What Kind of Person Sells Terrorists Surface-to-Air Missiles?

[Octafish]

These two. And they should've gone to prison.



500 HAWK missiles, at least.

[GP6971]

1. We certainly don't

Sarcasm

[Octafish]

2. HAWK and TOW sales probably were payback for help stealing 1980 election via October Surprise.

Debunking the Debunkers of October Surprise

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from investigative reporter Robert Parry's new book, America's Stolen Narrative. One of the book's storylines examines corporate media's role in squelching investigation into whether Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign in 1980 went behind President Jimmy Carter's back to contact Iranian officials then holding 52 Americans hostage, a controversy dubbed the October Surprise.

[GP6971]

7. A side note on the the Hawk missile system made by Raytheon

I was working for a moving company in the late 70s and early 80s and we had the contract to move Raytheon employees. The Hawk system was being exported to Turkey and Greece and it was delay after another in moving the Raytheon technicians to teach the host nation's personnel how to use it. Came to find out the delay was the US Government......they were revising the technical manuals from a 9th grade reading level to 7th grade reading level. The growing pains of the all volunteer army. The era of cartoon maintenance manuals.

[Go Vols]

23. This does not surprise me

:/

[blueridge3210]

52. Cartoon maintenance manuals go back to at least World War II

When Guderian was made Inspector General of the Wehrmacht armed forces and he redesigned several manuals to assist the troops in understanding basic principals and to recognize enemy (Soviet) vehicles as opposed to friendly vehicles.

[GP6971]

56. Didn't know that. Thanks. n/t

[fasttense]

41. Yes, indeed, Nixon, Raygun and the bushes were all illegitimate presidents.

I don't think the RepubliCONS are able to get a president elected without committing treason or at a minimum voter fraud.

"Thom Hartmann: Right. So Barbara Honegger who was in the Reagan administration wrote a book called “October Surprise” in which she suggested that Bill Casey did something very much like what we’ve heard the, I don’t know, you’re a guest right now I don’t want to play the tape for you, but I’ll play it in the next segment. The Johnson Library just released this tape last year and, of Lyndon Johnson talking to Everett Dirksen in, you know, leading up to the election of ’86, or ’68 rather. And he said you know we have proof now, we have the wire taps of the Nixon campaign talking to the South Vietnamese saying don’t make peace with LBJ because that will help Hubert Humphrey get elected. Instead wait until I’m president and I’ll get you a better deal. And Everett Dirksen said yes I know it’s going on and Lyndon Johnson said this is treason, Everett. And Everett said, and Everett Dirksen said I will try to talk to Nixon, but he’s not listening to us. And I mean these tapes are now, they’re public, they’re in the Johnson Library. I’m amazed that when they came out it was like a little one paragraph story in the New York Times that led me to them.

And, Barbara Honegger is alleging that basically the same thing happened in the Reagan campaign. That Bill Casey, who was the campaign manager, contacted the Iranians and said you want spare parts for your US made weapons? Jimmy Carter is never going to give them to you, he’s your enemy. Help Ronald Reagan get elected by holding onto the hostages and we’ll make sure that you get them and…

Reese Erlich: I know it comes as a shock to your listeners, Thom, that aspiring people, aspiring to the most powerful job in the world might engage in some underhanded dirty trick sin order to get themselves into power. But revelation time, what you described, absolutely it did happen. Casey cut a back room deal and if you had told people at the time that this was going on, people would have thought you were crazy. But when you look at what actually happened with the Iran Contra scandal, that’s exactly what they did. Which is that through secret back channels with the Iranian government with Rafsanjani then the president, they cut a deal to provide very, very much needed spare parts for what had been the Shah’s military and was heavily armed by the United states in order to help Iran against it’s then war with Iraq and on the part of the US they used the profits from those sales to arm the contras in Nicaragua illegally. Which because congress had cut off funding for that so they needed an alternative means to arm the contras."

- See more at: http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2011/03/transcript-thom-hartmann-asks-reese-erlich-if-ronald-reagan-cut-iran-hostage-deal-and-s#sthash.yX5xcylo.dpuf

[johnnyreb]

3. K&R.

Some cartoon context:

[littlemissmartypants]

10. Excellent. nt

[zeemike]

19. Now that was good.

[Octafish]

35. Emperors v Pirates

Thank you, johnnyreb. That sums up the game, perfectly.



One of the greatest contemporary Democratic leaders the United States has produced, David Bonior of Michigan, stood up to these gangsters as Majority Whip. For that, he was targeted by the right (and left!) and destroyed politically. The guy's a real human being, however, and continues the good fight as an educator and businessman.

[roamer65]

4. They learned the behavior from Trickie Dickie...

and his back channel negotiations with Saigon to torpedo peace talks with North Vietnam in 1968.

