second secretary at the US embassy in the Congo and, covertly, a CIA agent.

This attempt to keep Carlucci’s role in the Congo from television audiences follows the release of US government documents revealing that President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the CIA to murder Lumumba. Minutes of an August 1960 National Security Council meeting confirm that Eisenhower told CIA chief Allen Dulles to “eliminate” the Congolese leader. The official note taker, Robert H. Johnson, testified to this before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, but no documentary evidence had been previously available to back up his claim.

Carlucci’s lawyers threatened Peck and distribution company Zeitgeist Films with legal action if the name of the former US official was not bleeped out of a scene that shows American Ambassador Clare Timberlake and Carlucci, along with Belgian and Congolese officials, plotting Lumumba’s assassination. Carlucci insisted that only the altered version of the film, with his name missing, could be used for mass market venues, such as television, video and DVD, allowing the original track to remain intact for theater showings. Zeitgeist officials said they were too small and weak financially to fight a case in court.

Carlucci is an immensely wealthy individual, with connections at the highest levels of the US government. Deputy chief of the CIA under Jimmy Carter and secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, Carlucci is now chairman of the Carlyle Group, a private equity investment group with billions of dollars of assets in the defense industry. The company employs prominent ex-officeholders, such as former president George Bush, former British prime minister John Major and former president of the Philippines Fidel Ramos. Carlucci has the closest financial, political and personal ties to the Bush family. Other figures involved in Carlyle Group operations include former secretary of state James Baker, who headed up George W. Bush’s effort to block vote recounts in Florida in 2000 and hijack the presidential election. Carlucci has a long-term political relationship with his former classmate and wrestling buddy from Princeton, the present secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/carl-m15.shtml

Gee. Who knew Congo was so rich in our minerals and stuff?

Thanks for all you do, bridgit. We have a darn good chance of stopping these treasonous turds.

Thanks also for your Friendship!

[siligut]

29. Gotta watch your back.

They wanted to use his reputation and character to clear themselves of suspicion, guess it didn’t occur to their perverse and tainted minds that he wouldn’t become a company man.

"Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited," wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. "He could not shift his mind-set from the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator for businesses." (La Times)

I suspect “the right thing” in the mind of Lt. Col Lisa is what makes money. There are worse things than death, however this noble man’s death makes things easier for the greedy privileged.

[Octafish]

68. Jonah Goldberg’s Gambling Debt: Will Tribune Company Pay It?

Greedy warmongers always search for ways to justify their treason.

If they didn't, they couldn't enjoy the high life.

And so they pay a certain class of person to be their heralds.

Juan Cole put it nicely:

Jonah Goldberg’s Gambling Debt: Will Tribune Company Pay It?

by Jeff Cohen
Published on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

There are many shades of rightwing punditry in our country. Among the shadiest is Jonah Goldberg.

With arrogance seemingly matched only by his ignorance, Goldberg was just being Goldberg when he offered this wager two years ago:

Let’s make a bet. I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now).

SNIP...

The bet was offered near the end of an overheated blogo-debate between Goldberg (at National Review Online) and Dr. Juan Cole, the Middle East scholar from University of Michigan. In proposing the wager to Cole, Goldberg goaded: “Money where your mouth is, doc. One caveat: Because I don’t think it’s right to bet on such serious matters for personal gain, if I win, I’ll donate the money to the USO.”

Cole reacted to the proposed bet with disgust – calling it symbolic of “the neo-imperial American Right. They are making their own fortunes with a wager on the fates of others, whom they are treating like ants.” Wrote Cole: “Here we have a prominent American media star. . .betting on Iraqis as though they are greyhounds in a race.”

Just before Goldberg proposed his bet to Cole, the professor had fumed: “Goldberg is just a dime-a-dozen pundit. Cranky rich people hire sharp-tongued and relatively uninformed young people all the time and put them on the mass media to badmouth the poor, spread bigotry, exalt mindless militarism, promote anti-intellectualism, and ensure that rightwing views come to predominate.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0207-22.htm

Which explains ABCNNBCBSFixedNoiseNutwork and the closeasthis relationship of NYT WaPo Gannett and the rest of the Mighty Whorelitzer Press Corpse.

PS: A most hearty welcome to DU, siligut! Thanks. You GET it.

[siligut]

69. I get it, yes.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the recruitment and indoctrination of articulate and intimidating talking-soldiers has been a detail in the logistics in the war of the posers. Of course, as your OP points out, they are expendable, especially when “malfunctioning”, like Col. Westhusing.

Control of the MSM has been a coup for the RW. The world is too big to know firsthand and our respect for what the squawkbox spews now has more sway, for many, anyway. Commentaries follow debates, re-interpreting, framing and formatting. We are social creatures, we want to belong, groupthink, part of our survival instinct is being used against us now, the irony is too much.

