Re: grand theft pentagon... follow up on previous thread



On Sat, 15 Apr 2006, Aging_Recycled_Scientist wrote:

Grand Theft Pentagon
Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Common Courage Press
November 2005
.

Grand Theft Pentagon tells the scandalous story of how some of the
world's mightiest and must ruthless corporations exploited the tragic
events of 9/11 to make billions upon billions in the form of government
contracts with the connivance of the Bush administration.

Me? I got sick to my stomach when I saw, appearing almost instantly after 9/11, raftloads of American flags, of all kinds and sizes, come out in stores at prices that looked like 20-30 times what it cost to make them, to exploit emotional/psychological feelings of ordinary people all for the purpose of enriching a few people who could push "selling" onto the gullible.

In a riveting
work of investigative reporting, Jeffrey St. Clair shines a merciless
searchlight into some of the murkiest corners of the Pentagon, exposing
the sweatheart deals between the defense department and its favorite
coterie contractors: Boeing, Bechtel, Halliburton and the Carlyle
Group.

My first experience with how corruption really works in the DOD is after I read the book "In the Name of Science" by Harold Neiburg (circa 1960s). Its pretty bad. Everything from how TRW took generator armatures from GM, paying $20 each, having guys in the warehouse take them out of cardboard boxes with GM on the side and put them into new cardboard boxes with TRW on the side, and selling them to the Air Force for $70 each, to vast scams and schemes. DOD? I wonder if the value of the crime there could be on the same order of magnitude as all the rest of the crime in the country.

Among the many explosive revelations in Grand Theft Pentagon is a
first--hand account from an emissary to Afghanistan of how the Bush
administration refused an offer by the Taliban to turn over Osama Bin
Laden and his top leadership. They wanted total war instead. First on
Afghanistan, then Iraq. In shocking detail, St. Clair unveils how the
Bush administration hired a team of marketing and PR executives to sell
their fraudulent war claims to a panic--striken public, a complicit
congress engorged with arms PAC money and a gullible national press
corps. Here you will find scathing portraits of the enablers of this
corrupt system---- from George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, to Senators
Ted Stevens and the pseudo--maverick John McCain---- and the war
profiteers themselves, from DynCorp and Lockheed to the devious
machinations of the RAND, Corp and Magnequench, the missile company
that outsourced its work to China.

See below...

In the wake of 9/11, the Pentagon was handed a blank check, which it
used to resurrect some of the most baroque relics of the Cold War, from
the B--2 steath bomber and the F--22 fighter to the most fanciful of
all boondoggles, the $80 billion Star Wars missile defense system. In
this hard--hitting exposé, St. Clair shows, through the use of the
Pentagon's own damning internal documents, that none of these big
ticket weapons systems are needed and that none of them has ever worked
as advertised. Indeed, these destabilizing arms programs have
backfired, hurling the nation to the brink of bankruptcy and sparking a
new global arms race.

From the war room at the White House to the board room of Halliburton,
Grand Theft Pentagon is a harrowing trip through the new imperial
order, where the weapons companies make a killing, while the citizens
of the world cower under the shadow of perpetual war


Don't forget that book, now out in paperback I think, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" see my review below.


-------------------------------

title: "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"
author: John Perkins
ISBN: 1-57675-301-8, pub: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
copyright 2004, $24.95 new, around $15 new or used on Amazon.
www.bkconnection.com, 250 pp, incl. author info, index,
many pages of references and sources including some www URLs.

What Economic Hit Men (EHMs) do:

Quotes--

from page xvii of the Prologue:

"...we build a global empire. We are an elite
group of men and women who utilize
international finance organizations to foment
conditions that make other nations subservient
to the corporatocracy running our biggest
corporations, our government, and our banks.
Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs
provide favors. These take the form of loans
to develop infrastructure--electric generating
plants, highways, ports, airports, or
industrial parks. A condition of of such loans
is that engineering and construction companies
from our own country must build all of these
projects. In essence, most of the money never
leaves the United States; it is simply
transferred from the banking offices in
Washington to engineering offices in New York,
Houston, or San Francisco."

"Despite the fact that the money is returned
almost immediately to corporations that are
members of the corporatocracy (the creditors),
the recipient country is required to pay it
all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM
is completely successful, the loans are so
large that the debtor is forced to default on
its payments after a few years. When this
happens, then like the Mafia we demand our
pound of flesh. This often includes one or
more of the following: control over United
Nations votes, the installation of military
bases, or access to precious resources such as
oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor
still owes us the money--and another country
is added to our global empire."

from page xiii of the Prologue:

"Because of my fellow EHMs and me, Ecuador is
in far worse shape today than she was before
we introduced her to the miracles of modern
economics, banking, and engineering. Since
1970, during this period known euphemistically
as the Oil Boom, the official poverty level
grew from 50 to 70 percent, under- or
unemployment increased from 15 to 70 percent,
and public debt increased from $240 million to
$16 billion. Meanwhile, the share of national
resources allocated to the poorest segments of
the population declined from 20 to 6 percent."

from page xx of the Prologue:

"For every $100 of crude taken out of the
Ecuadorian rain forests, the oil companies
receive $75. Of the remaining $25, three-
quarters must go to paying off the foreign
debt. Most of the remainder covers military
and other government expenses--which leaves
about $2.50 for health, education, and
programs aimes at helping the poor."

from page xxi of the Prologue:

"We seldom resort to anything illegal because
the system itself is built on subterfuge, and
the system is by definition legitimate."