[Octafish]

34. ''Treason'' is how LBJ put it.

The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon's 'treason'

By David Taylor
BBC.com, Archive On 4



Declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson's telephone calls provide a fresh insight into his world. Among the revelations - he planned a dramatic entry into the 1968 Democratic Convention to re-join the presidential race. And he caught Richard Nixon sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks... but said nothing.

[leftstreet]

5. You need a graphic pic warning on that

DURec

[Octafish]

36. It IS a nasty image.

One good DUer once told me it reminded them that Reagan suffered from Alzheimer's. FWIU, the photo was taken in August 1980 at a fundraiser in Detroit during the GOP convention. To me, it shows who the real boss was for all those treasonous trickle down years.

[smirkymonkey]

6. K&R!

:kick:

[Octafish]

37. They also armed Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

My source is Congressman Henry Gonzalez (D Puro-Texas):

Iraqgate--A Case Study of a Big Story With Little Impact

By David Shaw,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, October 27, 1992

Eight months ago, the Los Angeles Times published the first in a continuing series of articles charging that the Bush Administration had secretly funneled several billion dollars worth of loan guarantees and military technology to Saddam Hussein from 1986 to 1990. Directly and indirectly, the stories said, this money and materiel gave Hussein the very weapons he later used against American and allied forces in the Persian Gulf War..

The Times stories--many based on previously secret papers prepared by the Bush Administration--also alleged that the Administration tried to cover up what it had done by altering documents it supplied to Congress and by attempting to obstruct official investigations of aid to Iraq.

The Times has now published more than 100 stories, totaling more than 90,000 words, on the scandal known as Iraqgate. Almost half these stories have appeared on Page 1. Although The Times "got a good chunk of the story first," as William Safire wrote in a New York Times column, many other news organizations--print and broadcast--have also pursued it. But even though 1992 is an election year and President Bush has proven vulnerable on other grounds, Iraqgate has had negligible impact on the national political scene.

Shortly after The Times stories began running, Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.), chairman of the House Banking Committee, cited them in calling for congressional hearings on Iraqgate. Gonzalez, who had been investigating the role in Iraqgate of the Atlanta branch of the Italian government-owned Banca Nazionale del Lavoro for more than a year, also read dozens of classified documents on Iraqgate into the Congressional Record.

But the House was often near-empty when Gonzalez was reading, and Gonzalez was dismissed by many as "an amiable blowhard, a colorful character, and not as a serious exposer of wrongdoing, which is what he is," Safire says.

There was no public outcry over Iraqgate similar to that which triggered the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations. When U.S. Atty. Gen. William P. Barr announced in August that he would not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether any laws were broken, the reaction, especially outside Washington, was barely perceptible. Only in recent weeks has the story spurred appreciable political activity, and even now, it does not seem to have had substantial impact on the general public.

Why not?

CONTINUED...

http://www.latimes.com/food/la-me-shaw27oct27-story.html#page=1

For some durn reason, Corporat McPravda did not see fit to print or broadcast this story. Musta got in the way of "Money trumps peace" work.

[Samantha]

8. I was going to respond to your question when the thread opened with "psychopaths"

but I see from the picture you already knew the answer.

Sam

[Octafish]

30. American Caligula

The appellation "psychopaths" sums them up perfectly. Details why from 1991 -- from the Introduction to the "Unauthorized Biography of George Bush":

American Caligula

The thesis of this book is simple: if George Bush were to be re- elected in November 1992 for a second term as the president of the United States, this country and the rest of the world would face a catastrophe of gigantic proportions.

The necessity of writing this book became overwhelming in the minds of the authors in the wake of the ghastly slaughter of the Iraq war of January-February 1991. That war was an act of savage and premeditated genocide on the part of Bush, undertaken in connivance with a clique in London which has, in its historical continuity, represented both the worst enemy of the long-term interests of the American people, and the most implacable adversary of the progress of the human species.

The authors observed George Bush very carefully as the Gulf crisis and the war unfolded, and had no doubt that his enraged public outbursts constituted real psychotic episodes, indicative of a deranged mental state that was full of ominous portent for humanity. The authors were also horrified by the degree to which their fellow citizens willfully ignored the shocking reality of these public fits. A majority of the American people proved more than willing to lend its support to a despicable enterprise of killing.

By their role-call votes of January 12, 1991, the Senate and the House of Representatives gave their authorization for Bush’s planned and imminent war measures to restore the Emir of Kuwait, who owns and holds chattel slaves. That vote was a crime against God’s justice.

This book is part of an attempt to help them to survive anyway, both for the sake of the world and for their own sake. It is intended as a contribution to a process of education that might still save the American people from the awesome destruction of a second Bush presidency. It is further intended as a warning to all citizens that if they fail to deny Bush a second term, they will deserve what they get after 1993.

