WarMachine 101 ~

Ill: Wizard of Whimsy
http://home.comcast.net/~wizardofwhimsy/index.html

War by and for Cabalists in the Military-Industrial Complex ~ A Nation's Worst Fears Realized

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address, 1961

* * *

Bushco Oil and Terra Wars, 2002 : In return for "access" ~ to Pentagon poobahs, introductions in Iraq and classified information ~ retired Generals and lobbyists with billions of dollars in war business interests sold themselves, the American media, and us down the river in a calculated effort to convince America the war was going well ~

"A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

"It was them saying, 'We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,' Robert S. Bevelcqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox news analyst, said.

" Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. 'This was a coherent, active policy,' he said. As conditions in Iraq deteriorated [he said] he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

"Night and day,' Mr. Allard said, 'I felt we'd been hosed."

"...The Administration has demonstrated that there is a price for sustained criticism, some analysts said...' you'll lose all access."

How likely, on the face of it, would you think it'd be that George W. and "the Dick" Cheney, both of whom spent the Vietnam War either AWOL or hiding in school behind the wife's skirts, would live to be the architects of a brave new world order whereby war is fought for the most callow and self-serving purposes, largely by propaganda and a newly roaring military-industrial complex? Could a great nation and its legendary "free press" be so easily co-opted and fooled so blatantly? Almost 8 years into it, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

Though you wouldn't know it by the mainstream media silence otherwise, The New York Times on Sunday carried what is, to your Demon, a bombshell 17-page article, the result of its suit against Bushco's DOD to get information regarding Bushco's successful progaganda ploy to convince Americans that its grand and glorious war in the Middle East is going as planned, despite all the evidence on the ground to the contrary.

There's a reason for that ~ the American media who've been complicit in hyping the war even though it hasn't gone well ~ CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN as well as ABC ~ have all been hoodwinked in an elaborate ruse by Bushco to wage a disinformation campaign and distort news by deliberately planted information through Generals and lobbyists with very profitable business interests in the Middle Eastern war machine. Bushco successfully planted these a***holes as "media analysts" to keep us "on message," which was, predictably, the war, despite some setbacks, is going well.

It's a nightmare of stunning proportions, and includes the run-up to the invasion, even though Bushco knew there wasn't any good evidence for invading Iraq. Even worse, the aforementioned networks were complicit in that they didn't look very closely into the hired guns' business interests, claiming now that it was up to the hired guns to voluntarily disclose them.

One ~ General Marks, who was "working intensively on a 4.6 billion contract to provide thousands of translators to United States forces in Iraq" and was even "made president of the McNeil spin-off that won [a] huge contract in Iraq" ~ at the same time as he was serving as a paid consultant for CNN~ told the New York Times that he had "zero challenge separating myself from a business interest" and that it did not affect his commentary on the war.

"CNN said it had no idea until July 2007, when it reviewed his most recent disclosure made several months earlier, and finally made inquiries about his new job." As a result, CNN ended the relationship ~ but not, your Demon posits, before the damage was done.

Fox, of course, the only source of "fair and balanced coverage" in the nation, refused to participate or comment on the article, and promptly returned to its obsessive gossipy coverage of the radical Mormon cult in Texas and examination of Britney Spears' profound cultural significance.

Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican, is surely spinning in his grave. Your Demon is willing to bet that he's none too pleased that a pair of pansy cowards like Bush and Cheney would be responsible for such a debacle. But not, I suspect, at all surprised.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html

Your Demon can't wait to read history's judgement of this abysmal episode of American history (seriously!) How much more evidence do we need that Bushco is a criminal enterprise, for cryin' out loud? Impeach them NOW!

5 Years In Iraq ~ And A Civics Lesson for Dick

Apologies, kittens, but your Demon didn't have time this past week to appropriately remark the Anniversary of the Grand and Glorious War in Iraq, nor to lobby for the commendable idea of expanding it to Iran. Why not bring a campaign that's met with so much success to other nations we really dislike since we can't control them anymore (and happen to be sitting on oil reserves that should be ours, anyway?)

Lessee: bonuses and dividends so far: the normalization of lying, spying and torture abroad and at home; the suspension of habeus corpus; giving Faux News Network and hate-spew radio a reason to exist and; the complete suspension of international and domestic law! Those things are quite an achievement in a democratic democracy! *wink, wink*

To all of which, Dick Cheney sez, rightfully: SO?

If we were stupid enough to surrender all that power to them on such feeble and unexamined pretexts, don't we deserve what we get? And all the rest of the world, too ~ SO?

Wouldn't there be rioting in the streets if such things had really happened? Wouldn't they have been impeached by now?

A former bigwig GOP supporter has the nerve to upbraid the excellent Mr. Dick and presume to give him a civics lesson:

"For at least six years, as I've become increasingly frustrated by the Bush administration's repeated betrayal of constitutional -- and conservative -- principles, I have defended Vice President Cheney, a man I've known for decades and with whom I served and made common cause in Congress. No longer.

