Bush/Neocon Model: War Serves Corporate Globalization

by **StarmanSkye** » Sat May 06, 2006 5:59 am

As detailed below, Antonia Juhasz in her latest book makes the case that, above all, the Iraq War signals America's total committment to Imperialism -- that is, spreading the empire by changing the very laws of foreign nations to service the empire's needs, but especially using military force and violating long-held International Laws and agreements that it is signatory to. This is the basis for the enormous criminal enterprise which the Bush Regime, various government officials, agencies and private associations and the leading corporate beneficiaries of the war --Halliburton, Bechtel, Chevron and Lockheed Martin -- are implicated in, by actively conspiring, promoting, supporting, scheming, lying about, and exerting immense pressure to make the invasion and total subversion of Iraq happen. What really strikes me in the following description of how the Iraq War and the (illegal) implementation of pro-exploitation laws by Bremer (as per the detailed post-invasion plans prepared by Bearing Point Inc. --for $250 million; So THAT'S why the Bush Gang ignored the comprehensive regime-change study commissioned by Clinton and written by dozens of experts -- which accurately anticipated precisely the catastrophe now seen if specific actions weren't taken -- SOMEBODY ought to be held-accountable and sued for this enormously flawed plan put together by Bearing Point --S) follows the same game plan followed by the State Dept. and legions of Economic Hitmen working with the IMF and World Bank -- bribing or threatening (and if that doesn't work, then simply killing installing) corrupt leaders who write-off on huge, extravagent, wasteful, inefficient and seriously flawed development schemes that aren't pragmatic and don't contribute to the nation's productivity, which become an elaborate money-tree scam for well-connected US corporations and for which successive generations become increasingly indebted, resulting in World Bank bail-out terms requiring the selling-off of valuable national assets and the cutting of social services (esp. education and health care -- which increases poverty and enforces a large peasant, menial labour underclass -- a truly massive, monstrous swindle that reveals how utterly evil and corrupt unregulated corporatism is, especially when facilitated by the US National Security ponzai-scheme -- the same racketeers that brought us the perpetual-debt scheme of the Federal Reserve; They're ALL really slave schemes. Juhazs seems to make a very clear, well-argued case against the Bush Gang for what they have tried to foist off on the American public, the citizens of Iraq, and the World Community. This may be a book of damning facts that just might get through the mental-blocks and filters of stubborn stuck-on-Bush conservatives, assuming they are capable of understanding that the Bush model of using military force to back corporate-globalism is inherantly fascist, thus immoral and extremely dangerous. Starman ****** AlterNet - May 5, 2006 <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/35846/">www.alternet.org/story/35846/</a> Bush Clears the Way for Corporate Domination By Joshua Holland, AlterNet When George W. Bush says that he wants to spread freedom to every corner of the earth, he means it. But of course the president that turned Soviet-era gulags into secret CIA prisons in order to do God-knows-what to God-knows-whom isn't talking about individual freedom. He means corporate freedom -- freedom for the great multinationals to extract everything they can from the world's resources and labor without the hindrance of public interest laws, environmental regulations or worker protections. Bush's vision of a free world actually looks just like the corporate globalization agenda pushed by a succession of American presidents in institutions like the World Trade Organization. But this administration yearns for freedom too much to leave it up to trade negotiators. Unlike his predecessors, Bush isn't content to use carrots and sticks and a liberal dose of arm twisting to advance that agenda. His administration has made the neoliberal policies euphemistically referred to as "free-trade" a centerpiece of its national security policy. Bush is willing to use the awesome force of the United States military to guarantee the freedom of the world's largest multinationals. In her new book, The Bush Agenda, Antonia Juhasz peels the veils away from Bush's agenda -- imperialism, militarism and corporate globalization -- and -- exposes who drives it: a group of hawkish ideologues with an unprecedented relationship to major defense and energy companies. Juhasz shows that the invasion of Iraq -- an invasion that was as much economic as military -- was the centerpiece of a larger project: the creation a New American Century in which the end-goal of American foreign policy is to enrich the corporate elites, and dissent at home will not be tolerated. Juhasz is a wonk -- she got her start as a staffer for Rep. John Conyers -- but the book is as readable as it is deeply researched. I caught up with Juhasz last week at Washington's Union Station, just blocks away from the White House, to chat about The Bush Agenda. Joshua Holland: [19th century Prussian military philosopher Carl von] Clausewitz said that war is an extension of politics by other means. You suggest that for the Bush administration, war is an extension of corporate globalization by other means. Run down your basic premise. Antonia Juhasz: The Bush administration has implemented a particularly radical model of corporate globalization by which it has teamed overt military might -- full-scale invasion -- with the advancement of its corporate globalization agenda. And this model is particularly imperial -- that's one of the things that makes it different from, for example, the Reagan or Bush Sr. regimes. As opposed to simply replacing the head of a regime that is no longer serving the interests of the administration, the Bush team has gone further -- using a military invasion to fundamentally transform a country's political and economic structure. It is also using an occupation to maintain that altered structure, which is the definition of imperialism in my mind: spreading the empire by changing the very laws of foreign nations to service the empire's needs. And, as Bush is repeatedly saying, "Iraq is only the beginning." I detail the rest of the empire's pursuits across the Middle East in the chapter on the U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area. The fundamental purpose of the book was to determine how this model came to be, where its advocates hope it will go and who its advocates are so that we can better dismantle it. JH: But Bush isn't the first to use a full-scale invasion -- unilaterally -- in furtherance of those goals. I think of Reagan's invasion of Grenada to knock off Maurice Bishop, a moderate socialist. AJ: There was