As this book goes to press in the autumn of 1991, public awareness of the long-term depression of the American economy is rapidly growing. If Bush were re-elected, he would view himself as beyond the reach of the voters and the popular will; with the federal deficit rising beyond a billion dollars a day, a second Bush administration would dictate such crushing austerity as to bring the country to the brink of civil war. Some harbingers of what might be coming are described in the last chapter of this book. Our goal has been to assemble as much of the truth about Bush as possible within the time constraints imposed by the 1992 election. Time and resources have not permitted us meticulous attention to certain matters of detail; we can say, nevertheless, that both our commitment to the truth and our final product are better than anything anyone else has been able to muster, including news organizations and intelligence agencies with capabilities that far surpass our own.

How can we hope to fight the mightily Bush power cartel with a biography, a mere book? We have no illusions of easy success, but we were encouraged in our work by the hope that a biography might stimulate opposition to Bush and his policies. It will certainly, if only by virtue of its novelty, pose a new set of problems to those seeking to get Bush re-elected. For although Bush is now what journalists call a world leader, no accurate account on his actual career exists in the public domain.

The volume which we submit herewith to the court of world public opinion is, to the best of our knowledge, the first and only book- length, unauthorized biography of George Bush. It is the first approximation of the truth about his life. This is the first biography worthy of the name, a fact that says a great deal about the sinister power and obsessive secrecy of this personage. None of the other self-announced biographies (including Bush’s campaign autobiography) can be taken seriously; each of these books is a pastiche of lies, distortions and banalities that run the gamut from campaign panegyric to the Goebbels Big Lie to fake but edifying stories for credulous children. Almost without exception, the available Bush literature is worthless.

But with Bush, this is only the beginning of the problem. Bush’s family pedigree establishes him as a network asset of Brown Brothers, Harriman, one of the most powerful political forces in the United States during much of the twentieth century, and for many years the largest private bank in the world. It suffices in this context to think of Averell Harriman negotiating during World War II in the name of the United States with Churchill and Stalin, or of the role of Brown Brothers, Harriman partner Robert Lovett in guiding John F. Kennedy’s choice of his cabinet, to begin to see the implications of Senator Prescott Bush’s post as managing partner of this bank. Brown Brothers, Harriman networks pervade government and the mass media. Again and again in the course of the following pages we will see stories embarrassing to George Bush refused publication, documents embarrassing to Bush suspiciously disappear, and witnesses inculpatory to Bush be overtaken by mysterious and conveniently timed deaths. The few relevant facts which have found their way here and there into the public domain have necessarily been filtered by this gigantic apparatus. This problem has been compounded by the corruption and servility of authors, journalists, news executives and publishers who have functioned more and more as kept advocates for Bush.

George Bush wants key aspects of his life to remain covert. At the same time, he senses that his need for coverup is a vulnerability. The need to protect this weak flank accounts for the steady stream of fake biographical and historical material concerning George, as well as the spin given to many studies of recent history that may never mention George directly. Over the past several months, we have seen a new book about Watergate that pretends to tell the public something new by fingering Al Haig as Deep Throat, but ignoring the central role of George Bush and his business partners in the Watergate affair. We have a new book by Lt. Col. Oliver North which alleges that Reagan knew everything about the Iran-contra affair, but that George Bush was not part of North’s chain of command. The latter point merely paraphrases Bush’s own lame excuse that he was “out of the loop” during all those illegal transactions. During the hearings on the nomination of Robert Gates to become Director of Central Intelligence, nobody had anything new to add about the role of George Bush, the boss of the National Security Council’s Special Situation Group crisis staff that was a command center for the whole affair. These charades are peddled to a very credulous public by operatives whose task goes beyond mere damage control to mind control– the “MK” in the government’s MK Ultra operation.

Part of the free ride enjoyed by George Bush during the 1988 elections is reflected in the fact that at no point in the campaign was there any serious effort by any of the so-called news organizations to provide the public with something approaching an accurate and complete account of his political career. At least two biographies of Dukakis appeared which, although hardly critical, were not uniformly laudatory either. But in the case of Bush, all the public could turn to was Bush’s old 1980 campaign biography and a newer campaign autobiography, both of them a tissue of lies.

Early in the course of our research for the present volume it became apparent that all books and most longer articles dealing with the life of George Bush had been generated from a single print-out of thoroughly sanitized, approved and canonically admitted “facts” about Bush and his family. We learned that during 1979-1980, Bush aide Pete Roussel attempted to recruit biographers to prepare a life of Bush based on a collection of press releases, news summaries, and similar pre-digested material. Most biographical writing about Bush consists merely of the points from this printout, strung out chronologically and made into a narrative through the interpretation of comments, anecdotes, embellishments, or special stylistic devices.