From the phrase finder: THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD - "The written word is more powerful than any physical weapon. The proverb has been traced back to 'Institution of Christian Prince' (1571) and 'Heptameron of Civil Discourses' (1582). 'No more sword to be feared than the learned pen,' was the form of proverb at that time. Robert Burton (1577-1640) said that the 'pen is worse than the sword' (1621), and it was Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-73) who was the first to coin the current form (1839). This adage was first used in the United States in 'Clouded Moon' (1938) by M. Saltmarsh." From "Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings" (1996) by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996).

Thank you for the welcome.

[bobthedrummer]

70. "Reframing Perception-space (P-space): A Quick Overview of A Unifying Concept"

by Col. Michael McKim USAFR (ret)
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc/reframing-p-space.htm

"Reality vs. perception management: the tinfoil controversy" 1-06-2006
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x71919

I think we're on the same page too, siligut. Welcome to DU.

Col. Westhusing's death (and many similar "coincidences") did not go unnoticed by those of US that have some specific knowledge of what the BFEE is about.

[siligut]

74. I've set up a honeypot . . .shhh

The mind has no firewall!?!? Our conscience mind is our firewall and it is being hacked. Critical thinking is no longer cultivated amongst the lesser classes; it only gets in the way of their utility/obedience/willingness to sacrifice their lives so their betters can show their faces at the club.

Thank you for the welcome and the links <---have some reading to do now.

[Octafish]

84. For today's spy, the entire Internet is one big honeypot.

TIA is just the tip of their ECHELON, CARNIVORE and whatever else these sons of J Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles have conceived. Everything you do. Everywhere you go. Everyone you know.

The Spy

I'm a spy in the house of love
I know the dream, that you're dreamin' of
I know the word that you long to hear
I know your deepest, secret fear

I'm a spy in the house of love
I know the dream, that you're dreamin' of
I know the word that you long to hear
I know your deepest, secret fear

I know everything
Everything you do
Everywhere you go
Everyone you know

-- The Doors

What monsters?

[siligut]

90. Tearing the association apart, for my sanity.

Jim Morrison and the MFs that want to control the world to compensate for their soulessness don't belong together in my head, my last refuge, it seems. I am keeping the song and putting the spies out with the trash. I deal with the concept of our complete lack of privacy with amusement, in fact SPY VS SPY, the characters from MAD magazine, they are the image I chose to see with my minds eye, when the subject comes up. They obviously take themselves too seriously, I won't.

[donkeyotay]

71. Translation time

"Despite their alleged intelligence, the Rightwing seems unable or unwilling to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector, but that profit motive may be incompatible with the notion of a nation's just defense, the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, or that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator. If we let the military start setting defense policy based on profit, who knows what ethical chasm we might fall into." (LaLa Times)

[siligut]

73. Ethical Chasm! Oh nooooooooooooooooooooooooo

She is just flabbergasted that someone couldn’t, wouldn’t sell-out. “Poor Col. Westhusing, he just hung onto values that didn’t get him anywhere now; did they? Tsk, silly man; justice, reality, beauty, honor, they have no meaning now, this is a new day. ”

[Kurovski]

30. Put these fuckers in prison, America! they ain't your friends.

America, you don't "want to have a beer" with these folks and they don't care if you live or die.

Americans keeps complaining about folks who are "soft on crime"?
Then demand that we get the BFEE tossed in the can, goddammit.

[Octafish]

75. Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq

Gosh. There are a lot of them. Satanic them.

Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq

Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01

Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.

The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.

Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.

"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193.html

Oh well. Build more prisons, if we have too.

[deutsey]

31. Interesting how so many people who get too close and too critical

end up killing themselves, isn't it?

:evilfrown:

[Octafish]

76. Unbelievable, were it not true. Remember John J. Kokal?

Here are a few people who investigated the Bush Family Evil Empire, one of the last things they did in this life:

Gary Webb hurt the BFEE’s feelings by tying the CIA's Iran-Contra gang to the crack cocaine epidemic in America's major metropolitan areas. To the Bush gang, telling the truth made Webb an enemy.

Daniel “Danny” Casolaro — Researched BCCI and the Inslaw/PROMIS Affair, found that George HW Bush had ties going around the world and back through Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate, the October Surprise, Watergate, Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs and Dallas. A “suicide.”

Abbie Hoffman — Yippie of the 60s turned into an investigative reporter in the 80s, researched and wrote about “October Surprise” allegations involving George HW Bush, Bill Casey and Robert Gates doing a deal with the Ayatollah Khomeini to delay the release of the USA’s Iran embassy hostages in 1980. The pretty good overview appeared in Playboy in 1992. A “suicide.”

Steve Kangas — Researcher and writer who started “Liberal Resurgent” web site dedicated to naming names like Richard Mellon Scaife and telling the truth about what was happening to America. Wrote the seminal “The Origins of the Overclass” which detailed the role of the CIA in preserving the privileged positions of the nation’s wealthiest individuals and corporations. A “suicide.”

Jim Hatfield — Researcher and writer who penned “Fortunate Son,” an unauthorized biography of George W Bush that included allegations of cocaine use, planted by Karl Rove, who knew that Hatfield, an ex-con would be discredited. The last thing Hatfield wrote “Why Would Osama Want to Kill His Ex-Business Partner?” that detailed bin Laden threatening to crash a plane loaded with explosives into the G-8 summit in Genoa Italy in July 2001. Bush slept offshore aboard a US warship and the meeting was guarded by SAMs. A “suicide.”

Mark Lombardi — Artist and researcher who developed “Global Networks” or “Social Network Diagrams” which illustrated and chronicled the relationships between many of our day’s shadiest characters, institutions and treasons. One of his works graphically charted Osama bin Laden, Sheik Salim bin Laden, James R Bath, Texas Gov George W Bush and HARKEN Energy. A “suicide.”

Cliff Baxter — was the Number Two guy at ENRON. An Air Force Academy graduate, Baxter had told friends he was going to cooperate with investigators. Guess that would’ve really hurt Ken Lay, huh? Well, he would’ve really hurt someone else even more: George Walker Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush. After he passed out from an overdose, a “suicide” by gunshot.

Last I heard, Tariq Aziz was digging his own latrine in the midday August sun of Iraq.

Was Bolton behind death of State Department official?

WM The Truthseeker
First reported on November 20, 2003, updated April 20, 2005

In a case eerily reminiscent of the death of British Ministry of Defense bio-weapons expert, Dr. David Kelly, an official of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Near East and South Asian division (INR/NESA), John J. Kokal, 58, was found dead in the late afternoon of November 7, 2003.

Police indicated he may have jumped from the roof of the State Department. Kokal's body was found at the bottom of a 20-foot window well, eight floors below the roof of the State Department headquarters, near the 23rd and D Street location. Kokal's death was briefly mentioned in a FOX News website story on November 8 but has been virtually overlooked by the major media. In light of recent revelations concerning UN ambassador nominee John Bolton's bizarre and physically abusive behavior, a re-examination of the Kokal death is in order.

Kokal's INR bureau was at the forefront of confronting claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington police have not ruled out homicide as the cause of his death. Kokal was not wearing either a jacket or shoes when his body was found. He lived with his wife in Arlington, Virginia.

However, a colleague of Kokal's told this writer that the Iraq analyst was despondent over "problems" with his security clearance. Kokal reportedly climbed out of a window and threw himself off in such a manner so that he would "land on his head." At the time Kokal fell from either the roof or a window, his wife Pamela, a public affairs specialist in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, was waiting for him in the parking garage. Mrs. Kokal had previously worked in Consular Affairs where she was involved in the stricter vetting of visa applicants from mainly Muslim countries after the Sept. 11 attacks.

State Department officials dispute official department communiqués that said Kokal was not an analyst at INR. People who know Kokal told the French publication Geopolitique that Kokal was involved in the analysis of intelligence about Iraq prior to and during the war against Saddam Hussein. According to State Department sources, Kokal briefed Secretary of State Colin Powell at least once a week on Iraq, adding that Kokal was a skeptic on the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=3029

PS: Thank you for giving a damn, Dwayne. Your Friendship means the world to me.

[ftr23532]

33. K&R!

:kick:& :thumbsup:

[Octafish]

77. Why the US is Not Leaving Iraq: The Profits of Escalation

US special envoy Donald Rumsfeld is mighty glad to meet
a then-healthy Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.

The Profits of Escalation

Why the US is Not Leaving Iraq

By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH
CounterPunch January 10, 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 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. The fact 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.

A time-honored proverb maintains that wars abroad are often continuations of wars at home. Accordingly, recent US wars abroad seem to be largely reflections of domestic fights over national resources, or public finance: opponents of social spending are using the escalating Pentagon budget (in combination with drastic tax cuts for the wealthy) as a cynical and roundabout way of redistributing national income in favor of the wealthy. As this combination of increasing military spending and decreasing tax liabilities of the wealthy creates wide gaps in the Federal budget, it then justifies the slashing of non-military public spending-a subtle and insidious policy of reversing the New Deal reforms, a policy that, incidentally, started under President Ronald Reagan.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/hossein01112007.html

Thanks for the kick, ftr23532. Really appreciate your caring and Friendship!

[provis99]

34. my gut feeling is that this guy was murdered by the "civilian contractors"

who are in my opinion nothing but a bunch of bloodthirsty, Soldier-of-Fortune reading mercenaries and hitmen for hire. DynCorp, the worst of them, make Colonel Callan of the 1970s look like a peace-loving hippie. Lets get American soldiers out of Iraq and abandon these mercenary corporations to their fate from the angry Iraqi population.

