Randi Rhodes Forums

War Is A Racket

A speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

WAR is a racket. It always has been

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

Continued

The presidential papers are frequently very illuminating historically.

One of the first things G. W. Bush did in the oval office was an executive order which blocked release of the Reagan/Daddy Bush papers. Why has Obama, after almost two years, not issued an executive order to rescind his predecessor’s action which was questionable in its legality?

Oh lord. Could you imagine the hissy fit the Republicans would throw if he did that?

Don't believe the screaming mimi's comparing DADT to desegregation of the military.

Read for self: DESEGREGATION OF THE ARMED FORCES, Truman Library

This movie was made in 1947 to remind citizens of what can happen if we don't reject discrimination of any kind. http://tinyurl.com/33rbthc

Thank you so much and welcome to the board...

There are a number of other good videos on that site as well.

More wayback machine stuff. This is something I wrote on an older incarnation of the RRMB on June 27, 2005:

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WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR....

Sometimes it's difficult to pick the wheat from the chaff in the blizzard of useless info we normally get, so I wanted to create just a bulleted list of raw facts. These are largely in chronological order, but are also listed together as a part of their topical relationships, and relevance to one another. Just to make connecting the dots a bit easier. The jokes work better too.

So here's a recap I worked up over the weekend......


--- Post WWII, the Middle East is divided up by Western money men such as the Rockafeller twins into countries to follow oil production routes. The border of Jordan follows the pipeline for that reason. Much like Africa was divided into countries by the Colonial powers without regard to tribal conflicts, or cultural differences, the Middle East is carved up without regard to religious or cultural implications.

--- In 1968 the World Trade Center is built, and the two largest buildings are nicknamed the "Twin Towers" after the Rockafeller brothers, who financed their construction.

--- In 1980 Jimmy Carter was ousted primarily because of "high gas prices" and Americans being held hostage in the Middle East. He brought the hostages home safely, despite backroom deals between Reagan and the Iranian terrorists to keep our people incarcerated until Reagan had taken the oath of office.

--- Gas prices now are at record highs, and oil is going for $62 a barrel. 1,700 Americans have been killed in the Middle East, and over 10,000 injured.

--- During the 1980's, the Reagan/Bush Administration train Osama Bin Laden how to fight.

--- In 1983 Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein to give him chemical and biological Weapons of Mass Destruction. He then uses them on the Kurds. We do nothing.

--- In 1990 Hussein invades Kuwait, which was formerly part of Iraq before the British divided it off, then he threatens the Saudis, Bush's business partners, to the tune of billions of dollars. We attack Iraq.

--- We beat the Iraqi Army without breaking a sweat. Saddam surrenders. Gen. Schwarzkopf sits in a tent with commanders of the Iraqi Army and gives them permission to load explosives on their helicopters. The Iraqi Army then drops the explosives on the Iraqi resistence, while our soldiers watch from the other side of the border, and are not allowed to help the Iraqi resistence, per orders from Bush. Therefore the popular uprising against Saddam is killed, and he remains in power.

--- In 1991, weapons inspectors disarm Saddam Hussein with the most intrusive inspection/destruction regime in the history of the world.

--- Clinton has to keep bombing them for the next 8 years, and maintain a base in Saudi Arabia Bush agreed to, because if he doesn't continue to "contain" Hussein, Republicans will call him weak on defense. 1 million Iraqi children die because of sanctions and bombings. The rest don't seem to reach old age very successfully. Half of all Iraqis are under the age of 17.

--- The base in Saudi Arabia combined with the invention of low-rise jeans for girls, pushes Osama Bin Laden over the edge.

--- James Bath, meets George Bush during the five minutes he serves in the "Champagne Unit" and both are cited for failing to take a drug test. Bath begins aircraft business by selling a jet to Salaam bin Laden. Bath invests money in Bush's Arbusto Oil Company, which finds no oil, and goes out of business.