CONTINUED...

http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/introduction-american-caligula/

Guess they didn't think possible a Baby Doc Bush would come along and pick up where Poppy Doc Caligula left off. Ah, professionalism.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. ...

[navarth]

16. stinky!!

I just know that was his nickname. Oliver 'Stinky' North.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

28. I still say Fawn Hall should have sold shredders....

Who can forget the Big Hair 80's?

[Cleita]

26. Nice pic. But now he's a, probably well paid, poisonality on TV. eom

[Octafish]

53. Stinky the Dope Dealer

The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations



Smells like sulfur, rotten eggs up close.

[christx30]

11. "Well, I had a genuine moral

problem with selling the weapons to the terrorists. But that all changed when his check cleared."

[Octafish]

64. Power the semantics of terrorism...

A STASI Fashion Show...



Var big hit:

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/10/7331544-the-stasi-fashion-show-east-german-spy-archive-showcases-the-art-of-disguise

I believe it was part of a new exhibition on the state security apparatus put together by the good people in Berlin:

Stasi records take center stage in Berlin

EXCERPT...

The date - January 15 - is significant. Exactly 21 years ago, on January 15, 1990, East German activists stormed the redundant Stasi headquarters in East Berlin, and managed to salvage a significant proportion of the vast numbers of files, recordings and photos in the Stasi archive. Former Stasi officers had been in the process of destroying the material after the fall of the Berlin Wall a couple of months earlier.

[font color="blue"]I look forward to the day where the records of our own government's secret domestic spy apparatus are open for review.[/font color]

Power and the Semantics of Terrorism

By Edward S. Herman
Covert Action Quarterly 26, Summer 1986

For the average citizen of the West, the idea of the United States as a sponsor of international terrorism ‑ let alone the dominant sponsor1 ‑ would appear utterly incomprehensible. After all, one reads daily that the United States is leading the charge against something it calls "terrorism," and it regularly assails its allies for dragging their feet in responding to terrorism. On the other hand, the U.S. government has organized a mercenary army to attack Nicaragua, and even provided it with a printed manual of recommended acts of sabotage and murder, which has been implemented by the proxy army, at the cost of well over a thousand Nicaraguan civilian lives. The U.S. government has given unstinting support to the apartheid government of South Africa, which has invaded, and organized its own mercenary armies, to subvert a string of frontline states, again at the cost of many thousands of civilian lives.2 The western media, however, never refer to the United States or South Africa as "terrorist states," even though both of them have killed vastly greater numbers than Qaddafi or the Red Brigades.3

The reason for the western misperception is that the powerful define terrorism, and the western media loyally follow the agenda of their own leaders. The powerful naturally define terrorism to exclude their own acts and those of their friends and clients.

"If I don't like it, call it terrorism."

The current administration in Washington has found it possible arbitrarily to designate any group or country which it opposes as "terrorist," and this will be transmitted to the public by the mass media without serious criticism or laughter. In his speech before the American Bar Association on July 8, 1985, President Reagan named five states as engaging in serious state terrorism‑North Korea, Libya, Iran, Cuba, and Nicaragua. The Soviet Union was presumably omitted because of the upcoming Summit meeting. The media reported that Syria had been spared as "a gesture of gratitude" to President Assad for his role in negotiating the release of 39 U.S. hostages in Lebanon!4 The press failed to discuss the fact that South Africa and Guatemala (among others) were omitted, that Nicaragua does not murder its own citizens as South Africa and Guatemala have done on a large scale, and that Nicaragua has not invaded other countries or organized subversive forces to destabilize other countries, as South Africa has done in many places and as the United States does quite openly to Nicaragua itself. The ludicrousness and hypocrisy of the United States calling Nicaragua a terrorist state was entirely unnoticed and without effect on the objective reporting by the U.S. press. With a compliant mass media, especially in the United States but also among its clients, terror is what the powerful U.S. government declares to be terror. As it is now using the concept with audacious and arbitrary abandon, it is employing the "If I don't like it, call it terrorism" definition of terrorism.

