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In reply to the discussion: C. Wright Mills: Sociological Imagination and the Power Elite [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)8. ''We have more will than wallet.'' -- George Herbert Walker Bush inaugural address
Then the guy found the vision thing long enough to pull a trillion bucks from Congress to bail out the Savings & Loan looted by his kin and cronies.
In Detroit, at HateFest 1980 GOP nominating convention:
After the election, the one-up one-down in the relationship really changed:
George Bush Takes Charge
The Uses of "Counter-Terrorism"
By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58
A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.
During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.
Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.
The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.
SNIP...
Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.
CONTINUED...
More details from Professor Simpson:
EXCERPT...
NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985
The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.
The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.
[font color="green"]The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.
Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.
CONTINUED...
CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.
This all used to be online, easily found via the GOOGLE. It's gone now, for some strange reason.
When you saw him, Poppy had already been running the show that matters for almost 8 years. Claiming national security, they've been able to hide their unconstitutionality, criminality and untold treason from the American people. All we can see are the wars without end and that the rich have gotten richer than ever and all we get is the "more will than wallet" of Austerity.
Thank you for sharing that personal history, leveymg. These crumb bums running the police state really are low.
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A class project -- organizing student protests@ '81 Reagan Inaugur - earned me an A and an FBI File.
leveymg
Jan 2016
#5
''We have more will than wallet.'' -- George Herbert Walker Bush inaugural address
Octafish
Jan 2016
#8
One thing I know: Mills wrote about the Military Industrial Complex before there was such a term.
Octafish
Jan 2016
#13
The elites murdered Caesar, overthrew the Republic, and did themselves in for greed.
Octafish
Jan 2016
#14
Power Elite was assigned reading in my poli sci days. Read this from Robert Reich:
groovedaddy
Jan 2016
#9
Reich reminds us Princeton study looked at US political scene before Citizens United.
Octafish
Jan 2016
#15
Have you found Parenti's theses to be confirmed by events over the past 35 years, hifiguy?
Octafish
Jan 2016
#19
yes, the triangle of power, the illusion of democracy, and the inactionary masses, nt
amborin
Jan 2016
#12
That explains why his story is seldom told any more, as JFK, who also addressed class and power...
Octafish
Jan 2016
#27
The power elite have been using all these same tricks and treasons upon us for thousands of years
Dont call me Shirley
Jan 2016
#20
A simple, few indviduals, yes. But propped up and hoisted on the shoulders of the many.
raouldukelives
Jan 2016
#24
When Mill tried to get his PE published at U. of Texas Press, the book was rejected....
Eleanors38
Jan 2016
#30