Amy Goodman interview... holy crap!

[Serial Mom]

As I was searching for something, I came across this interview with "Halliburton's Army" author published yesterday - wow, just wow!

But why should we be surprised about corruption and lying and cheating and corporate welfare and stuffing pockets and (add your own idea of how the taxpayer gets screwed)!


Author tells how well-connected Texas oil company revolutionized way America makes war.

<snip>

AMY GOODMAN: The title of your book is Halliburton’s Army; the subtitle, How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War. Very quickly, the history, how did this happen?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Well, this actually goes back many years. Most people think, you know, well, Halliburton was brought in by Dick Cheney. Not true at all. Kellogg Brown, & Root, or Brown & Root at the time, was building warships during the Second World War. In Vietnam, they built almost all the bases there. You can go to Cam Ranh Bay in Southeast Asia. I talk about Donald Rumsfeld actually arriving in 1966. He visits the bases, and then he comes back to the US Congress, and he speaks in the House of Representatives, and he says, “This company, you know, they don’t have receipts. They are wasting money, and they’re paying off the President.”

AMY GOODMAN: And they were paying…?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: They were paying off the President.

AMY GOODMAN: Lyndon Baines Johnson.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: In this case, Lyndon B. Johnson. So, fast-forward thirty-seven years, and he is the man who’s giving them a contract. And actually, it’s Rumsfeld really; it’s not even Cheney. It’s Rumsfeld who’s looking to this system of outsourcing war, of finding Indians to clean toilets and that sort of thing, so that Americans, you know, can invade Iraq.

<snip>

[atommom]

1. Do you have a link to the rest? Pretty explosive stuff.

[Serial Mom]

2. Oops, sorry... here it is

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/features/?id=30359

I am having problems with links this morning!

[Jazzgirl]

3. Here is a link to Democracy Now's recording.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/9/pratap_chatterjee_on_halliburtons_army_how

[atommom]

4. kick

[babylonsister]

5. Thanks. Bookmarked. nt

[democracy1st]

6. K & R thanks Serial Mom I'll look into it

[Greyhound]

7. K&R, watching it now, thanks. n/t

[Danascot]

8. Sounds a lot like the movie War, Inc.

Great concept and acting talent though it was kind of disappointing. It could have been a lot funnier and hard-hitting.

[1776Forever]

9. Outsourcing the entire government was Rumsfeld's dream - I saw it coming in 2002

There was a whole website devoted to it! Rumsfeld made a speech on it on September 10th - Yes you read the right - Sept. 10, 2001!

You can read about it here:

http://www.channelingreality.com/The_Coup/Rumsfeld_Military_Privatization.htm

On September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech to kick off DOD Acquisition and Logistics Excellence Week Kickoff—Bureaucracy to Battlefield. It was in this speech that Rumsfeld said that by some estimates "we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions".

The assumption made by most people in the 9-11 Truth community that what he meant was that $2.3 trillion dollars came up missing from the DOD accounts. And they pointed at Dov Zakheim as the suspect because he was Undersecretary of Defense and Comptroller of the Pentagon. That's a reasonable suspicion minus a few critical insights into the process of selling information technology and computer systems. It's standard procedure in the IT Consulting business when justifying costs for new systems to pump up the negatives as reasons why the new system(s) are needed. The bigger the new system(s), the higher the dollar value of the negatives for not doing it. The fact that Rumsfeld used $2.3 trillion as the negative indicates how big the contract values are for the privatization of the military that he was selling.

(Read on for more rip-offs to our treasury - it is no wonder we are in the condition we are in now)

..........

I wrote many letters to my Senators and others about the danger of doing this. Not one of them was on my side on this matter! I even wrote the Bush White House and asked them fire Rumsfeld. Rummy is still welcomed into the dinners and hasn't been held accountable for anything!

If you really want to research it go here:

http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:suMD2VyeQJYJ:https://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/02winter/smith.htm+author:%22Smith%22+intitle:%22The+New+Condottieri+and+US+Policy:+The+Privatization+of+...%22+

:argh:

[underpants]

10. "I don't care how much it is as long as KBR builds it"

I believe that was the LBJ quote back in the day

[EmeraldCityGrl]

11. The Brown brothers financed LBJ's campaign. This has been on

Wikipedia for a few years.