Exclusion of State Terrorism: Retail Versus Wholesale Terror

In its semantic manipulation of terrorism and related words, a number of devices are used by the United States and its intellectual spokespersons to differentiate friends and self from "terrorists." Perhaps the most important is to confine the use of the word to non‑state actors and actions; i.e., to define terrorism as the use of violence to oppose governments.5 This departs from standard and traditional usage, according to which terrorism is a mode of governing as well as of opposing governments by means of intimidation.6

By excluding governments, South Africa, Guatemala, and Israel are removed from the category of terrorist, while the African National Congress (ANC), rebel groups in Guatemala, and the PLO are automatically eligible. This is grotesque in terms of both numbers of victims and forms of violence employed by state and non‑state intimidators,7 but it is extremely convenient in terms of western priorities and interests. The governments protected by this word usage are allies, clients, and self; the groups automatically made "terrorists" oppose these clients and western defense of the status quo.8

To focus more sharply on the absurdity of this definitional system, I use the concepts of "retail" and "wholesale" terror: Dissident individuals and groups kill on a retail basis (that is, on a small scale, with limited technological resources to kill, and with small numbers of victims); states kill wholesale. This fairly obvious but neglected point is displayed dramatically on Table 1, which compares the numbers killed by state and non-state terrorists in recent decades. It can be quickly observed that single incidents of state terrorism frequently involve many more killings than multi‑year totals for non‑state terrorists (not to speak of the vastly greater numbers allocable to state terrorists on a multi‑year basis). In fact, one can see from this table that the multi‑year aggregates for the Baader‑Meinhof gang (a part of row 1), the Red Brigades (only a part of the relatively small Italian total on row 2),9 and the PLO (row 3) ‑ bogeymen of the western media‑even when taken together fall short of the totals for single episodes of violence by South Africa, El Salvador, and Israel. The table suggests that if we were to allow state (wholesale) terror to be included in our definition of terror and give it attention remotely proportional to numbers, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Israel and the United States itself would be pushed to center stage,10 the Red Brigades and PLO would recede to the background. But this would not conform to the demands of western power.

CONTINUED...

http://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=108

Money, christx30. Money. And Power.

[global1]

12. Probably The Same Kind Of Person That Sells A Mentally Unstable Person Guns....nt

[Uncle Joe]

13. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Octafish.

[QuestForSense]

14. Is it me, or has the CIA become the elephant in the room which no one ever mentions?

Love the photo. Good cop, bad cop.

[JackRiddler]

18. What, they mention it all the time.

Under its Dr. Jekyll name as the State Department.

[easychoice]

21. GHWB

Ronnie the Jello-Head didn't have the brains to think this shit up.
Bush and his buddies did all the heavy lifting.

[Octafish]

25. Poppy represents the black heart of the elephant.

From Christopher Simpson, info on how Poppy started the big ball of wax when he pried control out of the bed-ridden Pruneface:

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.

SOURCE: http://mediafilter.org/caq/CAQ58contents.html

Gangster times were a picnic compared to these, what Barbara Bush called our "Brave New World Order."

[navarth]

15. indeed. kicking.

[volstork]

17. Agreed. As you know,

it all goes back to the Kennedy assassination. Nixon and Bush I were involved, Ford was on the Warren Commission. Agnew took a dive, Nixon appointed Ford, Ford ascended when Nixon fell, then pardoned Nixon and his cronies. Bush ran the CIA, then slipped into the VP slot. He was the puppeteer for Reagan like Cheney (former Nixon staffer, along with Rumsfeld, et al) was for Bush II.
We continue to reap what was sown on that black day...

[zeemike]

20. Good points.

It was the day democracy died...and we have had the same people running things ever sense.

[easychoice]

22. I bet Bush was bummed out when Reagan didn't croak.

He was ready to flood the country with cocaine and ronnie would just get in the way and cause problems.
I bet Reagan actually thought he was running the show.Such a poor deluded idiot.

[MisterP]

24. did they also give 'em cookies?

[Octafish]

29. John McFarlane and Oliver North delivered a cake shaped like a key...

...personally.

MCFARLANE TOOK CAKE AND BIBLE TO TEHERAN, EX-C.I.A. MAN SAYS

By BERNARD GWERTZMAN, Special to the New York Times
Published: January 11, 1987

A retired Central Intelligence Agency official has confirmed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that on the secret mission to Teheran last May, Robert C. McFarlane and his party carried a Bible with a handwritten verse from President Reagan for Iranian leaders.

According to a person who has read the committee's draft report, the retired C.I.A. official, George W. Cave, an Iran expert who was part of the mission, said the group had 10 falsified passports, believed to be Irish, and a key-shaped cake to symbolize the anticipated ''opening'' to Iran.

These and other details of the secret American operation are discussed at length in the report, but much of the material has already appeared in public in the more than two months since the revelations began with publication of a story about the McFarlane mission in a small Beirut weekly. In effect, the report supplies a useful chronology of the events.

The rather bizarre details of the McFarlane mission were first made known by the Iranian Speaker of Parliament, Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani, on Nov. 4, when the secret operation first became known. Hojatolislam Rafsanjani also said that the Americans had been disguised and that they had carried sets of Colt pistols as gifts. But these details were not confirmed in the report.