"However--and this is a very large caveat--if
we fail, and even more sinister breed steps
in, ones we EHMs refer to as the jackals, men
who trace their heritage directly to those
earlier empires. When they emerge, heads of
state are overthrown or die in violent
"accidents." And, if by chance the jackals
fail, as they failed in Afghanistan and Iraq,
then the old models resurface [meaning troops
are sent in]."

from page 16, Chapter 2:

"Claudine and I openly discussed the deceptive
nature of GNP. For instance, the growth of GNP
may result even when it profits only one
person, such as an individual who owns a
utility company, and even if the majority of
the population is burdened with debt. The rich
get richer and the poor grow poorer. Yet, from
a statistical standpoint, this is recorded as
economic progress."

from page 19, Chapter 2:

"By the time I enrolled in BU's business
school, a solution to the Roosevelt-as-CIA-
agent problem had already been worked out.
U.S. intelligence agencies--including the NSA-
-would identify prospective EHMs, who could
then be hired by international corporations.
These EHMs would never be paid by the
government; instead, they would draw their
salaries from the private sector. As a result,
their dirty work, if exposed, would be chalked
up to corporate greed rather than to
government policy. In addition, the
corporations that hired them, although paid by
government agencies and their multinational
banking counterparts (with taxpayer money),
would be insulated from congressional
oversight and public scrutiny, shielded by a
growing body of legal initiatives, including
trademarks, international trade, and Freedom
of Information laws."

Around pages 84 and after, the author mentions
an agreement made with the government of Saudi
Arabia to build up its infrastructure. The
arrangements were a little different. Instead
of using US money which flowed to the foreign
country as debt but which in reality just
flowed to corporate bank accounts, Saudi oil
dollars came to the corporate bank accounts to
pay for those airports, malls, etc., and part
of the deal, which ran over a 25 year period,
was that the Saudi govt would guarantee a
minimum amount of oil production targeted for
delivery to the USA and within price ranges
acceptable to the USA and in return for this,
the US government would provide whatever
military assistance the Saudi royal family
would ever need to defend its dominion over
Saudi Arabia (the author says it was an offer
they could not refuse).

from page 102:

"I brought a young MIT mathematician, Dr.
Nadipuram Prasad, into my department and gave
him a budget. Within six months he developed a
Markov method for econometric modeling.
Together we hammered out a series of technical
papers that presented Markov as a
revolutionary method for forecasting the
impact of infrastructure investment on
economic development.

next paragraph, same page:

"It was exactly what we wanted: a tool that
scientifically "proved" we were doing
countries a favor by helping them incur debts
they would never be able to pay off. In
addition, only a highly skilled econometrician
with lots of time and money could possibly
comprehend the intricacies of Markov or
question its conclusion."

from page 160:

"The Bechtel Group, Inc., was a prime example
of the cozy relationship between private
companies and the U.S. government. I knew
Bechtel well; we at MAIN often worked closely
with the company, and its cheif architect
became a close personal friend. Bechtel [there
is at least one whole book on Bechtel and its
secrecy and secret dealings] was the United
States' most influential engineering and
construction company. Its president and senior
officers included George Shultz and Caspar
Weinberger, who despised Torrijos [who later
died in a mysterious accident] because he
brazenly courted a Japanese plan to replace
Panama's existing canal with a new, more
efficient one."

The rest of the book gives details on the
author's involvment in EHM activities in many
other countries and reveals how the author's
conscience began to bother him to the point
where he vowed to expose this work by writing
the above book. For those people wishing to
delve more deeply into such issues, one need
only look at the bottom of the page after the
title page for hints on where else to look.
Here one will often find something like the
following (quoted from this book). Read it
carefully.
"1. Perkins, John. 1945- 2. United States.
National Security Agency--Biography. 3.
Economists--United States--Biography. 4.
Energy consultants--United States--Biography.
5 Intelligence agents--United States--
Biography. 6 Chas. T. Main, Inc. 7. World
Bank--Developing countries. 8 Corporations,
American--Foreign countries. 9. Corporations,
American--Corrupt practices. 10. Imperialism--
History--20th century. 11. Imperialism--
History--21st century I. Title. UB271.U52P47 2004
332'.042'092--dc22"

Relevant Pages

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    ... PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: ... Or because of the possibility of the existence of WMDs in one country, ... But the war was not waged to ... they have put the elected government under ...
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  • Re: Carta de Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a Bush
    ... PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: ... Or because of the possibility of the existence of WMDs in one country, ... But the war was not waged to ... they have put the elected government under ...
    (soc.culture.venezuela)
  • Saddam was a murderous dictator
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    (soc.culture.polish)
  • Re: There is no real terror threat...
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  • Re: BTW, Happy Independence Day for Americans here!
    ... We finally got around to invading a country that had been, ... weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. ... His acts of war should have been enough to have gotten his ass ... your very own government breaks that very same law whenever they ...
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