no occupation, and it wasn't done the same way that the Bush administration -- using its own tools, its own people, its own policies -- explicitly restructured the entire functioning of the country's economy to serve its own ends. Reagan wanted a different leader, a leader that would meet his needs and that was enough. Bush has locked in an entirely new economic and political structure. I'm certainly not justifying the invasion of Grenada, but for me that was quantitatively different. JH: What is Pax Americana -- the "American Peace" -- and what is it about the original Roman version, Pax Romana, that makes it a poor model to emulate? AJ: I talk about Pax Americana because that's what members of the administration talk about -- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Khalilzad, Perle, Zoellick, Bolton. In fact, there are 16 members of the Bush administration that were also participants in the Project for the New American Century, which was very clear that the U.S. not only has a Pax Americana but should seek to maintain it. This is problematic because it seeks to achieve the Roman model, with an all-powerful emperor who ran his kingdom on 50 percent slave labor, who eliminated all guarantees of civil liberties and eliminated all civic participation, but maintained the fallacy of public institutions and participatory government to keep the elites at bay -- to make elites feel like they had the presence and prestige of serving in government. So there were senators and there were "representatives of the people," but of course the emperor appointed those he wanted to sit in the senate, and he chose those who would serve his interests. And then he appointed regional overlords to oversee the rest of the empire. In addition, the idea that Rome generated peace -- that it really was in fact a Pax Romana that guaranteed peace for the rest of the world -- is false. To create the empire, there was an enormous amount of war and bloodshed, and also to maintain the empire there was continued fighting as nations and peoples were forced to acquiesce. However, there was a period of about 200 years where there was relatively less struggle within Rome over who would rule. But one key reason Rome was able to maintain that internal peace was all the money that the empire poured into public services -- building aqueducts, providing services, supporting intellectual thought and -- as I say in the book -- creating the Western Canon. The Bush administration has chosen all the worst elements of the Roman Empire: the lack of civil liberties and the movement towards a nonrepresentative government run by a dictator. Even the most conservative Republican columnist will admit that Bush has consolidated more and more power in the executive branch than any president in modern history. And he's increased the proportion of people in the United States in the lower income sphere, people who have to work day in and day out in order to meet basic needs like health care, and who often aren't able to meet those needs. I argue that that is a modern form of slavery. And while the administration is explicitly imperial -- it is trying to annex other nations through its military and its economic policy -- its not putting any of that attention to public education, public resources and public services. So we are getting the worst of the worst. And just as it was a myth that the Pax Romana created world peace, the Pax Americana clearly generates more global insecurity. Acts of deadly terror have increased every year of the Bush administration; they increased more than three-fold between 2003 and 2004. JH: So he's not just the worst president ever, he's also the worst -- AJ: Yes, he's also the worst emperor ever. JH: You're blunt about calling Iraq an economic invasion. Most analyses are geopolitical, but you put it together with the long-standing wish list of the corporate globalists. Can you tell me about Bremer's100 rules and what Bearing Point is? AJ: If you look at the corporations that have profited most from the invasion -- Bechtel, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin and Chevron -- these are all corporations that have decades of operations and activities trying to increase their economic engagement in Iraq -- lobbying the U.S. government to increase their access to Iraq. And they've done so successfully -- first with Saddam Hussein and later with the coalition authorities and now with the new government of Iraq. They have participated with or guided -- you can choose the word you want -- the Bush administration in its invasion. Through their executives, they played key roles in advocating for war. George Shultz is the perfect example and one I focus on in the book. I emphasize that it's an absolute fallacy that there was no post-war plan. The plan was written two months before the invasion of Iraq by a company, Bearing Point Inc., which is based in Virginia -- it was KPMG Consulting until it changed its name in the wake of the Arthur Anderson-Enron corruption scandals. The company is not well-known. It works behind the scenes for every branch of government, and it provides all kinds of consulting services. Bearing Point received a $250 million contract from USAID to write a remodeled structure for the Iraqi economy. It was to transition Iraq from a state-controlled economy to a market economy, but I argue that the new model was more a state-controlled economy that is controlled on behalf of multinational corporations, and heavily regulated in fact on behalf of multinational corporations. It just no longer serves the public interest. Bearing point's plan was implemented to a T by L. Paul Bremer, the administrator of Iraq's coalition government. The U.N.'s special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, called him the "Dictator of Iraq," and he was. He ruled Iraq for 14 months, and he implemented Bearing Point's plan; he rewrote Iraq's entire economic and political structure by implementing his 100 orders. The orders had the force of law, and any Iraqi laws that contradicted the orders were overridden. The 100 orders put into place a standard set of corporate globalization policies. Instead of having to wait for Iraq to become a member of the World Trade Organization, for example, or to fulfill requirements of the International Monetary Fund or World Bank, or worrying about whether the policies they most wanted would be accepted, the administration was able to simply invade, occupy and impose those provisions itself. And many of those provisions have been long opposed at institutions like the WTO -- for example the investments provisions -- but they were implemented overnight in Iraq with a stroke of the pen by Paul Bremer. Probably the most important order in terms of what happened with the occupation was the very first order. Bremer fired 120,000 key bureaucrats in every government ministry in Iraq. That meant that ministries that had been functioning very well for decades lost their bureaucracies almost overnight. The excuse that was given was that they were Ba'ath Party members, but nobody could hold those positions unless they belonged to the Ba'ath Party, so it wasn't an indication that they were a party to Saddam Hussein's crimes. They were fired because they could have stood in the way of the economic transformation. Then there was the firing of the entire Iraqi military, and I think that problem is well-known. Less well-known is how that played out in relation to the rest of the orders. Order number 39 was the foreign investment order. There were several provisions which I detail in the book, but the most important may be national treatment, which meant that Iraqis could not preference Iraqi companies and Iraqi workers in the reconstruction. So 150 United States corporations have received $50 billion for work in Iraq, $33 billion of which was exclusively for standard reconstruction -- building bridges, repairing electricity and repairing water. But originally the plan was to use the soldiers -- the Iraqi military -- for the reconstruction. Instead of taking a half a million men and canceling their salaries and sending them home with guns, they were going to go to work and get money, and provide for their families and be part of the reconstruction. Even worse is that those American companies failed. Miserably. And it's not just because of the insurgency -- the insurgency didn't begin immediately. They failed because they went in to maximize their profit, to build the most expensive state-of-the-art systems they could and to get their feet firmly in Iraq so they would be able to profit long term. But what Iraq needed was just to get the systems up and running. It was summer in the desert. JH: How long did it take for Iraq to get those systems up after the first invasion? AJ: Three months. The Iraqi workers and companies rebuilt their systems in three months. JH: OK, so Bremer imposed these rules under the Coalition Provisional Authority. Explain how rules set up by a provisional government ended up codified in Iraq's new constitution? AJ: Bremer appointed an interim government for Iraq when the occupation formally ended. The interim government, together with Bremer, threw out the existing Iraqi Constitution. And I think at the time there was this idea that it was a nation being molded out of the dirt -- that it didn't have a government, didn't have a structure -- and here was the United States helping them form a constitutional convention. But they had a government, they had a constitution -- they've had a constitution since 1922. We didn't have to create a constitutional government for them. The first constitution that was written had all of Bremer's orders, and it could only be changed by a very complicated process -- it essentially locked the orders in. Then the new constitution for Iraq was supposed to be "of the people." It was drafted by the interim government and put to a popular vote. But it was crafted so that it locked into place the occupation, the economic transformation, the constitutionality of the new oil law -- which the United States had drafted -- and all of the Bremer orders. The only public discussion of the constitution was the few things people were gleaning from the press and what their religious leaders -- who were themselves gleaning it from the press -- told them. Five days before the constitution was to be voted on, the paper copies were released. They made 5 million copies for 15 million voters. And on that same day, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, was meeting with influential Iraqi leaders to rewrite fundamental aspects of that very constitution. There was absolutely no way that the vast majority of the Iraqi people had any idea what was in the constitution. They were voting for hope, and they risked their lives to do so. But there's no way they knew that they were voting to maintain the Bremer orders. JH: What's the Hague Convention of 1907? AJ: Under international law an occupying government has one set of responsibilities, and they're very clear. An occupying government must provide security and basic services. An occupying government explicitly cannot fundamentally rewrite the laws of the country they're occupying. The United States did exactly the opposite; we rewrote the laws, and we didn't provide basic services or security for the people. JH: Did we ratify the Hague Conventions? AJ: We certainly did. JH: You focus on four firms that pushed the policy and have profited handsomely from the invasion: Bechtel, Chevron, Lockheed Martin and Halliburton. But there are many other multinational corporations that have both made a killing in Iraq and have close ties to both the administration and to the conservative movement more generally. Why those four and, playing devil's advocate, is there a danger focusing on a small number of firms when the issues are militarism and corporate globalization more broadly? AJ: These four companies have the longest relationship to Iraq. Through their executives, they lobbied on behalf of an invasion of Iraq, and they have profited more than almost all other companies from that invasion. And they have intimate interlocking relationships with this administration. They demonstrate very clearly how, in the Bush administration, there essentially is no distinction between corporate characters and government characters. They also are companies that because of their corporate behavior around the world have preexisting and longstanding movements -- social movements -- that are organized against their harmful actions, which readers of the book support and become a part of. JH: That's a great segue. In your final chapter, you discuss ways that people can oppose the Bush agenda, and you suggest that another agenda is possible. I think that's very important because so many books bash Bush and then leave readers feeling dispirited. Name just one thing that needs to be done to reverse this agenda? AJ: There are so many alternatives, and I give concrete examples of solutions -- for how to end the economic invasion of Iraq. What I hoped to do in the last chapter was to present the movements and many of the ideas generating fundamental change already. I wanted to empower people -- to show that the information in the book can be used as a tool for these movements and a tool for change. So I give examples of not only different policies, but I also give examples of organizations and communities that have been successfully mobilizing against the full Bush agenda -- that means corporate globalization, war and imperialism. To me that's more important than any one of the alternatives that I present. The whole point of the chapter is that there are, thankfully, millions of alternatives to choose from. And we're already seeing successful transformation -- there are real movements that we can join and in which we can have an impact. Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer. ) 2006 Independent Media Institute.