[Octafish]

78. The US says Suicide by Pistol! A Carlyle Insider says 'Murder!'

Others have been thinking along those lines:

The US says Suicide by Pistol!
A Carlyle Insider says Murder!

deep throat | 08.18.05 - 10:50 am | #

Anonymous said...

also, there were a pair of surgical gloves in his room on a table according to the forensic report, the gun was at his feet, the door was locked when the contractor i.e., manager first came there and unlocked when he went back in after seeing Ted on the floor, this person, also unchambered the gun and threw it on the bed (by the way, this contractor), wasn't checked for residue or interrogated, there was an argument reported in Ted's trailer (by the person living next door) before his time of death and additional coverup. USIS? Contractors? ... was in the fox's den.

Ted's note had three pages missing and was about these major issues not him/suicide and were torn from a notebook on his bed.,.... you tell me. I know......

SOURCE:

http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=4177

For his family and our country, I wish we could change the past. For it would have been great to have had Col. Westhusing testify about all the missing money and so on in Congress this week. We would be much closer to knowing what happened to the missing billions, identifying the incompetent, and arresting the traitors.

If somehow the past could be undone, many of today's majority against the war who then were gung-ho would never have allowed this illegal and immoral war to ever have started.

PS: A hearty welcome to DU, provis99! Thank you for giving a damn.

[wildbilln864]

36. and kicked again!

Wake the fuck up America!
:wtf:

[Octafish]

79. Spoils of War: Oil, the U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area and the Bush Agenda

It's more than just oil. Smirko's after control of the world's economy.

Spoils of War

Oil, the U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area and the Bush Agenda

By Antonia Juhasz
In These Times
Features > January 15, 2007

Remember oil? That thing we didn’t go to war in Iraq for? Now with his war under attack, even President George W. Bush has gone public, telling reporters last August, “(a) failed Iraq … would give the terrorists and extremists an additional tool besides safe haven, and that is revenues from oil sales.” Of course, Bush not only wants to keep oil out of his enemies’ hands, he also wants to put it into the hands of his friends.

The President’s concern over Iraq’s oil is shared by the Iraq Study Group, which on December 6 released its much-anticipated report. While the mainstream press focused on the report’s criticism of Bush’s handling of the war and the report’s call for (potential) removal of (most) U.S. troops (maybe) by 2008, ignored was the report’s focus on Iraq’s oil. Page 1, chapter 1 laid out in no uncertain terms Iraq’s importance to the Middle East, the United States and the world with this reminder: “It has the world’s second-largest known oil reserves.” The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what should be done to secure those reserves.

Guaranteeing access to Iraq’s oil, however isn’t the whole story. Despite the lives lost and the utter ruin that the war has brought, the overarching economic agenda that the administration is successfully pursuing in the Middle East might be the most enduring legacy of the war—and the most ignored.

Just two months after declaring “mission accomplished” in Iraq, Bush announced his plans for a U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area to spread the economic invasion well-underway in Iraq to the rest of the region by 2013. Negotiations have progressed rapidly as countries seek to prove that they are with the United States, not against it.

The Bush Agenda

Within days of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick announced that the Bush administration would be “countering terror with trade.” Bush reiterated that pledge four years later when he told the United Nations, “By expanding trade, we spread hope and opportunity to the corners of the world, and we strike a blow against the terrorists. Our agenda for freer trade is part of our agenda for a freer world.” In the case of the March 2003 invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq, these “free trade”—or corporate globalization—policies have been applied in tandem with America’s military forces.

CONTINUED...

http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/2979/

Thank you for all you do, wildbilln864. Really appreciate your Friendship, too.

[wildbilln864]

80. Thanks Octafish, and here's...

another kick 4 exposure!

Impeach!
Indict!
Convict the Bush/PNAC cabal!

[sce56]

38. Real Soldiers Die due to Wannabe Bush Family Fake Patriots Greed PERIOD!

http://web.archive.org/web/20030602211200/

October 17, 2006,Will be remembered as the Enabling day of the 21st Century!
"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures..."
~Adolf Hitler, March 23, 1933, before the German Parliament (Reichstag) as he urged them to pass his "Enabling Act"

Got Fascism Yet?


http://www.georgewalkerbush.net/bush-nazilinkconfirmed.htm



Fascism Accomplished!

[Octafish]

82. Roll Call. Daylight Again.

Something that we can never forget, from Mark Grmisley's "Blog Them Out of The Stone Age"...

Roll Call / Daylight Again

"Roll Call" by MAJ Robert Bateman

We move around a lot in the military, as individuals and collectively. This presents a challenge, because with so many moving parts it is difficult to maintain an account. This is why we conduct roll calls. These are run by our Non-commissioned officers. Normally officers stand beyond the ranks, but under some circumstances they will stand in the ranks for accountability purposes. The command in which I serve has elements of all four services.

“Sergeant Stevens”

“Here Master Chief!”

“Staff Sergeant Michaels”

“Present Master Chief!”