Nevertheless, until the committee's report began to circulate in Washington, all the Iranian assertions about the McFarlane mission were either derided as fanciful or not confirmed. Today, a senior State Department official independently confirmed that Mr. McFarlane, a former national security adviser, did carry the Reagan Bible as authentication for the group. But he said he was not sure about the cake and declined to discuss the passports.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/11/us/mcfarlane-took-cake-and-bible-to-teheran-ex-cia-man-says.html

C'mon. Everybody loves a traitor. Ask Roger Ailes.

[historian]

27. the bush family and his cronies

the armament industry doesnt care who they sell to - they just want the once almighty dollar.

[Octafish]

51. ‘Dynasty of Death’

Historical Perspective on the Bush Family

There is no historic parallel that can be drawn, nothing compares with the accomplishments of the Bush family. No dictator or tyrant can equal the suffering and destruction they have wrought on humanity, as they are not mere tyrants themselves, but the makers and breakers of tyrants, the organizers and profiteers of war and death. They are not alone and solely responsible for creating the present day military industrial complex, however since 1915 the Bush family has been directly involved in World War One and Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, numerous CIA secret wars, the Gulf War, and now a “Never Ending War”. The past four generations of this one family have had a hand in promoting and profiting from most of major wars that America has waged since the beginning of the industrialized age.

By Schuyler Ebbets
Global Research, October 22, 2006
thepeoplesvoice.org 22 October 2006

PART I

The nightmare for the world began in 1915, with the establishment of an unholy partnership between the U.S. Government and the ‘War Industries Board’, for-runner of America’s present day ‘military-industrial complex’. Some of those seated on the board of directors were Samuel P. Bush, great grandfather of George W. bush, and so-called chief of Ordnance for the Small Arms and Ammunition Section, Wall Street banker Clarence Dillon, Samuel Pryor, executive committee chairman of Remington Arms, and Bernard Baruch, who, as head of the War Industries Board profited in excess of $200,000,000.

The members of the Board aptly came to be known as the “Merchants of Death.” Using the facade of government to legitimize their operations, the War Industries Board represented the big munitions makers of the day who dispatched agents around the globe to sell the weapons and materials of war to both sides of any conflict. They bribed government officials and used their corporate influence and capitol to increase international tensions, which in turn generated demand and maximized profit.

It was during the First World War that Samuel P. Bush and the other board members amassed fortunes selling the weapons and materials of war not only to America but also to Germany. Most of the records and correspondence pertaining to Samuel P. Bush’s activities on the War Industries Board were later burned mysteriously, “to save space” in the National Archives. When their business venture officially ended on November 11, 1918, some 37,508,686 human beings had been killed. It set a dangerous precedent for the destiny of America and the destiny of civilization itself. A small group of corporate manufactures, bankers, and industrialists had formulated a devilishly effective method by which profit is extracted from human suffering, war, and death, and their dark technique would be repeated and refined.

In 1922 while George Walker, was president at W. A. Harriman & Co, Averell Harriman went to Berlin to set up a branch bank for the company. While in Berlin Averell Harriman met with Fritz Thyssen, prime sponsor of the German politician Adolph Hitler. It was at that time that preliminary arrangements were made to establish a bank for Thyssen in New York. Two years later, in 1924, W. A. Harriman & Co. formally began the Union Banking Corporation in Manhattan, chiefly to handle German funds supplied through the Thyssen-owned Nazi front Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart (BHS), in the Netherlands, for the mass purchase of American commodities. The W. A. Harriman & Co executives labeled these dealing as the “Hitler Project”.

On May 1st 1926 Prescott Bush, grandfather of George W. Bush, close friend of Bunny Harriman and fellow Bonesmen from their Yale class of 1917 joined W. A. Harriman & Co. as its vice president under the bank’s president and his father-in-law George Walker. In that same year an associate of Prescott Bush’s father, Samuel P. Bush, and “Merchants of Death” board member Clarence Dillon, acquired $70 million dollars from Fritz Thyssen to set up a massive organization named the Vereinigte Stahlwerke (United Steel Works Corporation, or the German Steel Trust). This would become Germany’s largest industrial corporation.

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/dynasty-of-death/3558

[jwirr]

31. That is what I think every time I hear how the weapon was a Russian made weapon. Every country

that spreads military equipment around the world is guilty. I am not defending the separatists but I am realistic enough to know that our military supplies also have been used for much the same purpose.

[librechik]

32. NWO. The more dead the better.

they don't care who dies, and it doesn't occur to them it could be themselves. They live a world of lies.

[Octafish]

33. BFEE Business Model: Sell Arms to Both Sides

Perhaps it's where the phrase "Making a Killing" comes from.