by **Dreams End** » Sat May 06, 2006 11:42 am

Why do people think this is something new? Here's Smedley Butler, decorated war veteran, speakin in 1933. <blockquote>Quote:<hr> War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of 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 masses. . . . There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. . . . <hr></blockquote> I'm pretty sure there weren't any neocons around at the time. Don't get me wrong, these plans should be exposed and opposed...just suggesting there's a bigger picture.

by **NavnDansk** » Sat May 06, 2006 12:56 pm

Excellent post. I think maybe the neocons were around but used different names. I remember reading the Andrew Carnegie probably started his charities out of guilt of what he did to his slave laborers. I am all for libraries and art but it doesn't sound like he did anything for the "Salt of the Earth or the Common Foot Soldier." J.P. Morgan despite his saying he sat in church all the time and got some of his best ideas from God does not seem to have read the admonishions to help the poor and not to cheat or steal from you slaves or workers that is throughout the Bible Old and New Testaments. Does anyone have a link proving what I read a while back in a paragraph on a site about the BFEE that Prescott Bush made a fortune on slave labor at Auschwitz and the survivors and their relatives tried to sue when some of the Nazi documents were released, I think about 15 or 20 years ago but the BFEE and their lawyers were too powerful and it was not widely reported. Wiki mentions this story skeptically and does not have a link.