"I do not blame Dick Cheney for George W. Bush's transgressions; the president needs no prompting to wrap himself in the cloak of a modern-day king. Nor do I believe that the vice president so enthusiastically supports the Iraq war out of a loyalty to the oil industry that his former employer serves. By all accounts, Cheney's belief in "the military option" and the principle of president-as-decider predates his affiliation with Halliburton.

"What, then, is the straw that causes me to finally consign a man I served with in the House Republican leadership to the category of "those about whom we should be greatly concerned"?
It is Cheney's all-too-revealing conversation this week with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz. On Wednesday, reminded of the public's disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: "So?"

.."Policy, Cheney went on to say, should not be tailored to fit fluctuations in the public attitudes. If there is one thing public attitudes have not been doing, however, it is fluctuating: Resistance to the Bush administration's Iraq policy has been widespread, entrenched and consistent. Whether public opinion is right or wrong, it is not to be cavalierly dismissed.
[...]

"The decision to go to war, I told the students -- to send young Americans off to battle, knowing that some will die -- is the single most difficult choice any public official can be called upon to make. That is precisely why the nation's Founders, aware of the deadly wars of Europe, deliberately withheld from the executive branch the power to engage in war unless such action was expressly approved by the people themselves, through their representatives in Congress.

"Cheney told Raddatz that American war policy should not be affected by the views of the people. But that is precisely whose views should matter: It is the people who should decide whether the nation shall go to war. That is not a radical, or liberal, or unpatriotic idea. It is the very heart of America's constitutional system.

"In Europe, before America's founding, there were rulers and their subjects. The Founders decided that in the United States there would be not subjects but citizens. Rulers tell their subjects what to do, but citizens tell their government what to do.

"If Dick Cheney believes, as he obviously does, that the war in Iraq is vital to American interests, it is his job, and that of President Bush, to make the case with sufficient proof to win the necessary public support.

"That is the difference between a strong president (one who leads) and a strong presidency (one in which ultimate power resides in the hands of a single person). Bush is officially America's 'head of state,' but he is not the head of government; he is the head of one branch of our government, and it's not the branch that decides on war and peace. "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/21/AR2008032102482.html

Personally, Mr. Mickey Edwards's op-ed on the topic sounds like heresy to me. If all that was true, how is it that Bush and Cheney have been able to convince "the people" to go along with things that are not supposed to happen under a Constitutional framework that provides for 3 separate, co-equal branches of government?? He must be hallucinating.

I want some of what he's injecting.

Wild Adventures In Profiteering & Corruption In Iraq, Cont'd.

'Tis fitting, Demon thinks, that while we're on the subject of how well things are going overall in Iraq (below), & to accompany the news that Bush seeks an additional $50 Billion to spend for the war effort, to take this opportunity to also point out that recent news reports say that Maliki's government is not only incapable of governing, but rife with systemic corruption.

Demon thinks she should warn Maliki he's infringing on Bushco trademarks & patented business methods where incompetence & corruption are concerned.

And, oh yeah, more on the mistreatment of those charmingly deluded US government & former government officials who somehow thought they were doing the right thing to expose illegal arms sales by Iraqis with our assistance, & well-documented fraud & overcharging by the likes of Halliburton & KBR.

Bushco showed them! We must have order in the ranks, after all. The moral of the story may also be "lie down with dogs, get fleas & worse."

From an MSNBC report late last month:

"One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.
Or worse.

"For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military [for 97 days] in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.
[...]
"Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the country’s oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.

"Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.

“'If you do it, you will be destroyed,' said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

“'Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, ‘Should I do this?’ And my answer is no. If they’re married, they’ll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything,' Weaver said.

"They have been fired or demoted, shunned by colleagues, and denied government support in whistleblower lawsuits filed against contracting firms.
[...]
" Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse knows this only too well. As the highest-ranking civilian contracting officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she testified before a congressional committee in 2005 that she found widespread fraud in multibillion-dollar rebuilding contracts awarded to former Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

"Soon after, Greenhouse was demoted. She now sits in a tiny cubicle in a different department with very little to do and no decision-making authority, at the end of an otherwise exemplary 20-year career.

"People she has known for years no longer speak to her.
[...]

"Then there is Robert Isakson, who filed a whistleblower suit against contractor Custer Battles in 2004, alleging the company — with which he was briefly associated — bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars by filing fake invoices and padding other bills for reconstruction work.

"He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses. Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.

"It was the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud.

"But in 2006, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III overturned the jury award. He said Isakson and Baldwin failed to prove that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-backed occupier of Iraq for 14 months, was part of the U.S. government.

"Not a single Iraq whistleblower suit has gone to trial since."

Read on: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20430153/