“Chief’s voice is booming, though he has not raised his voice. Even restrained it carries, as befits his six-foot three-inches and all-Navy frame. Traditionally the responses are returned at a slightly louder volume. I don’t know why, that’s just how we do it.

“Lieutenant Colonel Hale”

“Here Master Chief!”

“Colonel Westhusing.”

No response.

CONTINUED...

http://warhistorian.org/wordpress/?p=219

Thank you for understanding, sce56. And I understand what you mean about these un-American fascist bastards who use the finest men and women for their own gain. Americans are not dumb, more and more see what the Bushes and their cronies have done. And soon, may we all see their treason exposed and punished.

[wildbilln864]

83. kicked damnit!

:hi:

[oasis]

41. Col. Westhusing, I salute you.k&r

:patriot:

[Octafish]

85. Wars with No Logic

What one of Col. Westhusing's cousins wrote, in response to a writer who thought the family wanted all talk of the specifics surrounding Colonel's passing be respeced with silence:

It so happens within “your boundaries” I am a relative of Teds and I myself personally appreciate “all comments.”

In all due respects come short of asking his mother or mine directly *mine just got back from the funeral* …at least not asking her yet, as in today…. I myself am trying to find out answers as to what really happened.

I am not so surprised and yet it baffles my intelligent on the lack of information this US administration gives-out or releases concerning anything they do.

Releases is the word …the secrets of this war and the politics are abounding, the truths are mired in FOIA court proceedings and plastered with denial of any wrongdoings whether it is bad information (WMD) or Torture or the numbers deaths and why thousands of Humans are dieing

Was it an accident? There is pure danger as Anonymous mentioned everywhere, yet that wasn’t what I think caused his death.

Motherload you mention”accusations that I had maligned Col. Westhusing's reputation” seeking the truth is admirable and we all can only sort through what we believe are true facts and come to a hypothesis as Robert clarified. In all the press I have been searching, it is here in these blogs that I think the truth is closest to honest answer that I am searching for. Thank you all.

In a letter my mother sent to me over a month ago, regarding Ted it mentioned that he was frustrated with all the distrust and the lying and killing by the contractors and also by the Iraqi police amongst each other and in the Police cases they were suppose to be protecting people, he felt it was insolvable. He had asked for prayers, saying they were “really needed now” the letter mentions that he was fed up with the Army and was getting out?

I read this and then put more facts together …one bullet, non combat, closed casket, no info from military to the public and it seems like the worst may of happened.

I too am hypothesizing and looking to understand what happened to my cousin while in Iraq. I haven’t seen him in 30 years and now it’s too late. From some of his own writings, and others about him, he seemed like a compassionate man.
I wonder if the ugliness of this war is a message in his passing away that the world can take heed to.

The very reasons Ted may have taken his life might be the words we need to listen to when great men scream for help in the battlefields of Wars with no Logic

CONTINUED...

http://nomoreapples.blogspot.com/2005/06/on-col-westhusings-death.html#c111934276110353955

Thanks, oasis. We owe our freedom to you, Col. Westhusing and all who've served our great nation.

[SpiralHawk]

47. R.I.P. Colonel. Another American patriot falls to the republicon crony borg

I blame the republicon crony war-profiteering borg
for the death of this patriot.

republicons praise and honor a clown who deserted the Texas Air National Guard,
a VP with Five Military Deferments
and media clowns who never served the US for one day:
Rush "Anal Cyst" Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity.

republicons have no honor.

[Octafish]

86. Hail to the Robber Baron?

Hard work at Harvard for the AWOL coward of Crawford.



From the brave professor who pegged the little turd from Crawford, way back when:

Hail to the Robber Baron?

Published On Wednesday, April 06, 2005 12:00 AM
By YOSHI TSURUMI

Thirty years ago, President Bush was my student at Harvard Business School. In my class, he called former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, a “socialist” and spoke against Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal innovations. He refused to understand that capitalism becomes corrupt without democratic civic values and ethical restraints.

In those days, Bush belonged to a minority of MBA students who were seriously disconnected from taking the moral and social responsibility for their actions. Today, he would fit in comfortably with an overwhelming majority of business students and teachers whose role models are celebrated captains of piracy. Since the 1980s, as neo-conservatives have captured the Republican Party, America’s business education has also increasingly become contaminated by the robber baron culture of the pre-Great Depression era.

Bush is the first president of the United States with a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA). Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America’s business education. To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today’s business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush’s tax cuts, over 80 of America’s most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children.

SNIP...

To justify the robber baron culture, America’s business educators and economists falsely cite their demigod of laissez-faire market economics, Adam Smith. Little do they know that Adam Smith in fact scathingly castigated Bush’s type of government: business collusion and unfair taxes, Wal-Mart’s exploitations of labor and communities, and robber barons’ hubris. Nowhere in his 900-page book, The Wealth of Nations, does Smith even imply that those who knowingly harm others and society in their pursuit of personal greed also benefit their society. He rejects the notion that a corporation exists to make money without ethical constraints.