by **Dreams End** » Sat May 06, 2006 2:31 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr> Excellent post. I think maybe the neocons were around but used different names.<hr></blockquote> This is not possible. Neo-con specifically refers to those who "converted" from liberalism. Really, they were cold-war liberals...propped up to promote anti-Soviet liberalism to offset left groups which were pro-Soviet or else not anti-Soviet enough. It also could be neo, says wikipedia, because it is a new form of Conservatism...one not minding "big government", but that's always been a fake value of traditional conservatism in my view. The state merely expands in different places. But that's another debate. There have always been greed and power-madness. The underlying situation as Butler saw it was that some very powerful corporations were using the State, particularly the military, to promote their economic interests. Neocons, allegedly, act out of an aggressive ideology to promote the national interest. Of course, I am constantly amazed at how many people, even around here, seem to believe that our rulers act for the reasons they say they are acting. By pinning the tail on the neo-con there is a tendency to believe that if you just get rid of this little group, you've fixed the problem. My suggestion is that, while the official justifications may change, the underlying motivation of US foreign policy has never changed. The only real ideology underneath is to figure out the best way to ensure raw materials coming in unimpeded and that there will always be markets available to buy them. This is not "neo-con"...it's not even fascist, although fascism is probably the most efficient way to ensure this agenda is unimpeded. Originally, of course, it was overt colonialism. This passed out of favor. Does this mean our benevolent rulers recognized the need to accept the sovereignty of foreign countries? Nah. Colonies are very inefficient. Those dang natives keep rebelling and the cost of maintaining overt rule is way too high. Even World War 2, in which calling our enemy "Adolph Hitler" was quite accurate, since, um...that's who he was, there were some calculations made at the highest levels. Can the US really thrive with German control of all that territory should we need to do without the resources provided in those territories? The answer was "no", though contingency plans were naturally made in case the war didn't go "our" way. This is seen quite clearly in Council of Foreign Relations documents. There's no hidden conspiracy there...just business as usual. In addition, there was always a fascist element in our highest corridors of power. I note with amusement another thread in which I learned that the Three Stooges, of all people, were investigated for violating the Neutrality Act for their film mocking Hitler. Premature anti-fascists, as they say. And there were active plans to overthrow Roosevelt, backed by Duponts and Morgans for which Butler was recruited. He turned the conspirators in but the Congressional investigation was minimal. I don't know how serious a threat all that was, but it did happen. So there are different flavors of rule. And I imagine those favoring overt fascism oppose those who find protection of human rights and at least the appearance of democracy to be the preferred path. From a purely self-serving point of view, I'd think the latter view would be correct, as you have less to worry about in terms of rebellion and revolution. However, people COULD do something stupid and vote to nationalize oil fields or something. So the temptation to overt fascism is always strong. Some have criticized the idea that fascism was purely a creation of big corporations seeking a compliant populace and workforce with a state nearly indistinguishable from corporate interests. I think that is a fair criticism in the sense that there's a lot of mass psychology involved as well, manipulated or not. However, that doesn't change the fact that the "big boys" looked at fascism as just another tool in the box...and there was serious, and I think fairly open, discussion here in the US during the pre-war years about how fascism was the next big thing and would inevitably supplant democracy. I had a political science teacher say the very same thing in a class some years back. He wasn't saying it was good, just that it was inevitable. Surprise, surprise, the reason, of course, was "dwindling resources." I was just reading about a political scientist trying to understand the perspective of that recent "Israel runs the US" report that has made the rounds in mainstream papers recently. I'm still looking into that. But what I learned is that there are three "acceptable" schools of scholarly models for how nations behave. One is neo-con...surely losing favor. Kick ass, take no prisoners, but in the name of "ideals" such as democracy and with profound distrust of any and all international institutions. Secondly, would be the "structural realists" who suggest that states simply act in their own interests, despite rhetoric to the contrary. I actually am confused on this point because the perspective says states DO act in their own interests but its proponents seem more likely to propose that states SHOULD act solely in their own interests. That's the whole point of the Israel Lobby "expose". In any event, military adventures don't serve those interests very well within this perspective and various realists signed on to statements opposing the current war. The third acceptable perspective in academia is liberalis internationalism, which, within the maintream use of the term, suggests that international organizations can affect world affairs for the good either by effectively supplanting individual national agendas with a more benign international agenda or at least keeping those national powers in check to some degree. Here's the problem. These perspectives make some huge assumptions. The first assumption is that nations do what they do for the reasons they say they do them. So to assume neocons are motivated by spreading democracy or even that neocons are running the show in the US leaves off the possibility that there are other, deeper reasons for these actions. Another assumption is that nations are somehow made of interests easily and categorically distinguishable from the interests of a particular class, namely the