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Octafish

(55,745 posts)
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 06:10 PM Nov 2015

It wasn't CHALABI. It was BUSH, CHENEY, RUMSFELD and Friends who LIED America into War.

Adam Johnson from FAIR shows the corrupt nature of Corporate McPravda attempting to shift blame from the traitors to the now-conveniently deceased "Architect" of the Iraq War.




Some Use Chalabi’s Death to Lay Blame for Iraq War at His Feet

By Adam Johnson
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, Nov. 4, 2015

Former Iraqi dissident and discredited huckster Ahmed Chalabi died Monday at the age of 71. While most in the media played it straight, noting Chalabi’s role in selling the Iraq War but putting in the proper context, a significant number of journalists and pundits did something very odd: They turned his death into an opportunity to lay the blame for the Iraq War at his feet.

Some described Chalabi as the Iraq War’s “architect”:

Iraqi Architect of US Invasion Is Dead
Veteran Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi, most remembered for his role in convincing the United States to invade his country and topple Saddam Hussein in 2003….
—Daily Beast (11/3/15)

Iraq War Architect Ahmed Chalabi Dies Aged 71
—Middle East Eye (11/3/15)


Others presented him as someone who “convinced” or “persuaded” an apparently reluctant Bush administration to invade Iraq:

Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi politician who from exile helped persuade the United States to invade Iraq in 2003….
–New York Times (11/3/15)

Ahmad Chalabi, Who Helped Convince Bush Administration to Invade Iraq, Dies at 71
—New York Post (11/3/15)


Some even had him “manipulating” or “duping” the US into war:

Ahmed Chalabi was a con artist & opportunist masquerading as an idealist. Manipulated US, then became Iranian ally. Never became PM. RIP.
–CFR senior fellow Max Boot (Twitter, 11/3/15)

Breaking: Iraq state media reports that Ahmed Chalabi, who proudly played role in duping US into toppling Saddam, died of natural causes
—Buzzfeed’s Borzou Daragahi (Twitter, 11/3/15)


Much of how one reads this framing depends on how one defines “the US.” Given that the term is typically used as a synonym for the US government—or at the very least its national security apparatus—it’s fair to assume that the New York Times, the Daily Beast and Max Boot intend to convey that the Bush administration was “convinced” by Chalabi. To be convinced, of course, one had to have previously been skeptical. Well, let’s take a quick look at where we know the administration stood at the time. As Paul Waldman recently documented in The Week (5/20/15):

"In the summer of 2002, the administration established something called the White House Iraq Group, through which Karl Rove and other communication strategists like Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin coordinated with policy officials to sell the public on the threat from Iraq in order to justify war. “The script had been finalized with great care over the summer,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan later wrote, for a “campaign to convince Americans that war with Iraq was inevitable and necessary.”…

The intelligence wasn’t “mistaken,” as the Bush administration’s defenders would have us believe today. The intelligence was a mass of contradictions and differing interpretations. The administration picked out the parts that they wanted—supported, unsupported, plausible, absurd, it didn’t matter—and used them in their campaign to turn up Americans’ fear.


CONTINUED w/links to details...

http://fair.org/home/some-use-chalabis-death-to-lay-blame-for-iraq-war-at-his-feet/


Corporate Owned News -- the megaphone for War Inc and Capitalism's Invisible Army, the "Money trumps peace" crowd -- are trying hard to make you forget who is at fault. Their professional propagandists earn their keep, making a sizable chunk of the population believe anything, like Saddam Hussein was at fault for the attacks of September 11.