--- Bush then founds another oil company using Saudi oil money invested by James Bath. That company is bought by Harken Energy, who gives George a seat as a Director on it's Audit Board. Despite warnings from the Legal Department, one week later, Bush sells $848,000 worth of stock. 2 months later, Harken announced financial losses of over $23 million dollars and the stock tanked. Martha Stewart went to jail for a year. Not for selling $40,000 worth of stock because her boyfriend told her to, since the government has no proof of that. She is convicted of supposedly lying to federal investigators about a charge they themselves cannot prove. How is this equality under the law?

--- Robert Jordan, a lawyer with the James Baker Law Firm represents Bush in the case brought against him by the SEC. Jordan wins the trial, despite overwhelming evidence of malfeasance on the part of George Bush. Bush later appoints Jordan as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

--- Bush is then awarded a seat on the board another oil company, owned by the Carlyle Group.

--- In 1997, Taliban gov't. representatives came to Texas while George was Governor to meet with UnoCal, which wanted to create an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (because they have to go around Iran.... getting the picture?) to the Persian Gulf. Halliburton got the contract to build it, the day it was approved.

--- Bush cheats to win in Florida. Supreme Court lets him. The James Baker Law Firm represents him. A Moscow Times editorial notes that "In the middle of much muddle, a few things became clear even naked: The owners of the country want their presidency back, and they'll stop at nothing to get it. The Republic slowly sinks into the swamps of Florida. The secret government has shown its face at last. And what a strange, multi-headed beast it is." The Times of London described it "a parody of democracy."

--- When votes for President are counted, the Republicans always win. No matter how matter people voted against them. Bush cheated in Ohio, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and a number of other states in 2004 as well.

--- When voice votes are taken in Congress, the Republicans always win. No matter how many people are in the room who disagree.

--- Under Bush Senior, unemployment rises to 6.7%, and in some areas is as high as 17%. Under Clinton, unemployment goes down to 3.9% nationwide. An average of 150,000 jobs are created every month for the entire 8 years Clinton is in office. Now watch what happens. September 2000 Employment Increases - 252,000. October 2000 Employment Increases - 137,000. November 2000 Employment Increases - 148,000. Americans get the first inkling that George W. Bush might actually become President. December 2000 Jobs Lost - 105,000. January 2001 Jobs Lost - 268,000. February 2001 Jobs Lost - 135,000. March 2001 Jobs Lost - 86,000. April 2001 Jobs Lost - 300,000. May 2001 Jobs Lost - 485,000. June 2001 Jobs Lost - 114,000 (266,000 workng Part-time because they were unable to find permanent jobs). July 2001 Jobs Lost - 42,000 (308,000 characterise themselves as discouraged workers - those not even looking for work because they believe there are no jobs to be found). August 2001 Jobs Lost - 500,000. Bush will spend 40% of this time on vacation. September 2001 Jobs Lost - 800,000. October 2001 Jobs Lost - 401,000. November 2001 Jobs Lost - 478,000. Then I stopped counting because it was too damn depressing.

--- On his first day in office, he cut off funding for any organization providing counseling that presents abortion as an option to pregnancy in Third World countries. This also means the lack of funding will also reduce or eliminate their capacity to provide all the OTHER women´s health services like prenatal care, child development education and parenting classes, child immunization, contraception distribution and family planning, disease prevention and treatment, AIDS testing, mammograms, etc. It is literally mass murder, approved with the stroke of a pen, since for many of these communities, these health clinics are the only medical facilities for hundreds of miles.

--- January 2001, National Security Director Condi Rice is warned by the Clinton transitional team that "You'll be spending most of your time on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda." On Jan 25th, given security memo by Richard Clarke outlining steps needed to prevent attack. He is ignored for the next nine months.

--- The Delenda Plan and the Hart-Rudman Report on global terrorism and our ability to respond are ignored as well.