Remembering the Dead: Reagan Armed Iraq and Iran in 1980s War That Killed Over 1 Million

[Octafish]

45. Haven't you heard? No one is above the law.

THE ADMINISTRATION'S IRAQ GATE SCANDAL

BY WILLIAM SAFIRE
Congressional Record
Extension of Remarks - May 19, 1992
Washington

Americans now know that the war in the Persian Gulf was brought about by a colossal foreign-policy blunder: George Bush's decision, after the Iran-Iraq war ended, to entrust regional security to Saddam Hussein.

What is not yet widely understood is how that benighted policy led to the Bush Administration's fraudulent use of public funds, its sustained deception of Congress and its obstruction of justice.

As the Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandar, was urging Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker to buy the friendship of the Iraqi dictator in August 1989, the F.B.I. uncovered a huge scam at the Atlanta branch of the Lavoro Bank to finance the buildup of Iraq's war machine by diverting U.S.-guaranteed grain loans.

Instead of pressing the investigation or curbing the appeasement, the President turned a blind eye to lawbreaking and directed another billion dollars to Iraq. Our State and Agriculture Department's complicity in Iraq's duplicity transformed what could have been dealt with as `Saddam's Lavoro scandal' into George Bush's Iraqgate.

The first element of corruption is the wrongful application of U.S. credit guarantees. Neither the Commodity Credit Corporation nor the Export-Import Bank runs a foreign-aid program; their purpose is to stimulate U.S. exports. High-risk loan guarantees to achieve foreign-policy goals unlawful endanger that purpose.

Yet we now know that George Bush personally leaned on Ex-Im to subvert its charter--not to promote our exports but to promote relations with the dictator. And we have evidence that James Baker overrode worries in Agriculture and O.M.B. that the law was being perverted: Mr. Baker's closest aid, Robert Kimmett, wrote triumphantly, `your call to . . . Yeutter . . . paid off.' Former Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter is now under White House protection.

Second element of corruption is the misleading of Congress. When the charge was made two years ago in this space that State was improperly intervening in this case, Mr. Baker's top Middle East aide denied it to Senate Foreign Relations; meanwhile, Yeutter aides deceived Senator Leahy's Agriculture Committee about the real foreign-policy purpose of the C.C.C. guarantees. To carry out Mr. Bush's infamous National Security Directive 26, lawful oversight was systematically blinded.

Third area of Iraqgate corruption is the obstruction of justice. Atlanta's assistant U.S. Attorney Gail McKenzie, long blamed here for foot-dragging, would not withhold from a grand jury what she has already told friends: that indictment of Lavoro officials was held up for nearly a year by the Bush Criminal Division. The long delay in prosecution enabled James Baker to shake credits for Saddam out of malfeasant Agriculture appointees.

When House Banking Chairman Henry Gonzalez gathered documents marked `secret' showing this pattern of corruption, he put them in the Congressional Record. Two months later, as the media awakened, Mr. Bush gave the familiar `gate' order; stonewall.

`Public disclosure of classified information harms the national security,' Attorney General William Barr instructed the House Banking Committee last week. `. . . in light of your recent disclosures, the executive branch will not provide any more classified information'--unless the wrongdoing is kept secret.

`Your threat to withhold documents,' responded Chairman Gonzalez, `has all the earmarks of a classic effort to obstruct a proper and legitimate investigation . . . none of the documents compromise, in any fashion whatsoever, the national security or intelligence sources and methods.'

Mr. Barr, in personal jeopardy, has flung down the gauntlet. Chairman Gonzalez tells me he plans to present his obstruction case this week to House Judiciary Chairman Jack Brooks, probably flanked by Representatives Charles Schumer and Barney Frank, members of both committees.

`I will recommend that Judiciary consider requiring the appointment of an independent counsel,' says Mr. Gonzalez, who has been given reason to believe that Judiciary--capable of triggering the Ethics in Government Act--will be persuaded to act.

Policy blunders are not crimes. But perverting the purpose of appropriated funds is a crime; lying to Congress compounds that crime; and obstructing justice to cover up the original crime is a criminal conspiracy.

SOURCE: http://fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992/h920519l.htm

# # #

[RufusTFirefly]

39. In 1934, the Nye Committee attempted to nationalize the arms industry

Needless to say, the Committee's efforts were thwarted.

There was a widespread belief that so-called "merchants of death" spearheaded a profit-driven effort to encourage U.S. intervention into World War I. The Committee named names and came to some forceful conclusions, most of which are just as relevant today:

The committee finds, under the head of the effect of armament, on peace, that some of the munitions companies have occasionally had opportunities to intensify the fears of people for their neighbors and have used them to their own profit.

The committee finds, further, that the very quality which in civilian life tends to lead toward progressive civilization, namely the improvements of machinery, has been used by the munitions makers to scare nations into a continued frantic expenditure for the latest improvements in devices of warfare. The constant message of the traveling salesman of the munitions companies to the rest of the world has been that they now had available for sale something new, more dangerous and more deadly than ever before and that the potential enemy was or would be buying it.