SOURCE:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=506836

Thanks for all you do, SpiralHawk! Very much appreciate your Friendship, too.

[oasis]

48. kick

[Octafish]

87. Who ripped out three pages from Col. Westhusing's notebook?

I'd like to know what they said.
I'd like to know who took them out of the notebook.
I'd like to know why they were found under the bed at the crime scene.
I'd like to know who the contractor was who moved the weapon and other items there.

The US says Suicide by Pistol!
A Carlyle Insider says Murder!
deep throat | 08.18.05 - 10:50 am | #

Anonymous said...
also, there were a pair of surgical gloves in his room on a table according to the forensic report, the gun was at his feet, the door was locked when the contractor i.e., manager first came there and unlocked when he went back in after seeing Ted on the floor, this person, also unchambered the gun and threw it on the bed (by the way, this contractor), wasn't checked for residue or interrogated, there was an argument reported in Ted's trailer (by the person living next door) before his time of death and additional coverup. USIS? Contractors? ... was in the fox's den.

Ted's note had three pages missing and was about these major issues not him/suicide and were torn from a notebook on his bed.,.... you tell me. I know......

SOURCE:

http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=4177

I'd like to know why this sounds so familiar, like what happened to Cliff Baxter, the guy who knew too much about ENRON.

The strange and convenient death of J. Clifford Baxter—Enron executive found shot to death

By Patrick Martin
28 January 2002

Without anything that can be called a serious investigation, local authorities in a wealthy Houston suburb have whitewashed the death of former Enron vice chairman J. Clifford Baxter, calling it a suicide. Baxter, 43, was found shot to death in his Mercedes Benz in the early hours of Friday morning, January 25, near his home in Sugar Land.

Baxter’s body was discovered inside his Mercedes Benz, which was parked in a turnaround on a street near his home. Officials in Sugar Land moved swiftly to label Baxter’s death a suicide. Local Justice of the Peace Jim Richard initially declared that Baxter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and no further inquiry was required. But within hours he reversed himself, citing the intense public interest in the death, and ordered an autopsy.

Harris County Medical Examiner Joye Carter conducted the autopsy and found the cause of death to be suicide by a “penetrating gunshot to the head.” The weapon was a .38 caliber revolver which was found in Baxter’s car, next to his body.

Neither the perfunctory official probe nor the media coverage has addressed the obvious suspicions aroused by the death of a critically important witness in the investigation into the criminal activities at Enron, the biggest corporate fraud in American history. Baxter quit as vice chairman of the company last May, after reportedly come into conflict with other top executives over the phony accounting gimmicks used to plunder billions of dollars.

The most disturbing account of Baxter’s last days comes from a former business associate who spoke to the New York Times but was not identified by the newspaper. This person spoke with the former Enron vice chairman two days before his death and congratulated him “for being named among those people who complained about Enron.”

According to the Times account, the unnamed associate added that Baxter “was talking about perhaps needing a bodyguard, though I’m not sure where that idea came from.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jan2002/enro-j28.shtml

Sink the BFEE.

[wildbilln864]

49. Here's a...

kick for more exposure! Wake the hell up America!
:wtf:

[Octafish]

88. The 'Real' New Middle East has lots of 'room' for Carlyle types...

War is Swell for Big Bidness and those with Big Bucks:

The real ‘new Middle East’

By Afshin Molavi, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
Published: 08/24/2006 12:00 AM (UAE)

Last month, as images of war and carnage in Lebanon filled Arab airwaves, more than 10 million Saudis joined together for a common goal. A massive political protest? No. A petition calling for an end to the fighting? Not that either. A boycott of American goods? No. So, what did 10 million Saudis more than half the adult population do? They bought stock.

SNIP...

It goes on. As the headlines screamed crisis, the business pages told another story. The transport company Aramex, the first Arab firm to go public on the Nasdaq Stock Market, announced a 73 per cent rise in second-quarter earnings. Bahrain-based Gulf Finance House, a leading Islamic finance bank with global investments, announced an 87 per cent increase in second-quarter profit. The billionaire Saudi businessman Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, who owns nearly 10 per cent of Citigroup, publicly criticised management, sending tremors through the company. And the Middle East construction boom mostly centred in the oil-rich Arab states of the Arabian Gulf surpassed the $1 trillion mark.

When US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the Lebanon war was a sign of the "birth pangs of a new Middle East", she was both dramatically wrong and partially right. A "new Middle East'' is indeed being born, but it has little to do with Lebanon or President Bush's democracy agenda.

The "new Middle East'' is forming in the boardrooms of new and innovative businesses, in assertive private sectors demanding reform, in booming equity markets, cash-rich banks, state-owned investment houses and individual investors with global outlooks, and in a new generation of entrepreneurs and businessmen (and women) creating real companies with real underlying values.

The folks at the Carlyle Group see this. Last week, as "Middle East crisis'' graphics flickered on our TV screens, they announced a $1.3 billion fund for investment in the region. In the past, Carlyle principally saw the Middle East as a source of funds for investments elsewhere. This time it sees the Middle East as an investment target. Carlyle is not alone. The big investment banks Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers are increasing their presence in the region, and western private equity and hedge fund money is circling.

CONTINUED...

http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/08/24/10062215.html

Really appreciate you giving a damn, wildbilln864. I'd bet you're a veteran of the armed forces, too. If so, thank you for your service. If not, thanks for being a patriot when it comes to guarding and spreading the Truth.

[Initech]

52. There's something that definitely rings false about this death.

Just like Pat Tillman's. I wonder if he was in fact murdered. If the Army's top ethics professor was still alive, the things he could have exposed to the world would have been very dangerous for the war profiteers. I'm sure he was silenced.

[Karenina]

53. Sounds more like a siren to me...

;-)

[PreacherCasey]

55. Thank you so much for these posts. Very informative and research provoking. eom

[Octafish]

89. More food for thought...

Thank you for the kind words, PreacherCasey. You understand the reason I do this. If you check out some of the following, you'll see how my OPs are magnets that draw other interesting resources together. The end result is information that, it is my sincere hope, help form the indictments of a certain class of traitor who've led America to near-ruin.

May the following make for fat ideas in everyone who cares about the future...


Know your BFEE Log


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

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2810465&mesg_id=2810465

Know your BFEE: The Fellowship ‘Preys’ for America

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


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

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


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

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


Know your BFEE: Los Amigos de Bush

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


Know your BFEE: Lies Are the Currency of Their Realm

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


Know your BFEE: Cheney & Halliburton Sold Iran Nuke Technology

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


Know your BFEE: The Stench of Moussaoui Permeates the Octopus

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


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

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


Know your BFEE: Alito is just another word for Mussolini

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


What the heck, this belongs here, too:

BFEE Turd Daniel Pipes tied to DANISH CARTOONS

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


Know your BFEE: Like a NAZI

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


Know your BFEE: The China-Bush Axis

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


Know your BFEE: The Secret Government

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


Know your BFEE: Reinhard Gehlen

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


Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush Armed Saddam

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


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

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


Know your BFEE: Nixon Threatened to Nuke Vietnam

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


Know your BFEE: Corrupt Craftsmen Hoover and Dulles

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


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

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


Know your BFEE: Hitler’s Bankers Shaped Vietnam War

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


Know your BFEE: Merchants of Death

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


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

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


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

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


Know your BFEE: Bush Lied America into War

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


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

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


Know your BFEE: War Profiteers

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


Know your BFEE: Dead Men Tell No Tales

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


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

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


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

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


Know your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

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


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

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


Know your BFEE: The Barreling Bushes

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


Know your BFEE: A Crime Line of Treason

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


Know your BFEE: How Smirko Got Rich

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


Know your BFEE: Oliver North, Drug Dealer

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


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

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



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

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

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


Vietnam and Iraq Wars Started by Same People

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


JFK Would NEVER Have Fallen for Phony INTEL!

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


Plame Affair makes clear: USA is run by TRAITORS.

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


BFEE Is More than Capable of Bombing Their Own Countrymen

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

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


A Short History of Conspiracy Theory

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


And for all DUers at work shining light on the BFEE:



Taming of Evil
2000, by Renata Pabulinkas
oil on canvas, 58 x 62-inches

[Megahurtz]

57. No Wonder They Won't $End$ $The$ $War$!

:mad:

[lonestarnot]

58. Endless war is what these fuckers are all about.

[Octafish]

92. Bush Military Budget Highest Since WWII

Warmonkey is the poster child for George Orwell's "1984."

Bush Military Budget Highest Since WWII

by William D. Hartung
Published on Saturday, February 10, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

Even by Bush administration standards, the military spending proposal for Fiscal Year 2008 - the budget year beginning on October 1, 2007 -- is enormous. The request for the "regular" military budget, which includes Pentagon spending plus work on nuclear warheads and naval reactors at the Department of Energy, was $499 billion. This represents a $46 billion increase from the current budget year.

Figures for the regular military budget exclude the costs of the current wars that the United States is engaged in. A proposed supplemental appropriation to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq of $141.7 billion brings proposed military spending for FY 2008 to $647.2 billion, the highest level of military spending since the end of World War II - higher than Vietnam, higher than Korea, higher than the peak of the Reagan buildup. There will also be a proposed supplemental of $93.4 billion added to this year's (FY 2007) budget, bringing the total for the year to $622.4 billion.

