The military-industrial complex “is much more pernicious than Eisenhower ever thought,” says the retired US colonel
“Was Bill Clinton’s expansion of NATO — after George H. W. Bush and [his Secretary of State] James Baker had assured Gorbachev and then Yeltsin that we wouldn’t go an inch further east — was this for Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, and Boeing, and others, to increase their network of potential weapon sales?” Wilkerson asked.
“You bet it was,” he answered.
Tip of the Hat to Contributing Editor Berto Jongman.
Read full story with additional quotes.
ROBERT STEELE: This is superb story — Col Wilkerson's is a useful voice more likely to be heard than those of us who have been saying this for decades, since he was at Colin Powell's side for the 9/11 lies followed by the creation of a swath of destruction from Afghanistan to Nigeria. The US military consumes 60% of the disposable federal budget (16% of the total budget, much of which is borrowed against future generations). This is not just criminally insane, it contrasts starkly with the fact that the infantry, 4% of the force that takes 80% of the casualties, receives only 1% of the budget. Everything else goes to weapons systems that are 50% waste and generally not needed and not useful across the spectrum of operations that an honest country would pursue.
Martin Luther King was assassinated for saying what Col Wilkerson is saying today, something Chuck Spinney, Winslow Wheeler and Robert Steele, among others, have been saying for years. I wrote the review that got Smedley Butler's book War is a Racket looked at more closely, and I have been very vocal about the disconnect between how we spend money on national security versus our real needs as a public. I commend to the public Death of a King (the why) and Act of State (the who) — MLK (and JFK) were assassinated for opposing the military-industrial complex. It is time military intelligence — largely worthless today as I have documented in On Defense Intelligence – Seven Strikes – got back in the business of helping commanders and staff train, equip, and organize a military that serves the public, not the banks. We do that with a mix of Grand Strategy and the re-professionalization of the crafts of both intelligence and acquisition.
There is a back story. The real reason we have military bases all over the world is not so that our military can be more responsive — the political bickering takes much longer than the actual movement of necessary military units — but rather so that CIA on behalf of Wall Street and other criminal elements can move gold, drugs, guns, and children, roughly in that order, at will. Col Fletcher Prouty's book, The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World is quite clear on this point, a point that has been confirmed over time by others. The short version of Prouty's book is free online, Fletcher Prouty: How CIA Really Works, I complement that with my own post on Seven CIA's. I cannot say this often enough: the vast majority who work for CIA or the military are good people trapped in a bad system — secrecy — and greed — have placed too much power in the hands of the few, while discouraging the many from holding those few to our Constitutional standards of accountability.
There is another back story told by two books, Gold Warriors and The Devil's Chessboard. The fascists did not lose WWII. They were rescued by Allen Dulles, then Director of the CIA, and their key leaders — not just scientists but the worst of the political and financial and others leaders — imported directly to the USA or to Argentina and to other secret locations. Using the Black Eagle Trust of covert off the books gold and treasure captured in Japan, the CIA explicitly funded the resurrection of fascism in Germany, Italy, and Japan, funded NATO's GLADIO stay-behind network comprised primarily of fascists who are sitting on a lifetime supply of gold and guns; and funded dictators instead of democracies under the facile assumption that they would be more effective against “the communists,” a threat that never existed — it was created by Lockheed Martin and others in order to justify the Cold War. War is a bankers game, the only people that lose are the soldiers on both sides who are sent to their deaths for profit.
Finally, we have 9/11. Too many good people trapped in bad systems refuse to face the facts. 9/11 — we were warned by thirteen countries months in advance — was taken over by Dick Cheney and the neo-conservatives and it was executed by US citizens planting controlled demolitions in NYC and firing a missile at the Pentagon while using drones to simulate aircraft impacting two of the three towers (one did not get hit at all). 9/11 was the ultimate modern false flag operations, and the point at which the US political system failed completely. Dick Cheney scheduled a national counterterrorism exercise for 9/11 months in advance so that he could control the government and short-circuit all of the safety features that would have worked — however incompetent elements of the US Government are, 9/11 worked because the USG safety net — flawed but very real — was shut down months in advance — to include the FBI raiding the US Army's ABLE DANGER program to confiscate materials clearly identifying 9/11 hijacker patsies months in advance.
The current election offers a “choice” between a criminal and a crazy. While Jill Stein and Gary Johnson could yet execute an October Surprise — and if the race is referred to the House of Representatives either Johnson or Stein (whoever makes top three) could yet emerge, the fact is that there is no integrity in the US electoral system. There are EIGHT accredited political parties in the USA, only two of which are allowed ready ballot access. Fully 70% of the eligible voters are not Democrats (17%) or Republicans (13%), and fully half of the eligible voters are so disgusted they simply do not vote at all — Barack Obama was twice elected by just 26% of the eligible voters narrowly defeating their Republican counterparts.
The military-industrial complex and the big banks and big farms and big medical complexes are all about sucking the blood, treasure, and spirit from an American public that is extraordinarily big-hearted, well-intentioned, and capable of huge productivity — productivity whose benefits have been stolen from the 99% to benefit the 1%. This need not be so. An honest electoral system and an honest political system managing a government that is certainly comprised of good people trapped in a bad system, would easily contain the legalized crime that Matt Taibbi calls “Griftopia.” Electoral Reform is the non-negotiable first step in achieving a non-violent revolution in the USA, restoring a government that makes evidence-based decisions in the public interest.
See Especially:
Robert Steele: Reinventing the US Army Part I – An American Grand Strategy
See Also:
Worth a Look: Recent Books on 10 High Level Threats
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Corruption 2.0
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Democracy Lost & Found
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on War Complex—War as a Racket
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive Future-Oriented)