corporate class. That is to say that, I think everyone here can accept that when the US does something, no matter the stated reason, it is often to benefit the wealthy classes by opening markets, controlling resources, etc. So, unless one simply accepts the notion that what's good for business is the sole criterion for the "national interest" those of us who don't buy that nations act in the interest of the nation but often act in the interest of a very tiny subset of the nation have no category to call our own...not in mainstream discourse, anyway. Further, this tripartite division of intellectual (sic) analysis, ignores supranational powers, particularly corporate power, which is simply too great now to be contained by nation-states. (In the US, corporations aren't even chartered nationally but at the state level.) This leads to the strange leap of logic that underlies the report on Israeli influence on US politics. I don't know that I'll have time to do the full critique I wanted to, but the basic logic is this: 1. The US is claiming it it fights in the Middle East to make the US safer. 2. There is no real danger (meaning military) to the US coming from the Middle East. 3. There ARE real dangers to Israel coming from the ME. (The report buys that, for example, Iran is building nukes, but just says they won't reach the US, only Israel.) 4. The war and also publicly siding with Israel has only inflamed the Arab world, thereby increasing the danger to the US. __________________________ Therefore, the US is acting in the interests of Israel at the expense of itsnational interests. The leap in logic is clear, but you have to be able to go outside the three acceptable intellectual frameworks in order to point it out, which is why there hasn't been much cogent criticism of the piece in the mainstream. Surely you spot where this breaks down. It's in a variety of extremely questionable assumptions. The argument assumes that the stated reason for fighting in the Middle East is the only reason there could be. If this reason is shown to be false, then the only alternative reason allowed in this analysis is that the US is fighting on behalf of Israel. So, the idea of controlling oil resources, weakening powers in the region so that no opposition to US interests can emerge, creating a climate of fear to allow greater expansion of state powers, etc are all reasons that could explain US behavior ignored in this analysis (pointed out in the Uri Avnery post a few days ago). The assumption in 3 is that there are real dangers to Israel in the Middle East in the form of nuclear weapons. It implies that these Middle East wars, while doing nothing to protect the US, somehow protect Israel, which is why Israel is manipulating the US into carrying them out. Havanagilla says that the powers that be in Israel share this view that Iraq and now Iran were real threats to Israel's security. I doubt it. While they may have reasons for wanting these wars, enhancing Israel's security cannot be the real reason. Does ANYONE in Israel now feel safer thanks to the Iraq war? However, the Israeli people will have to sort that out with their own government. My point is that Iraq was clearly not a threat to anyone in the stage just before the US destroyed it. This much is now accepted in the mainstream. Intelligence failures, don't you know. I further contend that Iraq was NEVER seen to be a threat..and that the WMD lies were exactly that...lies. Not mistakes. I feel VERY confident in saying this from a US perspective. I suppose it is possible that Israeli military folks really thought taking out Saddam was essential for military security. However, I assume that Israeli intel in the Middle East is better than US intel, so they also knew the WMD thing was false. And note again, this is not implying Israel "fooled" the US...I'm assuming that the US knew WMD was false all along. so even if one wants to argue that the Niger documents were forged by Israel (they weren't) and Ahmed Chalabi worked for Israel (he didn't), I still don't buy that the US BOUGHT any of it. They knew it was b.s. but needed some sort of justification. (Remember Gulf War 1 and George Senior's awkward attempt to find ways to justify it? They'd float a new one every few days...even one time going with "It's about jobs!" WTF??? Same deal. The US not only knew of Iraq's plans to invade Kuwait, the US actually signalled that it was fine with them. I'm sure con-men have a name for that sort of switch.) One possible motivation would be the eventual partition of Iraq into three smaller and weaker states, more easily controlled and manipulated. Oh, and a bunch of US military bases in the bargain. Point 4 is surely correct. By fighting this war, slaughtering civilians and siding openly with Israel, the US has made the world less safe for Americans, not more. The assumption here, however, is that this was not a desired outcome in the first place. I'd just add that, the world is now LESS safe for Israel also. Because just as the US has sided with Israel, Israel has sided with the US. And since Israel actually is in the region...while I never bought that nukes were going to rain down on them, I certainly acknowledge that Israelis are in far more danger than Americans in the midst of this increasing hostility. This is why I wonder how Israeli officials continue to justify this path. Or is it beyond the point where they even feel the need to? But I'm certain that the increasing danger of terrorism was a desired outcome. If you add up all the benefits it's quite clear. The military industrial complex benefits quite directly. Halliburton makes fat wallet and military expansion is assured for decades. The Patriot Act, the majority of provisions for which were actually designed UNDER CLINTON, was put into effect and torture is now officially acceptable. Go team. So this goes back to all the analysis about the evil neocons. While I accept the role of more conspiratorial aspects to history than most traditional "structuralist" leftists, the structural approach is simple and explains a lot. Some rich people want some stuff, so they get their host countries (these days it transcends nations, as I mentioned) to go get it for them. Not really a new idea. The only variations are how directly these rich folks run the country...directly or hidden behind veils of ideology and historical myth.

