White Collar Crimes.
Dwight D. Eisenhower - the only five-star General to become President of the US - warned against an increasing entanglement between military and industry. In his 1961 farewell address to the nation, he regarded the increasing influence of this industrial-military complex as a major threat to the American democracy as well as world peace.
I was watching the documentary "Why We Fight" by Eugene Jerecki just the other day. This film, produced by arte TV, CBC Canada and the BBC, premiered at the 2005 Sundance film festival and was awarded the Grand Jury Price Documentary. I highly recommend it to anyone alive with a couple of brain cells still intact. The following is a transcript of parts of Chalmers Johnson's comments during the program (Ch. Johnson was working as an outside consultant to the Office of National Estimates of the CIA from 1967 to 1973). Early into the film Johnson explains the term 'Blowback': "It's a CIA term. Blowback does not mean simply the unintended consequences of foreign operations, it means the unintended consequences of foreign operations that were deliberately kept secret from the American public, so that when the retaliation comes, the American public is not able to put it in context, to put cause and effect together that they come up with questions like 'Why do they hate us?'. Our government did not want the forensic question asked 'What were their motives?' and instead chose to say "They were just evil-doers".
Later on, Johnson says: "The United States is the world's largest consumer of fossil fuels. Oil is what drives the military machine of every country as it provides the fuel for the aircrafts, for the ships, for the tanks, for the trucks. Control of oil is indispensable: when you run out of it your army stops. There is a direct connection between events that happened more than fifty years ago and the war in Iraq today. In 1953 the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadek, became extremely irritated. The British were ripping off his country's national resources and he wanted a greater share in it. The British came to the new President Eisenhower and asked for help on this. Eisenhower very conveniently declared Mossadek to be a communist and we then set the CIA to overthrow him. The result was we brought the Shah to power and he created an extremely repressive regime, that within twenty years had led to a revolution against him. The Ayatollah Khomeini creates a government that is violently anti-America. In the after action report by the CIA on what they had done in Iran in 1953 they said "We're going to get some 'blowback' from this". We then made a puppet out of Saddam Hussein in Iraq who was a friend of ours - he was an asset in the CIA's computers. We did so because he was anti Iranian, he was very fearful that the revolution in Iran would spread into his country. He therefore went to war with Iran. The war was extremely bloody, went on throughout the 1980's. Unfortunately for Saddam Hussein he began to lose the war. At that point, in comes the United States in the form of Donald Rumsfeld, sent to Saddam Hussein by President Reagan to tell him "We will supply you with intelligence, we will supply you with the weapons you may need" - this is why cynics in Washington say 'We know Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction - we have the receipts!'. This is what we mean by 'blowback'. He remained a friend of ours right up to his invasion in the summer of 1990 of Kuwait. We became alarmed when he invaded Kuwait that he could also go on and invade Saudi Arabia itself, the largest reserves of oil on earth. We stationed troops in Saudi Arabia - it was a mistake in every sense of the term! Remember, Osama Bin Laden had said: 'I resent the government of Saudi Arabia for using Americans to defend Saudi Arabia against Iraq!'. We began to fear that we were going to lose our position in Saudi Arabia where the second largest source of proven reserves on earth are in Iraq. This leads us now to demonize our previous ally and to prepare the American public for the thought that we must take him out."
Links: The American Empire Project - Why we fight (stream on Google video) - BBC Storyville
I was watching the documentary "Why We Fight" by Eugene Jerecki just the other day. This film, produced by arte TV, CBC Canada and the BBC, premiered at the 2005 Sundance film festival and was awarded the Grand Jury Price Documentary. I highly recommend it to anyone alive with a couple of brain cells still intact. The following is a transcript of parts of Chalmers Johnson's comments during the program (Ch. Johnson was working as an outside consultant to the Office of National Estimates of the CIA from 1967 to 1973). Early into the film Johnson explains the term 'Blowback': "It's a CIA term. Blowback does not mean simply the unintended consequences of foreign operations, it means the unintended consequences of foreign operations that were deliberately kept secret from the American public, so that when the retaliation comes, the American public is not able to put it in context, to put cause and effect together that they come up with questions like 'Why do they hate us?'. Our government did not want the forensic question asked 'What were their motives?' and instead chose to say "They were just evil-doers".
Later on, Johnson says: "The United States is the world's largest consumer of fossil fuels. Oil is what drives the military machine of every country as it provides the fuel for the aircrafts, for the ships, for the tanks, for the trucks. Control of oil is indispensable: when you run out of it your army stops. There is a direct connection between events that happened more than fifty years ago and the war in Iraq today. In 1953 the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadek, became extremely irritated. The British were ripping off his country's national resources and he wanted a greater share in it. The British came to the new President Eisenhower and asked for help on this. Eisenhower very conveniently declared Mossadek to be a communist and we then set the CIA to overthrow him. The result was we brought the Shah to power and he created an extremely repressive regime, that within twenty years had led to a revolution against him. The Ayatollah Khomeini creates a government that is violently anti-America. In the after action report by the CIA on what they had done in Iran in 1953 they said "We're going to get some 'blowback' from this". We then made a puppet out of Saddam Hussein in Iraq who was a friend of ours - he was an asset in the CIA's computers. We did so because he was anti Iranian, he was very fearful that the revolution in Iran would spread into his country. He therefore went to war with Iran. The war was extremely bloody, went on throughout the 1980's. Unfortunately for Saddam Hussein he began to lose the war. At that point, in comes the United States in the form of Donald Rumsfeld, sent to Saddam Hussein by President Reagan to tell him "We will supply you with intelligence, we will supply you with the weapons you may need" - this is why cynics in Washington say 'We know Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction - we have the receipts!'. This is what we mean by 'blowback'. He remained a friend of ours right up to his invasion in the summer of 1990 of Kuwait. We became alarmed when he invaded Kuwait that he could also go on and invade Saudi Arabia itself, the largest reserves of oil on earth. We stationed troops in Saudi Arabia - it was a mistake in every sense of the term! Remember, Osama Bin Laden had said: 'I resent the government of Saudi Arabia for using Americans to defend Saudi Arabia against Iraq!'. We began to fear that we were going to lose our position in Saudi Arabia where the second largest source of proven reserves on earth are in Iraq. This leads us now to demonize our previous ally and to prepare the American public for the thought that we must take him out."
Links: The American Empire Project - Why we fight (stream on Google video) - BBC Storyville
posted by bunka @ 02:45
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