Building Blocks of War (Tom Tomorrow)

[pokerfan]

Last edited Mon Sep 22, 2014, 11:38 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/22/1330850/-Cartoon-Building-blocks-of-war

[Octafish]

1. Because Reasons.

[pokerfan]

2. Is it Groundhog Day?

Because I'm getting this déjà vu feeling...

[Octafish]

16. Deja vu Vietnam also meant money and opportunity for War Party...

East African Oil – Hot Tip of the Decade!

And for at least half a century, where the oil is is where the MIC goes. Consider Vietnam, where Texas oil man George Herbert Walker Bush went on CIA business:

CIA Helped Bush Senior In Oil Venture

By Russ Baker
WhoWhatWhy.com, Jan 7, 2007

Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a ‘real shocker.’

But the freshly uncovered memos contend that Bush maintained a close personal and business relationship for decades with a CIA staff employee who, according to those CIA documents, was instrumental in the establishment of Bush’s oil venture, Zapata, in the early 1950s, and who would later accompany Bush to Vietnam as a “cleared and witting commercial asset” of the agency.

According to a CIA internal memo dated November 29, 1975, Bush’s original oil company, Zapata Petroleum, began in 1953 through joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned his agency position that same year to go into private business. The ’75 memo describes Devine as an “oil wild-catting associate of Mr. Bush.” The memo is attached to an earlier memo written in 1968, which lays out how Devine resumed work for the secret agency under commercial cover beginning in 1963.

“Their joint activities culminated in the establishment of Zapata Oil,” the memo reads. In fact, early Zapata corporate filings do not seem to reflect Devine’s role in the company, suggesting that it may have been covert. Yet other documents do show Thomas Devine on the board of an affiliated Bush company, Zapata Offshore, in January, 1965, more than a year after he had resumed work for the spy agency.

It was while Devine was in his new CIA capacity as a commercial cover officer that he accompanied Bush to Vietnam the day after Christmas in 1967, remaining in the country with the newly elected congressman from Texas until January 11, 1968. Whatever information the duo was seeking, they left just in the nick of time. Only three weeks after the two men departed Saigon, the North Vietnamese and their Communist allies launched the Tet offensive with seventy thousand troops pre-positioned in more than 100 cities and towns.

While the elder Bush was in Vietnam with Devine, George W. Bush was making contact with representatives of the Texas Air National Guard, using his father’s connections to join up with an elite, Houston-based Guard unit – thus avoiding overseas combat service in a war that the Bushes strongly supported. -

CONTINUED...

http://whowhatwhy.com/2007/01/07/cia-bush-senior-oil-venture/

Which helps explain, for me at least, WTF we were doing wasting all those lives in Vietnam.

[EEO]

12. Worst. President. Ever. And she was a collaborator.

Nixon was a swell guy compared to George W. Bush, who was just a puppet.

[Octafish]

17. She looks so happy.

Here's her hubby's Grandpa Prescott's take on Iraq from 1959, the guy Ike was talking about
when he thought of making it: “Military-Intelligence-Congressional Complex.”



Then-U.S. Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush, wrote back in 1959, cheerleading for Boeing, General Electric, Westinghouse, Remington,
CondescendaChevron and the rest of the war profiteers hogging at the trough of the U.S. Treasury:

To Preserve Peace Let’s Show Russians How Strong We Are

By Prescott Bush
U.S. Senator from Connecticut;
member of the Senate Armed Services Committee
The Reader’s Digest July 1959

MAN’S GREATEST danger, it is said, is ignorance. In a very real sense, the Soviet Union’s ignorance of our military strength may be the source of her gravest peril—and ours. Kaiser Wilhelm started World War I because he miscalculated Allied power. Hitler, mistakenly thinking he could blitz the world, launched World War II. Kruschev today lacks firsthand knowledge of our country; he may be given what others think he would like to hear—rather than an objective report on our actual military strength. Although it seems impossible that any sane person could start a war, we would be wise to take no chances.

Why not invite the Soviet high command to the United States for a conducted tour of our military might? We are bringing Russians to see our farms and factories, our scientific laboratories and research centers; we exchange dancers and musicians. Why not have their military leaders over for the most beneficial look of all? Our expressed policy, the aim and purpose of our entire defense system, is to deter the Kremlin from starting a war. What better way to deter than to show?

What we could show is nothing more nor less than the greatest military might ever assembled in the history of the world. If the Soviet high command could see what we have, they should be of our mind—that for them to start war today would be an act of insanity.

We could start in a Pentagon briefing room. There, with maps, globes, films and sound-projection equipment to help illustrate our points, we could give them a good hard look at the distribution of American power. Then we could fly the group to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Montana, where bombers of the Strategic Air Command are on 24-hour alert, many ready to take off within 15 minutes. We could see an awe-inspiring line of B-47’s, any one of which can, in a single mission, deliver explosive power equivalent to that of all the bombs dropped by all sides in World War II. We could invite the commander of the Soviet air force to ride in one of these planes, and see it refueled in the air, thus quietly demonstrating that, while most Soviet bombers would have to fly one-way missions, ours can strike any target in the world and return nonstop.

SNIP...

The demonstration at SAC should effectively dismiss from Soviet minds any speculation about the possibility of their gaining an advantage from all-out war any time soon. But we must face the fact that in a few years the Russians may be able to zero in our SAC bases with ballistic missiles. To drive this temptation out of their minds, we could show them other deterrents.

CONTINUES…

The Reader’s Digest
July 1959 pp. 25-30

Prescott Bush detailed how Kruschev and the head of the Soviet armed forces be our guest on nuclear submarines, demonstrations of sea- and land-launched ICBMs, operations from aircraft carriers and a cruise aboard the inter-continental strategic bomber, the B-52.

The guy was on to something. You know how much they get for a B-2 these days? Two billion? Each?



Almost forgot. Prescott also discussed the strategic importance of Iraq –
the very same right next door to Iran, the very place the CIA and MI6 had, five years earlier,
replaced a democratically elected government with a despot, the Shah. For the oil, I’d wager.

It’s fortunate for them that we want only peace with justice. Our entire record attests to that. We have no history of aggression, profess no desire for world domination, as do the Communists. Only by their continued menace have we been forced to take these measures for defense.

I ASK, “Why don’t we show the Russians many of these defense measures?” What I would not show them is any self-satisfaction on our part about the future, any slowing-up of plans to produce the new weapons which must inevitably take the place of the old ones. I believe we are in a continuing struggle to keep on top in this business of declaring war. I think that the Russians are never to be underrated. [font color="red"]I also believe that the Communists are master bluffers that they seek to put us off by arrogant threats to Berlin and to the peace of the far Pacific, and, while our people are preoccupied with these threats, they may try to take over Iraq as the Chinese Reds have conquered Tibet.
[/font color]

So. At least three generations of the Bush Family Evil Empire have had their eyes on Iraq’s oil. Interesting how Prescott mentioned Tibet's destruction by China. How was he to know his namesake, Prescott Jr., would one day become head of the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce? The article also shows how Prescott Sr. boosted the Cold War, way back in ’59. Maybe it’s not such a coincidence to think that three generations of crazy petroleum-loving bidnissmen would rise to the top echelons of American leadership.



IMFO, this is exactly what Ike was talking about when he mentioned being on our guard against the “Military-Industrial Complex.” The Bushes and their supporters may think they're American royalty, but all they are is a multi-generational mob of traitors, warmongers and rip-off artistes. Compared to them, Nixon was a saint.

[nashville_brook]

27. who could have imagined...

the world's greatest superpower would lie the world into war and still be at it… how many years later.

Of course, the whole point is not to "win" - the point is to spend. Wheeeee!

[IDemo]

3. If it's good enough for Sensible Woodchuck,

it's good enough for me. Fight proud, hut, hut, hut!

[pokerfan]

4. Sensible Woodchuck is Sensible

[nashville_brook]

26. wish DU had a "like" button

[Zorra]

5. Tom Tomorrow nails it perfectly once again. nt

[whatchamacallit]

6. I'm going to kick this every day until Obama's War is over n/t

[pokerfan]

13. Have at it...

Right now I'm feeling like a person without a party.

[countryjake]

7. Kick & Recommend!

[JEB]

8. K&R

[indepat]

9. No Dem president can afford to drop his guard and let 'pukes claim he is weak on national defense

and soft on terra, so the only answer is to bomb 'em into oblivion like any self-respecting 'puke would do.

[99Forever]

10. Perfect.

[FlatStanley]

11. SSDD

[99th_Monkey]

14. "Definitely no ground war", "unless we have to", "Which we probably will" <--BRILLIANT!!

Which is exactly what happened, verbatim.

[deutsey]

24. I know...

I remember hearing this on the news and thought it sounded more like a skit from SNL, The Smothers Brothers, or Dr. Strangelove.

[Hissyspit]

15. Previous post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025569228

[pokerfan]

19. I thought I checked for dupes

Sorry

[Hissyspit]

20. No problem.

Just hoping to get it recced to the front page. (Which it did.)

[pokerfan]

22. Ah, mystery solved

This thread was actually started 30 minutes prior to yours, explaining why my search for dupes revealed nothing.

[countryjake]

23. 'Cept Hissy's was posted early yesterday morning...

but it doesn't matter and there's nothing wrong with lots of exposure for a spot-on toon

Here's another big KICK for Tom Tomorrow (Lets see if we can get this one on the front page, too!)

[Gothmog]

18. Great cartoon

[hifiguy]

21. The dead center of the bull's eye.

Par for the course for Tom Tomorrow.

[nashville_brook]

25. manic pixie dream insurgents