by **StarmanSkye** » Sat May 06, 2006 2:47 pm

DE: IMO, what appears to be 'new' about this is the sheer scale and extent of what is now unacknowledged official policy, the reckless criminal arrogance and audacity of it which has made a total mockery of extant International and Constitutional Laws, treaties and agreements the US is signatory to, in repudiating the UN's authority, and in the baldly evident interlinked partnership of the Imperialist enterprise, with the Pentagon, White House, State Dept., defense industry, oil companies, western corporations, lobbyists, NGOs, mass media, Federal Courts, the Republican and Democrat parties and even Congress involved. Perhaps I wasn't clear here but I've commented in numerous posts -- I see this policy as clearly extending from a long tradition of coordination where the US military and CIA has been used in furtherance of US corporate wealth and power -- but the US has never been so defiant of International Laws and the world community, or so bold in arranging such a massive wealth-transfer scheme. The US's coldly-manipulative destruction of Yugoslavia came close to foreshadowing the pillaging of Iraq's resources and civil assets, but doesn't compare for the sheer scale of looting -- already several hundred billion dollars, likely to be at least a trillion before the scam implodes, which generations of US taxpayers will be indebted for. This is Economic Hitmen Part Two -- The robber-barons stole many tens of billions and got away with their third-world neoliberal impoverishment schemes for over 30 years, but causing so much misery and worsening living standards that it caused a leftist-inspired backlash throughout Latin America, so that the thieves decided to target the American people via 'liberating' and rebuilding a devastated Iraq. What's amazing is that so many American's still don't see it, though it's plain enough to see once you filter-out the bullshit. And sure 'nuff -- Butler saw the empire for what it was, stripped of self-righteous excuses for waging economic conquest. Navndansk: Lotta google-results -- The Key is the Polish Silesian coal fields which fed the German steel industry; FTR#479—World War II-Era Lawsuit and the Bush Family—(One 30 ...“Thyssen’s partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants ... The issue of CSSC, slave labor and the Bush family’s liability for the ... www.spitfirelist.com/f479.html Conspiracy Planet - Bush Crime Family - George Bush: The Hitler ...It also made the hard-pressed Prescott Bush even more willing to do whatever ... own large and valuable coal and zinc mines in Silesia, Poland and Germany. ... www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel. cfm?channelid=39&contentid=54&page=2 - 49k 12thharmonic blog: 09/19/2004 - 09/25/2004George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and ... During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the ... 12thharmonic.blogspot.com/ 2004_09_19_12thharmonic_archive.html How Bush's Grandfather Helped Hitler's Rise to Power - Forums ...During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the ... Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across ... uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=freespace& Number=54500&page=8&view=collapsed&... Pundix » Prescott Bush - Follow the bouncing money trail... Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the ... National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC ... assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a ... pundix.com/index.php?p=53 George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Part 1 of 8On March 19, 1934, Prescott Bush -- then director of the German Steel ... The merged enterprise had opened the Auschwitz slave labor camp on June 14, 1940, ... www.padrak.com/alt/BUSHBOOK_1.html ParaPolitics Forum - ParaPolitics - General - How Bush's ...... Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after ... the big daddy partner that gave Prescott Bush his start ... Even though I hate the Bush family and would do ... www.parapolitics.info/phorum/ read.php?f=4&i=751&t=751 How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power | News From ...George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, ... Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the ... www.newsfrombabylon.com/index.php?q=node/ 4247&CSID=2c87a8cfb87b3ebd067ff0ddbeb28bf4 George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Part 1 of 8Return to the ...zinc mines in Silesia, Poland and Germany. Since September 1939, these ... opened the Auschwitz slave labor camp on June 14, 1940, to produce ... www.internetpirate.com/ George%20Bush%20The%20Unauthorized%20Biography%20-%20Part%201%20of%208.htm Clubplanet Nightlife Message Boards - Hatred of Bush? Not here... valuable coal and zinc mines in Silesia, Poland and ... project went into high gear, Harriman-Bush shares in ... Harriman Fifteen Corp., run by Prescott Bush and Bert ... bbs.clubplanet.com/showthread.php?t=189667 *** I haven't checked these links out, but they look like a good place to start anyway. The 'rest' of the search: <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=Prescott+Bush,+Silesia+coal+mines,+slave+labour,+lawsuit&spell=1">www.google.com/search?hl=...it&spell=1</a> Starman

by **dbeach** » Sat May 06, 2006 3:53 pm

"But of course the president that turned Soviet-era gulags into secret CIA prisons in order to do God-knows-what to God-knows-whom isn't talking about individual freedom. He means corporate freedom -- freedom for the great multinationals to extract everything they can from the world's resources and labor without the hindrance of public interest laws, environmental regulations or worker protections. " back in the 60s we called the PTB the establishment or the pigs we talked about the "man"..how the police have too much power we read 1984 animal farm and asked questions..THE PIGS responded by saying criminals have too many rights and they passed more laws and the pigs infiltrated EVERY anti-govt group EVERY and now their greedy pig attitudes are increasingly more viscious. Been saying for yrs bush and the pigs will divide us with fear and wars until the resistance breaks and they can mass rape the planet. .Its up to you and me to RESIST in our hearts minds and souls..THEY are satanic and that is the TRUE NATURE of the pigs the establishment the PTB whatever you tag these fascists I am a devout Catholic and I DO NOT expect Christ to save me or this planet..WE THE PEOPLE..need to be the resistance The ole nuns said :" God helps those who first stop and help themselves.." we are trapped behind enemy lines and we rebel against their war machine with LOVE and Peace... They are a bunch of sickos and need prayers..

