Iran, China get gear from Pentagon sales

[babylonsister]

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/01/appentagonsale070116/

Iran, China get gear from Pentagon sales

The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Jan 16, 2007 8:18:10 EST

The U.S. military has sold forbidden equipment at least a half-dozen times to middlemen for countries — including Iran and China — who exploited security flaws in the Defense Department’s surplus auctions. The sales include fighter jet parts and missile components.

In one case, federal investigators said, the contraband made it to Iran, a country President Bush branded part of an “axis of evil.”

In that instance, a Pakistani arms broker convicted of exporting U.S. missile parts to Iran resumed business after his release from prison. He purchased Chinook helicopter engine parts for Iran from a U.S. company that had bought them in a Pentagon surplus sale. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, speaking on condition of anonymity, said those parts made it to Iran.

The surplus sales can operate like a supermarket for arms dealers.

“Right Item, Right Time, Right Place, Right Price, Every Time. Best Value Solutions for America’s Warfighters,” the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service says on its Web site, calling itself “the place to obtain original U.S. Government surplus property.”

Federal investigators are increasingly anxious that Iran is within easy reach of a top priority on its shopping list: parts for the fleet of F-14 “Tomcat” fighter jets the U.S. let Iran buy in the 1970s when it was an ally.

In one case, convicted middlemen for Iran bought Tomcat parts from the Defense Department’s surplus division. Customs agents confiscated them and returned them to the Pentagon, which sold them again — customs evidence tags still attached — to another buyer, a suspected broker for Iran.

more...

[panader0]

1. Who's running the store?

Surplus parts shouild be recycled in our own country.

[whistle]

2. Exactly as planned....."WAR IS A RACKET"

...by Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient: Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC

Chapter One

WAR IS A RACKET

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 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?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce , their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace... War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."
<MORE entire book on-line>

http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

[peacetalksforall]

3. Double ways of screwing ourselves? Distinction required?

This thread is about auctions - selling to our enemies (to be used against our kids as long as our leaders keep us in war for the profit of a few).

The other way we're killing our kids is what has been out on the internet for awhile - the U.S. (Cheney?) trading with Pakistan's Khan and others - selling key nuclear parts (who gets what and what is the payoff? Enter Iran Khan Pakistan nuclear Cheney in a search engine.

The Khan reports have been coming out for quite awhile. The auction report is new?

This gives the press an out - if anyone gets to asking about nuclear supplies going to Iran the administration can deflect it by talking about the auction only and brush it off?

The net effect? We're killing our own with our own possessions. Thinking about the money trail and who gets what is mind boggling.

[babylonsister]

4. Yes, we're providing the armaments to kill our own. HArd to believe. nt

[jasmeel]

5. Rate this story up people! It needs visibility.

Especially when we're about to attack Iran.

Here's the Yahoo link to rate.
AP: Iran gets army gear in Pentagon sale
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070116/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/military_surplus_stings

[Kadie]

6. .

:kick: