9/11 opportunists took advantage of public fear and outrage to give the Executive broad new powers to make war wherever, whenever. Against "terrorists." Against Al Quaeda.
Even Obama is holding on to that grotesque paradigm shift, telling Congress he only consults it out of courtesy, but claiming the right to deploy military force unilaterally.
It's not a conceit or hyperbole or political rhetoric that one of the strongest influences in the country -- and probably THE best-funded, is the defense industry / MIL. It has real power and more than a few major leaders in its pocket. And it only wants one thing:
WAR. Neverending,constant, infinitely costly, and every possible way, war. War is one of the most effective mechanisms of moving wealth from the bottom and the middle to the very top of our society. It has become not only an endlessly greedy industry, but a flat-out scam perpetrated deliberately straight from the halls of own government. There can be no debate about whether this is the case any more.
The only question is how we will deal with it.
The Pentagon launched its covert media analyst program in 2002, to sell the Iraq war. Later, it was used to sell an image of progress in Afghanistan, whitewash the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and defend the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping, as David Barstow reported in his New York Times expose.
Millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in IraqBut the pundits weren't just selling government talking points. As Robert Bevelacqua, William Cowan and Carlton Sherwood enjoyed high-level Pentagon access through the analyst program, their WVC3 Group sought "contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq," reported Barstow. Cowan admitted to "push[ing] hard" on a WVC3 contract, during a Pentagon-funded trip to Iraq.
Then there's Pentagon pundit Robert H. Scales Jr. The military firm he co-founded in 2003, Colgen, has an interesting range of clients, from the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Special Operations Command, to Pfizer and Syracuse University, to Fox News and National Public Radio.
Of the 27 Pentagon pundits named publicly to date, six are registered as federal lobbyists. That's in addition to the less formal -- and less transparent -- boardroom to war-room influence peddling described above. (There are "more than 75 retired officers" who took part in the Pentagon program overall, according to Barstow.)
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2008/05/7282/what-pentagon-pundits-were-selling-side-propaganda-meets-corporate-lobbying
= new reply since forum marked as read