--- Within his first 100 days, Bush proposed cuts in funding for wind and solar energy research by 50%, he refused to take any action whatsoever to hold down the price gouging being commited by the power suppliers in the West, primarily because he himself was profiting from it. Bush was a major stockholder in the Enron Corporation (one of the big four power suppliers on the West Coast), and someone who has recieved over $100,000 in personal campaign contributions from Kenneth Lay (not to mention a $10,000 donation to the Bush Legal Fund to help disenfranchise black voters in Florida). Energy bills for individuals and businesses went up by between 300%-800% during that period. He also refused to sign the Kyoto Agreement to confront Global Warming, rescinded new standards for arsenic in drinking water, and reversed a campaign promise to require that electric-power plants reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

--- On May 3, 2001 the United States, for the first time since 1947, failed to win re-election to the Human Rights Commission that probes rights abuses throughout the world.

--- Bush did nothing after the August 6th 2001 memo "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

--- Also in August 2001, Bush gives millions to the Taliban Government despite their horrid human rights record and the fact that they are harboring Osama Bin Laden, who attacked the USS Cole and our embassy in Kenya. The money is basically a bribe. The Taliban had begun to back out of the deal UnoCal and Cheney's Halliburton had made to run the pipeline through Afghanistan.

--- Cheney still recieves money from Halliburton to this day.

--- On September 10th, 2001 John Ashcroft signs the Bush Administration policy memo cutting back FBI $65,000,000 worth of funding for counterterrorism.

--- In the Nuclear Age, when the entire country can be obliterated inside of 30 minutes, George Bush was informed the country was under attack, and sat reading "My Pet Goat" for 7 minutes, then took more photos for another 20 minutes.

--- Six private jets, and 24 commercial 747's were authorized by the Bush Administration to fly members of the Bin Laden family and other Saudis out of the country while the rest of us were grounded on 9/11. No questioning was made of them befoer they were allowed to leave.

--- Thousands of average Arab Americans and foreigners of Arab descent were involuntarily detained, some for months at a time, and some were subjected to torture techniques such as sleep deprivation and humiliation IN BROOKLYN simply by virtue of their ethnicity. This will be repeated in foreign countries and expanded upon to include outright murder of detainees.

--- Bush Senior, Bush Jr., James Baker (former Reagan Cabinet member), John Major (former British Prime Minister), and the Bin Laden family are part of the Carlyle Group - the 11th largest defense contractor in the United States.

--- Bush Sr. met with Osama's brother on September 10th, 2001 at a Carlyle Group conference.

--- The Carlyle Group owns Vought Aircraft Industries, US Marine Repair, eAccess, Aviall, Actelis, The Aerostructures Corp., Indigo Corp. (Makes infrared cameras “see” heat sources through obstructions like walls), MedPointe Corp. (Develops, manufactures & markets branded prescription pharmaceuticals. Altogether now, "Prescription Drug Bill..."), Blackboard (Makes internet infrastructure/networking products "customized" for universities), Stellex Aerostructures, Inc. (Manufactures large structural aircraft components), Avio SpA (makes propulsion systems for space launch vehicles - can you say "Missile Defense", kids? I knew that you could...), QinetiQ (created when the British Ministry of Defense privatized some of it's R&D Departments), QwestDex (They own your phone book.), Ctrip.com International (sells online reservation systems to hotels and airlines. Has a "vast database of travel information in both English and Chinese".), Grand Vehicle Works (makes large scale chassis formerly built by General Motors for big-rig trucks, as well as RV's) Le Figaro (Main Italian newspaper), The Relizon Company (An outsourcing company helping other Fortune 500 companies ship your jobs overseas), Connecticare (HMO in Connecticut and Massachusetts), KorAm Bank (the seventh-largest commercial bank in South Korea), WCI Cable, Archetype Solutions (Sells jeans to Land's End. Thankfully I never shop there because I'm not THAT white.), Dex Media, Inc., Carillon (Owns 14,772 square meters of office space in Nanterre, France, near Paris. Carlyle leased 10,000 square meters to Compagnie Generale des Eaux, a subsidiary of Vivendi Environment, who is now beholden to them with a 12 year lease.), Legend Natural Gas, FSS (Provides e-commerce for 18 of the 20 banks in India), Asahi Security Co., and..... United Defense.

--- When the United States ramped up on defense dollars, the Bin Laden family made a profit.

--- United Defense built the piece of shit Bradley Fighting Vehicle. A program that cost $14 billion dollars and took 17 years to design one armored vehicle (initially slated to cost $1 million per APC) that couldn't past a Live Fire Test without the whole tank blowing up. Had to be redesigned, uh, AGAIN, to have "capability upgrades" at the cost of another $1 billion to taxpayers, just so everyone inside wouldn't be killed. The fuckups who ran this program were promoted, the lone guy who forced them to make it SAFE for the grunts in the field, was forced to retire.

--- Six weeks after 9/11, the Carlyle Group took United Defense public, and made one-day profit of $237 billion dollars.

--- Bush sought to restrict, delay, and distrupt the independent congressional investigation into 9/11. Families of 9/11 victims had to sue to get an investigation, and the law firm that fought against the grieving families was James Baker's.

--- U.S. Special Forces weren't allowed to go into Afghanistan for two months after 9/11, and afterwards, Bush put only 11,000 troops into Afghanistan.

--- Hamid Karzai, New "President" of Afghanistan - Is also a former UnoCal Executive.

--- Reagan/Bush Sr. ran up $3 trillion in debt after 12 years, Clinton took 8 to pay it down and yield a surplus. "Fiscally conservative" Bush Jr. spent the surplus, and ran up a $5 trillion dollar debt in a mere 5 years.

--- The Saudis own 7% of the American economy. $860 billion dollars. They have $1 trillion dollars in our banks. (Seizing that to pay down our debt sounds like a mighty spiffy idea to me....)

--- 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis.

---- But we attacked Iraq based on intentionally fraudulent intel, as the Downing Street Memo, and 7 subsequent memos conclusively reveal. This combined with the memo written by Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzales and signed by Bush authorizing torure of "enemy combatants", and photographic evidence from multiple prison facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo is proof that the Bush Administration violated the U.S. Constitution Article VI par. 2, the War Crimes Act of 1996, the Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV), U.N. Gen. Assembly Res. 3314, the Nuremberg Tribunal Charter, and the Geneva Conventions.

--- By refusing to hear the reporter's appeal, the Supreme Court basically just ruled that apparently the only real protection reporters have when using anonymous sources is being a member of the Republican Party. Robert "Sleestak" Novak who first reported about Valerie Plame using anonymous sources faces no jail time for not revealing the source, but the two New York Times reporters WHO DIDN'T EVEN PUBLISH a report on Valerie Plame but who also had anonymous sources and refused to reveal them, are facing 18 months in jail. Now the Fourth Estate "We The People" rely on will be all the more skittish about reporting hidden info like the Downing Street Memos if they come from a source who wishes to remain anonymous. Of course the most important stories USUALLY involve someone taking a huge risk, so we'll be all the more uninformed from now on. But Right Wing reporters are apparently free to make all the anonymous claims they like. Nice.

--- The U.S. gov't is threatening foreign news sources now.

--- After destroying the Iraq, Halliburton was given one of the largest no-bid contracts in history to rebuild the country.

--- $8.8 billion of U.S. taxpayer's money is "missing" from the budget of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. No investigation has been allowed.

--- Iraqi money was distributed in cash, in dufflebags to U.S. contractors. No written accounting of the money was made.

--- The Iraq War has now gone on longer than our involvement in WWII.

--- More reporters have died in two years in Iraq, than in 11 years in Vietnam. Many killed by U.S. troops.

--- The Chinese now own a large portion of what amount to bank notes on our loans to run the country with. The national debt, now at a mindblowing $5 trillion dollars, was run up in a mere 5 years.

--- The Chinese now want to buy UnoCal.

--- So basically, the terrorists and the commies own us, and the Republicans sold us to them.
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Oh and here's a useful set of historical documents:

http://downingstreetmemo.com/