The War Profiteers---10/14/13 Antiwar.com Column

[Peace&Freedom]

A really powerful column by Raimondo today spells out the financial connections of the "commentators" in the media to the military industrial complex. Some highlights:

"...Particularly egregious: Stephen Hadley, former Bush administration official, whose membership on the board of Raytheon, a major military contractor, was never disclosed – although his other credentials as a "defense expert" were touted by his hosts on CNN, MSNBC, and Bloomberg TV. An op-ed for the Washington Post somehow neglected to note this little detail. As PAI documents, Hadley makes a pretty penny from his expertise at ginning up wars:

"Hadley earns $128,500 in annual cash compensation from the company and chairs its public affairs committee. He also owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate ($77.65 on August 23, making Hadley’s share’s worth $891,189). Despite this financial stake, Hadley was presented to his audience as an experienced, independent national security expert."

Raytheon stock rose during the debate over Syria on the prospect that President Obama would soon be lobbing Tomahawk missiles – made by Raytheon – at Bashar al-Assad. Each missile costs $1.41 million: we launched half a billion dollars worth during the Libya adventure. Hadley was for that one, too. Notice that in that last link – an interview with Obama cultist Andrea Mitchell – Hadley is introduced as a former national security advisor "and is currently with the United States Institute of Peace." What Mitchell doesn’t tell her viewers, who may think USIP is a real thinktank, is that the "Institute" is a US government agency devoted to rationalizing American foreign policy.

In these circles, however, the distinction between the public and the private is vague-to-nonexistent. If you take a good look at the PAI report, it charts commentators’ ties to various "consulting groups," the biggest of which involve former US government officials as principals and/or founders. This is the central nexus of the War Party, a crucial network of interlocking elites who perpetuate our interventionist foreign policy and short-circuit – in most cases – opposition outside the Washington beltway.

Take, for example, the Albright Stonebridge Group, founded by Madeleine "Indispensable Nation" Albright, an interventionist nest that sits high up in the tree now that a Democrat is in the White House. Albright’s hyper-interventionist views – she once complained to Colin Powell "what’s the use of having this superb military if we don’t use it?" – are now being parlayed into some nice profits (although ASG doesn’t make their internals public, they do have quite a generous profit-sharing 401k plan)...

The ideology behind the profiteering is crony capitalism, or oligarchical capitalism, as I prefer to call it, in which the coin of the realm is political connections rather than entrepreneurial savvy or technical innovativeness. What the novelist Ayn Rand called the "aristocracy of pull" is now clearly dominant in the US, where the wealthiest counties in the country are those surrounding Washington, D.C., and the amount of corporate welfare being ladled out in the federal budget has reached an all-time high.

This is the way it has always worked in the foreign policy realm: rich backers think up a profit-making enterprise which requires the support of the US government in order to turn a profit – often involving turning the US military into a company’s private police force. Their friends in Washington cook up a "national security" rationale for US intervention in the targeted area, and – bingo! We have the Panama Canal!"

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2...ar-profiteers/

[satchelmcqueen]

im not surprised.

[FSP-Rebel]

[enhanced_deficit]

Interesting.

[Carlybee]

War, Inc.

[Peace&Freedom]

"This is the way it has always worked in the foreign policy realm: rich backers think up a profit-making enterprise which requires the support of the US government in order to turn a profit – often involving turning the US military into a company’s private police force. Their friends in Washington cook up a "national security" rationale for US intervention in the targeted area, and – bingo! We have the Panama Canal!"

The article here virtually admits that the profiteers bake false flag pretexts to further the empire building and war profits. This is why talking up the inside jobs and false flags has always been superior means of short circuiting the war whoopers' campaigns. Notice how the 'Attack Syria by Labor Day' drumbeat collapsed when the international community declined to accept the legitimacy of US claims that the Syrian government must have been behind the chemical attacks. Endorsing the (likely manufactured) "evildoers are attacking us/civilians" meme leads to war, resisting it avoids war.

You can't wake people up, if you're not waking them up. Talk that merely repeats the rational case against blowback will not change the dynamic. Pointing out the public has been lied to, that Bin laden, Saddam, et al were CIA assets, false flags from 9/11 onward have manipulated us into accepting war, empire and TSA groping, etc., would change the dynamic, and can break the spell of the pro-war framework.

[Brian4Liberty]

This is the way it has always worked in the foreign policy realm: rich backers think up a profit-making enterprise which requires the support of the US government in order to turn a profit – often involving turning the US military into a company’s private police force. Their friends in Washington cook up a "national security" rationale for US intervention in the targeted area, and – bingo! We have the Panama Canal!"

And let's not forget taxes and debt. Lots and lots of debt...