39 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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It wasn't CHALABI. It was BUSH, CHENEY, RUMSFELD and Friends who LIED America into War. (Original Post) Octafish Nov 2015 OP
yes Angry Dragon Nov 2015 #1
The Mother of All Lies Octafish Nov 2015 #3
little bush created the vacuum in the Middle East and it seems Angry Dragon Nov 2015 #4
Cork, Schmork! ProfessorGAC Nov 2015 #37
That photo depicts Republicants idea of "family values". That photo just shreds my heart. nt Mnemosyne Nov 2015 #16
Sometimes I wonder if W just played up the idiot thing so that we'd believe him when he said smirkymonkey Nov 2015 #20
Bifurcation Trajan Nov 2015 #2
Absolutely. A bunch of them are responsible. Octafish Nov 2015 #6
True - he was just their tool malaise Nov 2015 #5
Like Mongo. Chalabi just a pawn in the game of life. Octafish Nov 2015 #8
The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Fumesucker Nov 2015 #7
Great optics. Octafish Nov 2015 #12
Not only fooled by them Art_from_Ark Nov 2015 #38
Ahmed Chalabi just told them what they wanted to hear... joeybee12 Nov 2015 #9
Exactly. War Party's got it down to a science. Octafish Nov 2015 #10
Ugh...the whole Bush Crime Family is disgusting...nt joeybee12 Nov 2015 #14
Yes. He did. 840high Nov 2015 #18
Exactly. He was a con man, but a useful con man. eppur_se_muova Nov 2015 #35
Is it too early to speculate if Pres Obama will pardon the war criminals? nm rhett o rick Nov 2015 #11
It might have happened before President Obama was first inaugurated. Octafish Nov 2015 #15
But the real question is, is it Obama's decision who he pardons? Or does he get direction from rhett o rick Nov 2015 #34
The false marketing campaign to sell the war was obvious to those who paid attention. Martin Eden Nov 2015 #13
Thank you for stating it so clearly, Martin Eden. Agree with every word, and sadly. Octafish Nov 2015 #26
Thank you for that information, Octafish Martin Eden Nov 2015 #29
X100! zentrum Nov 2015 #17
Harold Pinter - Nobel Lecture on Truth, War and the Big Lie Octafish Nov 2015 #25
YES! YES! a thousand times yes. n/t Hotler Nov 2015 #19
Making a Killing Octafish Nov 2015 #24
Chalabi was Charlie McCarthy hifiguy Nov 2015 #21
Lots of organ grinding. Octafish Nov 2015 #22
Perfect! hifiguy Nov 2015 #23
true, but many of those "friends" were democrats. nt TheFrenchRazor Nov 2015 #27
K & R Liberal_Dog Nov 2015 #28
Like son, like father, when it came to Iraq. seafan Nov 2015 #30
nice pitstains, George: how can one guy sweat so much? MisterP Nov 2015 #31
He was a tool Egnever Nov 2015 #32
K&R for the original post and subsequent informative posts and links. JEB Nov 2015 #33
k&r Electric Monk Nov 2015 #36
IMHO, the Republicans learned from Watergate and vowed to restore the Imperial Right-Wing Presidency YoungDemCA Nov 2015 #39

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
3. The Mother of All Lies
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 06:59 PM
Nov 2015


Iraqi POW and son.



George W. Bush didn't just lie about the Iraq War. What he did was much worse.

Paul Waldman
The Week, May 5, 2015

EXCERPT...

For the moment I want to focus on the part about the lies. I've found over the years that conservatives who supported the war get particularly angry at the assertion that Bush lied us into war. No, they'll insist, it wasn't his fault: There was mistaken intelligence, he took that intelligence in good faith, and presented what he believed to be true at the time. It's the George Costanza defense: It's not a lie if you believe it.

Here's the problem, though. It might be possible, with some incredibly narrow definition of the word "lie," to say that Bush told only a few outright lies on Iraq. Most of what he said in order to sell the public on the war could be said to have some basis in something somebody thought or something somebody alleged (Bush was slightly more careful than Dick Cheney, who lied without hesitation or remorse). But if we reduce the question of Bush's guilt and responsibility to how many lies we can count, we miss the bigger picture.

What the Bush administration launched in 2002 and 2003 may have been the most comprehensive, sophisticated, and misleading campaign of government propaganda in American history. Spend too much time in the weeds, and you risk missing the hysterical tenor of the whole campaign.

That's not to say there aren't plenty of weeds. In 2008, the Center for Public Integrity completed a project in which they went over the public statements by eight top Bush administration officials on the topic of Iraq, and found that no fewer than 935 were false, including 260 statements by President Bush himself. But the theory on which the White House operated was that whether or not you could fool all of the people some of the time, you could certainly scare them out of their wits. That's what was truly diabolical about their campaign.

And it was a campaign. In the summer of 2002, the administration established something called the White House Iraq Group, through which Karl Rove and other communication strategists like Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin coordinated with policy officials to sell the public on the threat from Iraq in order to justify war. "The script had been finalized with great care over the summer," White House press secretary Scott McClellan later wrote, for a "campaign to convince Americans that war with Iraq was inevitable and necessary."

CONTINUED...

http://theweek.com/articles/555921/george-w-bush-didnt-just-lie-about-iraq-war-what-did-much-worse



I am sad to think of people I know who died in an illegal, immoral, unnecessary and disastrous war based on lies. Then there are the million or so others whose deaths and injuries demand justice.

Angry Dragon

(36,693 posts)
4. little bush created the vacuum in the Middle East and it seems
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 07:03 PM
Nov 2015

no one can find the cork


It is all on bush

ProfessorGAC

(65,191 posts)
37. Cork, Schmork!
Thu Nov 5, 2015, 04:45 PM
Nov 2015

The whole is way to big to plug with any cork. He didn't put a crack in the dam. He blew the whole thing up!

 

smirkymonkey

(63,221 posts)
20. Sometimes I wonder if W just played up the idiot thing so that we'd believe him when he said
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 09:04 PM
Nov 2015

that he didn't know the intelligence was false. I think he knew what was going on all along and went into Iraq with full knowledge.

He's an idiot, but not that much of an idiot.

 

Trajan

(19,089 posts)
2. Bifurcation
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 06:22 PM
Nov 2015

This is not a black or white question ... It is multiple answer ...

ALL of them are responsible ...

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
6. Absolutely. A bunch of them are responsible.
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 07:10 PM
Nov 2015

Which is why the media frame the story as "The architect of the Iraq war is dead" to create the impression in the minds of many that the true architects have escaped justice. As if!





Behind the Curtain: Booz Allen Hamilton and its Owner, The Carlyle Group

Written by Bob Adelmann
The New American; June 13, 2013

According to writers Thomas Heath and Marjorie Censer at the Washington Post, The Carlyle Group and its errant child, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), have a public relations problem, thanks to NSA leaker and former BAH employee Edward Snowden. By the time top management at BAH learned that one of their top level agents had gone rogue, and terminated his employment, it was too late.

For years Carlyle had, according to the Post, “nurtured a reputation as a financially sophisticated asset manager that buys and sells everything from railroads to oil refineries”; but now the light from the Snowden revelations has revealed nothing more than two companies, parent and child, “bound by the thread of turning government secrets into profits.”

And have they ever. When The Carlyle Group bought BAH back in 2008, it was totally dependent upon government contracts in the fields of information technology (IT) and systems engineering for its bread and butter. But there wasn't much butter: After two years the company’s gross revenues were $5.1 billion but net profits were a minuscule $25 million, close to a rounding error on the company’s financial statement. In 2012, however, BAH grossed $5.8 billion and showed earnings of $219 million, nearly a nine-fold increase in net revenues and a nice gain in value for Carlyle.

Unwittingly, the Post authors exposed the real reason for the jump in profitability: close ties and interconnected relationships between top people at Carlyle and BAH, and the agencies with which they are working. The authors quoted George Price, an equity analyst at BB&T Capital: "[Booz Allen has] got a great brand, they've focused over time on hiring top people, including bringing on people who have a lot of senior government experience."

CONTINUED w Links n Privatized INTEL...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15696-behind-the-curtain-booz-allen-hamilton-and-its-owner-the-carlyle-group



Which, coincidentally, makes the go-to private spyhouse a perfect place for picking up the intel needed to make a strategic acquisition or investment. When the game is fixed for the insiders, those on the outside are really SOL in terms of justice and for just-us.



Octafish

(55,745 posts)
8. Like Mongo. Chalabi just a pawn in the game of life.
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 07:20 PM
Nov 2015

Ahmad Chalabi with the prostheses distributed by his foundation in Baghdad. Credit Joao Silva for The New York Times.





Contracts Go to Allies of Iraq's Chalabi

Paul Richter and Edmund Sanders
Los Angeles Times, November 07, 2003

BAGHDAD — Businessmen with close ties to a leading -- and controversial -- member of Iraq's Governing Council have won large contracts for the country's reconstruction, leading to charges by some council members and other Iraqis that the actions are fueling a cronyism that threatens to sabotage the nation-building effort.

The men are associates of Ahmad Chalabi, an American-trained financier who has close ties to senior Pentagon officials and is a prominent member of the council, the U.S.-appointed interim government in Iraq.

Although it is perfectly legal for entrepreneurs with ties to top government officials to land reconstruction contracts, the perception of favoritism is setting back the rebuilding effort in Iraq by discouraging some foreign companies from seeking contracts, Iraqi and U.S. businessmen and officials said in interviews in Washington and Iraq.

It is further damaging the image of a reconstruction effort already hurt by the granting of huge no-bid awards to the politically connected U.S. firms Halliburton Co. and the Bechtel Group, Iraqis said.

SNIP...

As U.S. and Iraqi authorities distribute billions of dollars worth of contracts in Iraq, two Chalabi associates have been awarded at least a portion of significant contracts.

Ahud Farouki, a longtime Chalabi business associate and family friend, got a substantial piece of an $80-million contract to provide security for the country's oil fields when a partnership that includes one of his companies landed the deal.

Mudar Shawkat, the No. 2 official at the Iraqi National Congress, the organization of anti-Hussein former exiles that Chalabi heads, won a significant share of the reconstruction effort when a consortium that includes his son's company got a contract to provide cell phone service for southern Iraq. Shawkat is a shareholder in his son's business.

CONTINUED...

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/07/world/fg-contracts7



I don't recall this part of the Iraq War II story mentioned on the tee vee over the past 12 years.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
12. Great optics.
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 07:33 PM
Nov 2015


Secrecy, Surveillance and Censorship

War by Media and the Triumph of Propaganda

by JOHN PILGER
CounterPunch, Dec. 5-7, 2014

Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers?

Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what’s called the mainstream media is not information, but power?

These are urgent questions. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war – with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003.

The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays called it, an “invisible government”. It is the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its principal aim is the conquest of us: our sense of the world, our ability to separate truth from lies.

SNIP...

The most effective propaganda is found not in the Sun or on Fox News – but beneath a liberal halo. When the New York Times published claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, its fake evidence was believed, because it wasn’t Fox News; it was the New York Times.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/05/war-by-media-and-the-triumph-of-propaganda/
 

joeybee12

(56,177 posts)
9. Ahmed Chalabi just told them what they wanted to hear...
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 07:22 PM
Nov 2015

And if he hadn't, they would have found someone else who would.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
10. Exactly. War Party's got it down to a science.
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 07:27 PM
Nov 2015
Poppy Bush had to lie America into making war on Iraq over Kuwait in 1992.

Hill & Knowlton conspired with warmongers in Congress to invite a young woman to testify she was a nurse working in a Kuwaiti City hospital who saw the Iraqi soldiers take babies from their incubators and leave them on the cold, hard floor so they could steal the incubators for Baghdad. She forgot to mention she was making that up, as well as the fact she really was the 15-year old daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington.



"If I wanted to lie, or if we wanted to lie, if we wanted to exaggerate, I wouldn't use my daughter to do so. I could easily buy other people to do it." -- Kuwait Ambassador

http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

Propaganda works. Otherwise, there wouldn't be all the advertising and all these illegal and immoral wars built on lies.



eppur_se_muova

(36,290 posts)
35. Exactly. He was a con man, but a useful con man.
Thu Nov 5, 2015, 10:55 AM
Nov 2015

If Chalabi had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent him. And it would have been easy to invent him.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
15. It might have happened before President Obama was first inaugurated.
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 07:42 PM
Nov 2015

The way Smirko, Sneer, Rumsferatu and Company are free to move around the country makes me believe they either have been forgiven by Smirko hisseff. It's easy to see where the little turd from Crawford would get such an idea:



Rise of the ‘Patriotic Journalist’

(Originally published on Oct. 20, 2005)

The apex for the “skeptical journalists” came in the mid-1970s when the press followed up disclosure of the Vietnam War’s Pentagon Papers and exposure of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal with revelations of CIA abuses, such as illegal spying on Americans and helping Chile’s army oust an elected government.

There were reasons for this new press aggressiveness. After some 58,000 U.S. soldiers had died in Vietnam during a long war fought for murky reasons, many reporters no longer gave the government the benefit of the doubt. The press corps’ new rallying cry was the public’s right to know, even when the wrongdoing occurred in the secretive world of national security.

But this journalistic skepticism represented an affront to government officials who had long enjoyed a relatively free hand in the conduct of foreign policy. The Wise Men and the Old Boys – the stewards of the post-World War II era – faced a harder time lining up public consensus behind any action. This national security elite, including then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush, viewed the post-Vietnam journalism as a threat to America’s ability to strike at its perceived enemies around the world.

Yet, it was from these ruins of distrust – the rubble of suspicion left behind by Vietnam and Watergate – that the conservative-leaning national security elite began its climb back, eventually coming full circle, gaining effective control of what a more “patriotic” press would tell the people, before stumbling into another disastrous war in Iraq.

-- Robert Parry, When Journalists Join the Cover-ups


Great to read you, rhett o rick. I understand that there is no statute of limitation on murder, war crimes, crimes against humanity and treason. Even if the media don't do their constitutionally mandated duty, and much of their criminality is hidden by the veneer of national security and secret government, We the People can and must hold them to account and bring them to justice. Their crimes are as plain as day.
 

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)
34. But the real question is, is it Obama's decision who he pardons? Or does he get direction from
Thu Nov 5, 2015, 01:46 AM
Nov 2015

Gen Clapper?

Martin Eden

(12,875 posts)
13. The false marketing campaign to sell the war was obvious to those who paid attention.
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 07:33 PM
Nov 2015

By October 2002, any House Rep or Senator who didn't know the case for war was a load of BS propaganda was unfit for office.

We knew it here at DU.

I will never, ever in a primary election support a Dem who voted for the IWR (slightly less than half the House & Senate total).

They were either unfit for office, on board with the neocon agenda, or stuck their finger in the post-9/11 winds and calculated it was better for their political career to be "strong" on national security.

That wasn't a sign of strength, it was a sign of weakness and a capitualtion of their most solemn responsibility to the people they ostensibly represent. If ever there was a time our country needed strong Democratic leaders to stand up, have the courage to speak truth to power, and make every effort to avert a terrible disaster, that was it.

No politician who voted for the IWR should ever be POTUS.

Unfortunately, in the general election we may have to decide between one of them and a Republican who will be much worse.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
26. Thank you for stating it so clearly, Martin Eden. Agree with every word, and sadly.
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 09:28 PM
Nov 2015


A professional narrative:



The Man Who Sold the War

Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war

JAMES BAMFORD
Rolling Stone, Nov 17, 2005 4:25 PM

The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.

On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.

Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.

CONTINUED...

http://crashrecovery.org/rendon/1.html



The great DUer bobthedrummer reminded us of Rendon's continuing service to putting the mock in democracy:

The Rendon Group staged the 2004 Democratic National Convention when then Sen. Obama

Martin Eden

(12,875 posts)
29. Thank you for that information, Octafish
Thu Nov 5, 2015, 12:06 AM
Nov 2015

I thought I was pretty well versed on the cauldron of lies, but I hadn't seen this one before.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
25. Harold Pinter - Nobel Lecture on Truth, War and the Big Lie
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 09:20 PM
Nov 2015

When you have about 45 minutes, zentrum...



The late, great writer puts it into unforgettable words that indict the warmongers and war criminals.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
24. Making a Killing
Wed Nov 4, 2015, 09:15 PM
Nov 2015

April 5, 2002
By Christian Dewar

Many Americans are probably not aware of the great extent to which U.S. corporations collaborated with the Nazi war machine during WWII. After the first world war, many wealthy American industrialists, bankers and financiers invested in Germany, in part, to avoid onerous U.S. regulations and also to reap the tremendous profits from the rebuilding of the nation.

Worried that there might be another war that would cause them to lose their investments, the directors of many of these companies plotted to protect their interests. Law firms like Sullivan and Cromwell specialized in helping to arrange these deals. When the second world war broke out, the Dulles brothers, Allen (who was a partner in that firm) and John, helped these companies hide their assets. As a result, many Nazi industrialist and their American collaborators maintained their wealth after the hostilites ceased.

Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg once stated that "The Dulles brothers were traitors." Some historians believe that Allen Dulles became head of the newly formed CIA in large part to cover up his treasonous behavior and that of his clients. Not confined to a few isolated companies, some of America's most prominent families and their financial empires worked with the Nazis well after the first bombs were dropped on Pearl Harbor.

On March 4th, 1998, a woman from Belgium brought a suit against the Ford Motor Company and it's German affiliate seeking compensation for the work she performed as a slave laborer for the company. Born in Russian, Elsa Iwanovwa claimed that she was abducted and forced to work at Ford's plant at Cologne. As many as 10,000 men, women and children may have labored there, many of them from the Buchenwald concentration camp.

The Ford plant in Germany played a major role in the Nazi war effort. While their American factories produced weapons for the allies, their German subsidiary manufactured troop transports, tracked vehicles, Panzer tanks, anti-tank guns and other crucial equipment for the Nazis. Providing weapons for both contestants in a world war was extraordinarily lucrative.

It is alleged that high ranking American officials including Edsel Ford oversaw the German plant's operations even during the war. Unlike most American businesses doing business in Germany during the war, Ford enjoyed significant independence and was never seized by the Nazi government.

The reason for this was in large part due to the close friendship that endured between Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler. Ford was known for his virulent anti-semitic views and he made substantial financial contributions to Hitler and the Nazi organization in its early years which may have sustained the party at a point where it might have otherwise collapsed.

Hitler's book, Mein Kampf borrowed heavily from Ford's anti-semitic book, The International Jew, a Worldwide Problem which was published in 1927. Hitler awarded Ford with Germany's highest civilian honor, the Great Cross of the German Order of the Eagle. Hitler's office had a large picture of Ford on the wall and stacks of Ford's books to give away to associates. Jim Mooney, GM's chief executive for overseas operations, was also awarded the Order of the German Eagle.

Ford was only one of many American corporations that eagerly helped the Germans. Some did so for ideological reasons and others for the immense profits which could be realized.

General Motors which was owned by the du Pont family during the 1930's manufactured thousands of bombers for the Luftwaffe and troop transports for the Wermacht at the same time that it's American plants were producing engines for the U.S. Air Force. Their German plant built propulsion systems for Germany's deadliest bomber, the Junker 88 and motors for their new, innovative jet fighters. They also repaired Geman trucks and converted them for alternative fuels at their facilites in Switzerland.

According to Charles Higham who wrote about the collaboration of American corporations with the Nazis in his book, Trading with the Enemy, GM may have even plotted with the Nazis against Roosevelt. Higham claims that high ranking officials in the company met with Baron Manfred von Killinger, head of a Nazi espionage rink and with Gestapo leader Baron von Tippleskirsh to sign an agreement "showing total commitment to the Nazi cause for the indefinite future" and that "in view of Roosevelt's attitude toward Germany, every effort must be made to remove him by defeat at the next election. Jewish influence in the political, cultural and public life in America must be stamped out. Press and radio must be subsidized to smear the administration" and an American fascist put in the White House.

Higham states that "Along with friends of the Morgan Bank and General Motors...certain du Pont backers financed a coup d'etat that would overthrow the president with the aid of a $3 million funded army of terrorists." The weapons were to be provided by Remington arms, a du Pont subsidiary.

Higham writes that Irenee du Pont was obsessed with Hitler and once made a speech to the American Chemical Society in 1926 "advocating a race of supermen to be achieved by injecting special drugs into them in boyhood to make their characters to order. He insisted his men reach physical standards equivalent to that of a marine and have blood as pure as that in the veins of the Vikings." The du Ponts financed anti-semitic, facist groups in the U.S. and along with some of America's most prominent families, promoted sterilization programs to assist in the effort to promote the white race over those deemed to be defective.

Higham also states that the du Ponts used their tremendous wealth "to finance the notorious Black Legions. This terrorist organization had as it's purpose the prevention of automobile workers from unionizing. The members wore hoods and black ropes, with skull and crossbones. They fire-bombed union meetings, murdered union organizers, often by beating them to death, and dedicated their lives to destroying Jews and communists. They were linked to the Ku Klux Klan."

The du Ponts formed an armed gang of men "modeled on the Gestapo to sweep though the plants and beat up anyone who proved rebellious. They hired the Pinkerton Agency to send its swarms of detectives through the whole chemicals, munitions and automobile empire to spy on left-wingers or other malcontents." The du Ponts also formed and financed the American Liberty League, "a Nazi organization whipping up hatred of blacks and Jews, love of Hitler, and loathing of Roosevelts." This group had chapters at 26 colleges and subsidiaries nationwide.

Standard Oil has also been implicated in providing crucial support for the Nazi war machine. The helped the Germans develop plants and gave them the necessary technology for the manufacture of synthetic fuels and leaded gas. Standard also assisited the Germans in stockpiling $20 million worth or petrolium products in anticipation of the war. This deal was concluded with the assistance of the Wall Street investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman where the senior managing partner was George H.W. Bush's father, Prescott Bush.

It also is alleged that Standard made a deal with the Germans to thwart the development of synthetic rubber in the United States and to withhold a method of producing synthetic ammonia. The U.S. government eventually seized some of Standard's patents. When the oil giant sued to retain the them, their case was denied. A judge who reviewed the appeal stated that "Standard Oil can be considered an enemy national in view of it's relationships with I.G. Farben after the United States and Germany became active enemies."

When threatened with sanctions, Standard essentially blackmailed the U.S. government, threatening to cut off supplies to the American military. Standard executives received a token fine of a few thousand dollars divided among several defendants. Roosevelt is said to have been reluctant to prosecute the heads of the company for fear of sparking another depression.

ITT also collaborated with the Nazis extensively. They owned significant shares of stock in several companies producing weapons for the Nazi including Focke-Wolfe which built fighter planes and bombers. Their subsidiaries, according to Higham, produced vital supplies such as "switchboards, telephones, alarm gongs, buoys, air raid warning devices, radar equipment and 30,000 fuses per month for artillery shells used to kill British and American troops" as well as "ingredients for the rocket bombs that fell on London."

The Curtis-Wright Aviation Corporation was another U.S. company doing business with the Nazis. Their planes were well suited for dive bombing. Although the Nazi pilots used this technique as an integral part of their blitzkrieg strategy of warfare, it was developed by the US. It was so effective that air plane manufacturers were forbidden to teach this to foreigners. Curtis-Wright managed to manuever around this inconvenient policy by not 'teaching' it, but rather demonstrating it at air shows in order to boost sales to Hitler.

Adding insult to injury, several of these American corporations who had collaborated had the audacity to sue the American government for damage that had been inflicted on their German plants by Allied bombers. GM managed to extract $33 million for the destruction of their Folke-Wulf plant. ITT received $27 million and Ford, a mere $1 million.

American banks have also been implicated in assistance to Nazi Germany including J.P. Morgan, Guaranty Trust of New York, Bank of the City of New York, Chase National Bank and American Express which turned over Jewish accounts to the Nazis. Higham reports that "the Nazi government through Chase National Bank offered Nazi in America the opportunity to buy German marks with dollars at a discount. The arrangement was open to those who wished to return to Germany and would use the marks in the interest of the Nazis."

The Chase Bank of Paris was involved in substantial financing of the Nazi embassy's activities throughout the war with the full knowledge of Chase's American headquarters. The Vichy branch of Chase "were strenuous in enforcing restrictions against Jewish property even going so far as to refuse to release funds belonging to Jews because they anticipated a Nazi decree with retroactive provisions prohibiting such a release."

Other Nazi collaborators include William Hearst, the media giant. After meeting with top Nazi officials and the payment of substantial sums of money, Hearst agreed to a policy whereby his newspaper would only report favorably on Nazi affairs.

Many Americans today might be surprised to discover that President Bush's family fortune was in large part compiled as a result of collaborating with the Nazis after the WWII had commenced. Author John Loftus has written about this recently and it is also covered extensively in the online book, The Elkhorn Manifesto.

According to the online book, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, written by Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, accessible only on the internet, George Bush senior's family "played a central role in financing and arming Adolf Hitler for his takeover of Germany; in financing and managing the buildup of Nazi war industries for the conquest of Europe and war against the U.S.A.; and in the developent of Nazi genocidal theories and racial propaganda".

The authors claim that "The president's family fortune was largely a result of the Hitler project" and that Bush's banking activities were "not just politically neutral money-making ventures which happened to coincide with the aims of of German Nazi" but rather that all of the firm's European business during that time "was organized around anti-democratic political forces." The book states that "Certain actions taken directly by the Harriman-Bush shipping line in 1932 must be ranked among the gravest acts of treason in this century."

One of the most influential players in financing Hitler's war industries was Brown Brothers Harriman. Prescott Bush, the current president's grandfather, was the managing director. Bush was also director of the Union Banking Corporation. The stock shares were owned by Bush, E. R.Harriman and three Nazi Nazi executives including Fritz Thyssen, one of Hitler's primary financiers. The U.S. government eventually confiscated the Nazi banking operations of Union Banking Corporation in which Bush was a director under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Another Bush business associate was Friedrick Flick who gave considerable financial support for the SS. Flicks's steel plants used about 48,000 slave laborers from Dachau, most of whom died.

Bush and his business associates were also involved in the operation of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. It was later shown to be a cover for Nazi espionage, spy infiltration and propaganda activities. The U.S. government also seized the Holland-American Trading Corporation, Seamless Steel and the Silesian-American Corporation in which Bush and his associates were involved.

Ultimately, the international corporations, the lawyers, bankers and financiers who collaborated with the Nazis prevailed. They exerted tremendous influence to thwart investigators delving into their seditious activities after the war. Many of the key players were elevated to senior postions in the U.S. government. Many of them were able to maintain their fortunes intact after the war. Officers from the Nazi intelligence and scientific communities became U.S. allies in the Cold War against the Soviets.

Americans at the highest levels of finance, industry and government willingly cooperated with the Nazis for political, ideological and financial reasons. They were heavily responsible for the rise of Hitler. They sustained his war effort and helped to shelter the perpetrators after the war. It would have been a bitter death for the brave American soldiers fighting in Europe if they had realized that comfortable American businessmen back in the States were making fortunes financing the same industrial cartels that manufactured the weapons that were being used to kill them.

Now Prescott's son, former George H.W. Bush, is making another fortune as a merchant of death, marketing weapons thorough the secretive Carlyle group. His power and influence is so pervasive that he can sell the Pentagon obsolete equipment such as the 70-ton Crusader cannon which is poorly suited to the realities of combatting terrorism and which the generals don't even want. George Bush Senior helped to arm both sides, Iran and Iraq, during their murderous war. This was a policy promulgated by his friend Ted Shackley, the legendary CIA spook, who advocated selling arms to both sides in a conflict as a way of enhancing the bottom line.

Historians know that Bush Senior arranged for the U.S. to sell millions of dollars of weapons to Hussein almost up to the time that he decided to invade Iraq country during the Gulf War. His administration sold weapons to the Iranians at a time when they were declared a terrorist nation and held American citizens hostage. As Yogi Berra once said, it's "Deja vu all over again."

Now his son, this administration and their corporate cronies who put them in office are poised to make obscene amounts of money from the weapons industries and oil. This war against a faceless foe and with no end game is costing our country over a billion dollars a month and George Bush wants even more money for defense. President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex.

Like grandfather, like father, like son. Some things never change. The Bushes know that there is a killing to be made in killing.

SOURCE: http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/04/p/05_killing.html

DU is really something. Thanks for remembering, Hotler.

seafan

(9,387 posts)
30. Like son, like father, when it came to Iraq.
Thu Nov 5, 2015, 12:19 AM
Nov 2015

President George HW Bush and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1990. (Image: Doug Mills/ AP)

The First Iraq War Was Also Sold to the Public Based on a Pack of Lies

June 27, 2014
by Joshua Holland

....

But as the usual suspects come out of the woodwork to urge the US to once again commit troops to Iraq, it’s important to recall that the first Gulf War was sold to the public on a pack of lies that were just as egregious as those told by the second Bush administration 12 years later.

The Lie of an Expansionist Iraq

Most countries condemned Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. But the truth — that it was the culmination of a series of tangled economic and historical conflicts between two Arab oil states — wasn’t likely to sell the US public on the idea of sending our troops halfway around the world to do something about it.

So we were given a variation of the “domino theory.” Saddam Hussein, we were told, had designs on the entire Middle East. If he wasn’t halted in Kuwait, his troops would just keep going into other countries.

As Scott Peterson reported for The Christian Science Monitor in 2002, a key part of the first Bush administration’s case “was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia. Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid-September [of 1990] that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.”

A quarter of a million troops with heavy armor amassed on the Saudi border certainly seemed like a clear sign of hostile intent. In announcing that he had deployed troops to the Gulf in August 1990, George HW Bush said, “I took this action to assist the Saudi Arabian Government in the defense of its homeland.” He asked the American people for their “support in a decision I’ve made to stand up for what’s right and condemn what’s wrong, all in the cause of peace.”

But one reporter — Jean Heller of the St. Petersburg Times — wasn’t satisfied taking the administration’s claims at face value. She obtained two commercial satellite images of the area taken at the exact same time that American intelligence supposedly had found Saddam’s huge and menacing army and found nothing there but empty desert.

She contacted the office of then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney “for evidence refuting the Times photos or analysis offering to hold the story if proven wrong.” But “the official response” was: “Trust us.”

Heller later told the Monitor’s Scott Peterson that the Iraqi buildup on the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia “was the whole justification for Bush sending troops in there, and it just didn’t exist.”

.....



Thanks for all your work on this, Octafish.

 

YoungDemCA

(5,714 posts)
39. IMHO, the Republicans learned from Watergate and vowed to restore the Imperial Right-Wing Presidency
Thu Nov 5, 2015, 05:19 PM
Nov 2015

Take a look at these articles....

Bush 41, Reagan consoled Nixon during Watergate:

snip=:

While Nixon seemed eager to get off the phone with both Reagan and Bush, he spoke at times candidly with both men who would go on to become the 40th and 41st presidents.

"I just want you to know, we watched and my heart was with you," Reagan said. "I know what this must have been and what this must have been in all these days and what you've been through and I just want you to know that, for whatever it's worth… you can count on us, we're still behind you out here and I wanted you to know that you're in our prayers."

Nixon thanked Reagan and said, "Each of us has a different religion…but God damn it, Ron, we have got to build peace in the world. And that's what I'm working on here."


snip:
Bush told Nixon he watched the speech with his wife Barbara and they had "just attended a Republican leadership conference."

"I really was proud of you and, by golly, I know it was tough and I just wanted to tell you that," Bush said. "Because to me it came through clearly and forcefully and it conveyed the depth of feeling that I know you must have had…. I just wanted to tell you that before I went to sleep."

Nixon assured Bush, "The main thing is, you had nothing to do with this goddamn thing. We're gonna go on."

Bush told Nixon to call him for any support and angrily called the political commentators "arrogant bastards."

"The thing that burns me up is the feeling that you had and it came through and there's so little credit," Bush told Nixon, who replied he thinks "the people may understand it" and "to hell with the commentators."


http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/08/bush-41-reagan-consoled-nixon-during-watergate-scandal/

The Iran-contra scandal, 25 years later:

snip:
Reagan and Bush were so deeply involved in various aspects of the Iran-Contra operations that the Independent Counsel, Lawrence Walsh, conducted a “criminal liability” evaluation on both of them. (My organization, the National Security Archive, recently obtained these records through the FOIA. We posted them on today.) The studies were drafted in March 1991 by a lawyer on Walsh’s staff, Christian J. Mixter, and represented preliminary conclusions on prosecuting both Reagan and Bush for various crimes ranging from conspiracy to perjury.




Both Reagan and Bush got away with their misconduct in the Iran-Contra operations. Few reviews of Reagan’s legacy even include mention of the scandal; Bush’s son was elected and re-elected president, bringing Richard Cheney with him-into the oval office. For Cheney, the lessons of the scandal were that the White House had the prerogative to ignore the law and the constitution in its exercise of power. We are still living with the consequences of that approach.

The Iran-Contra affairs are not a warning for our days alone,” Draper presciently wrote at the time. “If the story of the affairs is not fully known and understood, a similar usurpation of power by a small strategically placed group within the government may well reoccur before we are prepared to recognize what is happening.

Twenty-five years later, that is why we remember the real meaning of the scandal that defined the dangerous abuse of presidential power.


http://www.salon.com/2011/11/25/the_iran_contra_scandal_25_years_later/

The lesson from the Nixon administration is clear...don't get caught. Ford's pardoning of Nixon was a signal, IMHO, that future right-wing administrations would be able to get away with war crimes.

PS: I know I often don't agree with you and have said some nasty things before, and for that, I'm sorry. I loathe the Republican Party too.
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