by **slimmouse** » Sat May 06, 2006 6:06 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>They are a bunch of sickos and need prayers..<hr></blockquote> The reptilian controlled leaders trapped in the fourth dimension need more love than most. Its just a pity that they dont know that. And thats a fact <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/alien.gif ALT="0]"> - in my book at least <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)">

by **NavnDansk** » Mon May 08, 2006 1:13 am

Thank you Starman, that is something that I have wanted to research for a while since seeing the FISA letter in the 1990s about civilian prison labor and Gary Webb's speech on the Military Industrial PRISON Complex and the news stories about Halliburton building "detention" centers on the Mainland USA and that Halliburton just opened another prison on Guantanamo Bay and will "unveil" yet another prison on Gitmo in August to hold 500 more prisoners according to a post on DU a while back. The enormous USA prison population in comparison with other countries and the Poppy bush Drug Lord imprisoning so many people on the bogus War On Drugs is something that should be researched and dots connected and I would like to find credible sources about Prescott Bush profitting from Auschwitz slave labor. Just read Jeff's long article on Cheney appearing at the Auschwitz's Memorial in an olive green parka and ski hat that read "Staff". == dbeach - I think of a quote from a letter in Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago where his wife writes him about "the terrible crime which the failure to love is." and in thinking about the BFEE and their backers it seems appropriate. Maybe love is an energy force -- Proverbs states that "Love is stronger than death" and that is the Blessed Promise in the Bible. Hard to love - agape in these times with what is happening. Try to take some time to visit spiritual and arts (museums) sites.<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)">

by **Dreams End** » Mon May 08, 2006 10:33 am

navndansk used another thread to take offense at my response in this one. Confusing, but I should respond here. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>I noticed in another thread that in making a completely different point that you started out making a nasty crack about your own definition of neocon as a gratuitous insult aimed at me.<hr></blockquote> What are you talking about? This was the only thing I said about your post: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>navndansk: Excellent post. I think maybe the neocons were around but used different names. Me: This is not possible. Neo-con specifically refers to those who "converted" from liberalism. Really, they were cold-war liberals...propped up to promote anti-Soviet liberalism to offset left groups which were pro-Soviet or else not anti-Soviet enough. It also could be neo, says wikipedia, because it is a new form of Conservatism...one not minding "big government", but that's always been a fake value of traditional conservatism in my view. The state merely expands in different places. But that's another debate.<hr></blockquote> How is that a "nasty crack"? People are consistently putting Rumsfeld and Cheney in this "neocon" camp on the one hand and on the other, using the term to mean something much narrower..meaning...well, Zionists or something...Israeli spies...something in that general area. since I believe that focusing purely on "neocons" in whatever light and not noticing a long history of similar behavior by such political animals as "liberals" (Johnson, for example and the Vietnam war which killed FAR more people on both sides than both Iraq wars). I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings. And how is that "hijacked"? Isn't this thread about neocons?

by **wordspeak** » Mon May 08, 2006 7:40 pm

I totally agree with Dream's End that, "By pinning the tail on the neo-con there is a tendency to believe that if you just get rid of this little group, you've fixed the problem." I think that's why the neo-cons are scapegoats. They did not "hijack" power, as the story goes. There was never any significant transfer of power. There has been a "continuity of government" in the U.S. (and increasingly globally) for decades, essentially for at least a century, really. Sure, I agree, Starman, this cabal is particularly outgoing in its modus operandi, but that's exactly the idea. The ruling elites could switch back to a more "friendly fascist" Clinton-style Administration, and would people then be appeased, while the fascism continued- possibly. So the neo-con cabal represents one side of the coin. It may be the case that their usefullness runs out. Certainly, George Soros, who represents a massively powerful financial network, didn't want Bush re-elected, and it may be ultimately more beneficial for the global elites to pull back the more overt primacy military imperialism, in favor of the more stealth economic imperialism. That case was made in The New Statesman a couple years ago: "By making US ambitions so clear, the Bush gang has committed the cardinal sin of giving the game away. For years, Soros and his NGOs have gone about their work extending the boundaries of the "free world" so skilfully that hardly anyone noticed. Now a Texan redneck and a gang of overzealous neo-cons have blown it." <a href="http://www.mindfully.org/WTO/2003/George-Soros-Statesman2jun03.htm">www.mindfully.org/WTO/200...2jun03.htm</a> I'm not quite convinced that the Bush cabal has exactly "blown it." The New World Order vision seems as alive and well as ever. However, this is not some new thing, and we should understand "blame-PNAC" as a false meme, a scapegoat. Anyway, didn't the term "neoliberalism," which equated to corporate globalization, used to be the butt of criticism? Now it's suddenly "neo-conservatism." Seems like a funny linguistics twist there.

Bush/Neocon Model: War Serves Corporate Globalization

Bush/Neocon Model: War Serves Corporate Globalization

Re: Bush/Neocon Model: War Serves Corporate Globalization

Re: Bush/Neocon Model: War Serves Corporate Globalization

Re: Bush/Neocon Model: War Serves Corporate Globalization

Re: Bush/Neocon Model: War Serves Corporate Globalization

Re: Bush/Neocon Model: War Serves Corporate Globalization

Reptillians trapped in the 4th dimension......

Re: Bush/Neocon Model: War Serves Corporate Globalization

Re: Bush/Neocon Model: War Serves Corporate Globalization

neo-conned

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