This spending spree comes at a time when America's main enemy is not a rival superpower like the Soviet Union, but a network of terrorist groups armed primarily with explosives, shoulder-fired missiles, and AK-47s. And even if one accepts the "need" to fight a war like the current US occupation of Iraq, there are tens of billions of dollars in the administration's budget proposal that will never be used in that conflict. Requests for systems like the F-22 fighter ($4.6 billion), the V-22 Osprey ($2.6 billion), the CVN-21 aircraft carrier ($3.1 billion), the SSN-774 Virginia attack submarine ($2.7 billion), the Trident D-5 Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile ($1.2 billion), and Ballistic Missile Defense ($10.8 billion) are just a few examples of weapons that are unnecessary, unworkable, or both.

What do all these figures mean? How can the average person make sense of these billions and billions and billions of dollars? Some comparisons may be helpful.

Proposed U.S. military spending for FY 2008 is larger than military spending by all of the other nations in the world combined.

At $141.7 billion, this year's proposed spending on the Iraq war is larger than the military budgets of China and Russia combined. Total U.S. military spending for FY2008 is roughly ten times the military budget of the second largest military spending country in the world, China.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0210-26.htm

Thanks for giving a damn, Megahurtz and lonestarnot. Thanks also for all you do to spread light about these ... these... I'd call them cockroaches, but that would be an insult to cockroaches.

[oasis]

59. BFEE: Vampires for the 21st century .(eom)

[me b zola]

60. Of all of your informative, jaw-dropping posts...

...this is the one that outrages--and saddens me--the most.

There are no words for me to convey just how much I respect your work, Octafish. Thank you.

[ftr23532]

64. This reminds me of court case involving the Custer Battles whistleblowers trying to sue the CPA ...

Here's a http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33669-2005Feb17?language=printer">WaPo story on the courts considering the claims made by Custer Battles owners that they couldn't be sued in the US because the CPA wasn't an arm of the US government but instead an ambiguously-defined international authority. And here's http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/18/AR2006081801171.html?sub=AR">a follow up article after the ruling. Guess which way the court ruled :eyes:

[bobthedrummer]

72. White House Iraq Group/WHIG

http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/10/timeline_activi.php

WHIG
B.Gellman & W. Pincus
www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0810-01.htm

Baghdad Embassy Bonanza
D. Phinney
http://www.warprofiteers.com/article.php?id=13258

Know your BFEE: War Profiteers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3493251

Stephen A. Cambone
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stephen_A._Cambone

fair use cited

[wildbilln864]

81. kick

:hi:

[Mr Rabble]

91. Great post. Again. Thank you!

[Rex]

93. Ah yes, the BFEEs flagship company - The Carlyle Group.

Folks, this ain't no penny ante company. It is a conglomerate of over 500 other companies! Massive and more powerful than any other busniess in America (cept for maybe Exxon and Microsoft) today.

Here is a brief listing of the 'companies' Carlyle controls;

4Gas
Actelis Networks, Inc.
Acufocus, Inc.
Adesso Systems, Inc.
Aerostructures Corporation, The
Alcala
Align Technology, Inc.
Ambroise
AMC Entertainment, Inc.
American Achievement Corporation
Andritz AG
Anyday.com
Apama, Ltd.
Appfluent Technology, Inc.
Aprovia
Apteka Holding ZAO
Archetype Solutions, Inc.
Ares Portfolio
Asahi Security Co., Ltd.
AsiaEC.com, Ltd.
ATL - Amperex Technology Limited
AuthenTec, Inc.
Aviall Services, Inc.
Avio SpA
Awaken Limited
AxleTech International Holdings, Inc.
AZ Electronic Materials
Banque de France
Belden & Blake Corporation
Beru AG
BFinance
Blackboard, Inc.
Boto International
Boulogne
Bredbandsbolaget AB
Britax Childcare Holdings Limited
Bryggen Waterfront
Buckeye Partners, L.P.
CAMECA
Canesta, Inc.
Caribbean Investment Holdings Limited
Carillon
Casema BV
CDM Resource Management Ltd.
Cellutions, Inc.
Century Tower
Cheapside
China Pacific Life Insurance Co., Ltd.
China Real Estate Network
Chiusa
Claris Lifesciences Limited
Coastal Carolina Clean Power LLC
Cobalt International Energy, L.P.
Colin Medical Technology Corporation
Com Hem
Comark Building Systems, Inc.
Combined Systems, Inc.
Command Information, Inc.
Communications & Power Industries, Inc.
Composite Structures
Compusearch Software Systems
ConnectiCare Holdings, Inc.
CPU Technology, Inc.
Credit Orienwise Group
Ctrip.com International, Ltd.
Cube Optics AG
Cumbernauld Retail Park
Custom Alloy

That is just the ABC listing! To bad no one has the BALLS in Congress to address the criminal activity of the BFEE. Not that I blame them, I would be scared of The Carlyle Group too! BUT! Someone has to stop these assholes before their attack on Iran!

There will be no coming back to a normal world after they attack Iran.