How Much Are You Making On The War Daddy? +The Moral Sewer on Potomac

[indigobusiness]

(Assembled here are an assortment of links and portals for info into the nature and substance of govt spending vis a vis "The War Machine". From Dick Cheney and Haliburton, to the stellar analysis of the Pentagon by Chuck Spinney:
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Dick Cheney and the Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone
The Carlyle Group: Crony Capitalism without Borders
excerpted from the book
How Much Are You Making On The War Daddy?
A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration
by William D. Hartung
Nation Books, 2003, paper

pvii
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 State house, every office of the Federal government ...
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 D. Eisenhower, in a televised Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961
pxxi
It is simply not possible to have a multi-billion-dollar, multi-year tax cut, a Pentagon budget that will top $500 billion by the end of this decade, a seemingly endless string of wars for "regime change" that are paid for through emergency appropriations over and above the Pentagon's massive annual spending, plus massive new expenditures for intelligence and homeland security, and still expect the government to meet its traditional responsibilities in the areas of education, income security, transportation, health care, housing, environmental protection, and energy development.
pxxii
... when 50 percent of Americans don't even bother to vote, when most Americans get their news from the "shouting heads" and slick sound bites they hear on TV news, it's an open question whether the American public can rise to the occasion to restore and revive American democracy from the deep wounds suffered in November and December of 2000 ...

Dick Cheney and the Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone
p27
The revolving door between the government and weapons contractors isn't new, but it has reached new heights (monetarily) and depths (ethically), in recent years. Cheney's relationship with Halliburton is a perfect case study of all that is wrong with the relationship between our democratic form of government and the corporations that finance our elections and feed at the government trough on a daily basis.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/CarlyleGroup_HMOWD%3F.html

"Four sorrows ... are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal 'executive branch' of government into a military junta. Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens."
Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire



"Leaders symbolize what the country stands for. As corruption becomes routine in Washington in both parties, it trickles down as a corrupting influence in everyone's lives... Democracy is the ultimate casualty, and the sapping of democratic life is the most serious contribution of corporate ascendancy to our spiritual decline. As democracy ebbs, Americans retreat into private cocoons, feeling helpless to make a difference... In a democracy, civic participation and the belief in one's ability to contribute to the common good is the most important guarantor of public morality. When that belief fades, so too does the vision of the common good itself."
Charles Derber, Corporation Nation

HOME PAGE - http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/index.html

"To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them."
Michael Parenti
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Corporate Control of American Democracy
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Controlling_Corporations/ControllingCorporations.html

Introduction to Defense Death Spiral
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/defense_death_spiral/intro.htm

The Defense Budget Time Bomb Has Been Outted By the Congressional ...
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c468.htm

Deception at the Pentagon
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~canfrobt/spinney.html

snip

SPINNEY: They don't know where the money's going.

Well, guess what the Senate Armed Services and the House Armed Services agree to do in their infinite wisdom? They decided to waive the Pentagon's requirement for these annual audits in their authorization bills. So the Pentagon no longer has to do it.

Now the rationale was that we all know that this is a problem, we don't need to be told every year. Of course the one good thing about these audits was it would generate a small burst of news stories every April or May when the audits were due saying the Pentagon can't follow it's money. You know, there's a trillion dollars unaccounted for.

MOYERS: What does this do to the national ethos?

SPINNEY: Oh, I think it corrupts it. I think it corrupts it. Essentially you have all the pretensions of a democracy, we're really a democratic republic where you have representatives of the people in the government, and you have the representatives are under certain strictures to behave in a certain way. And in fact they're not behaving that way.

MOYERS: Your own…

SPINNEY: It's a fundamental moral issue.

MOYERS: Yeah, you've said it's a moral sewer there on the Potomac.

SPINNEY: That's correct.

MOYERS: What do you mean moral sewer?

SPINNEY: Well, fundamentally we take an oath of office to preserve the Constitution and we are in fact… in effect undermining the Constitution because we won't address this issue of accountability.

A lot of the people that are involved in this don't realize the moral implications of what they're doing. They regard what they're doing as being for the most patriotic of motives.

You know, "We've got to get the money out of Congress. And if we have to lie to get it, we'll do it. If we have to cook the books in order to sell a program, we'll do it because we're trying to save the country from the hoards," the Communist hoards or whatever…

snip

Chuck Spinney - with Bill Moyers
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_spinney.html

Chuck Spinney - Frontline
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/future/interviews/spinney.html

CHUCKSPINNEY AN AMERICAN PATRIOT!
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/12-06-03/discussion.cgi.2.html

The Great Wall of The War on Terror
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3045658

[indigobusiness]

1. This is worth the effort.

It is infuriating.

[realFedUp]

2. Thanks...this should be in mainstream media...

[indigobusiness]

3. Sure thing. I know what you mean.

I first heard about Chuck Spinney when he was interviewed on tv a few years back, and it amazes me he doesn't surface more often. He has a lot to offer to the court of public opinion.