While the evidence before this committee does not show that wars have been started solely because of the activities of munitions makers and their agents, it is also true that wars rarely have one single cause, and the committee finds it to be against the peace of the world for selfishly interested organizations to be left free to goad and frighten nations into military activity.

The committee finds, further, that munitions companies engaged in bribery find themselves involved in the civil and military politics of other nations, and that this is an unwarranted form of intrusion into the affairs of other nations and undesirable representation of the character and methods of the people of the United States.

(Note: This is a duplication of a post I made in another less trafficked thread.)

[Octafish]

42. Thank you! That should be an OP, RufusTFirefly.

Inconvenient History conveniently lost to benefit the War Party.

It is an idea an honest government would address, if not enact. And after the armaments, the banks and energy.

It would at least get some hiring started.

PS: A bit of history I don't want forgotten:

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

[RufusTFirefly]

43. You're welcome, Octafish! Perhaps it will come as no surprise that ...

Last edited Fri Jul 18, 2014, 06:28 PM - Edit history (1)

... some of the same companies cited by the Nye Commission were implicated in the Business Plot.

Here's the separate OP:

Believe it or not! Congress once sought to nationalize the arms industry.

[valerief]

40. Compassionate conservatives. They have compassion for their wallets. nt

[Octafish]

54. Pretty much it.

During Systemic Corruption, the money is good for the corrupted.

"One of the things that is interesting about reading conspiracy theory is that much of what folks think is conspiracy is really many people acting in concert to make or protect their money." - Catherine Austin Fitts

A big shot in Poppy's crew, Fitts got fed up with the corruption at the highest levels of government, business and finance. She's doing all she can to document corruption on Wall Street and Washington and helping those who give a damn do something about it. Her Narcodollars for Beginners deserves a Pulitzer.

Thank you for spelling it out, valerief. Integrity is an alien concept to the plutocrat.

[Rex]

44. Yep same kind of people that create dictators so decades later

they can pretend to be the hero by taking out said dictator.

[rickyhall]

46. Between convenient assassinations & behind the back deals,

How could they lose? Unless they run a crazy old man and a nitwit bleach blonde. I am a little puzzled how Bush I lost in '92 unless because Clintons were a little smarter than the Bushes. Maybe like with Romney they thought they couldn't lose.

[tea and oranges]

49. How could they lose? Where I come from it's spelled PEROT.

The delicious irony of all the Nader bashing around these parts is that Perot really did split the vote.

[Octafish]

55. No one was more surprised than Poppy...

...except maybe William Jefferson Clinton.

[McCamy Taylor]

47. I knew before I clicked on it what the pic would be. "Freedom fighters"

[Octafish]

50. Like a broken record...

Click...



Click...



Click...



Click...



Click...



Click...



Since Nov. 22, 1963.

[Mnemosyne]

48. Nasty bastard war criminals. nt

[Octafish]

59. 'Corruption in public office is treason.' -- Adlai Stevenson, Jr.

And theirs unpunished has returned to haunt America, again and again and until the present day.

[Mnemosyne]

67. Treason is rampant in our gov, I believe worse than ever in our history.

But I could be mistaken...

[Octafish]

68. You're not mistaken. And, as Reagan and Poppy Bush got away with it, all sorts of things ensued.

From wars without end for endless profits to banksters bailed out and given bonuses by taxpayers for their trouble.

"Rampant" is an excellent word for them.

[Mnemosyne]

70. Do you think Poppy still holds as much power? He looks pitiful, but wolf in sheeps clothing still

comes to mind whenever I see his evil ass. I rarely ever grave dance, but for him I will make an exception.

Drives me insane when someone here claims he "wasn't too bad"! Jr. was a piker compared to that miserable creature.

[Bad Thoughts]

57. And you despise Reagan as much as Putin?

Please, don't equivocate.

[Octafish]

58. Putin didn't do business with the Ayatollah.

Putin didn't make it OK to be racist again in America.

Putin didn't make war on women, children in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Putin didn't do the mafia's bidding.

Putin didn't lay a wreath on NAZI SS graves.

Putin may get there, though.

Do you like Reagan more? Be honest.

[Bad Thoughts]

60. Certainly you know what "as much" means

But for the record, Putin's politics and record are quite comparable to Reagan's. If you would oppose Reagan today, you would oppose Putin now.

[Octafish]

61. I oppose corrupt despots.

I oppose traitors more.

Now that you ask, don't you?

[Bad Thoughts]

62. You seem to have problems reading my transparent posts. eom.

[Octafish]

63. No. Your problem is you want a different answer.

As to what that is, I don't care.

[Iggo]

65. Even more.

[Octafish]

69. Thank you. That's the phrase I was searching for.

For the reasons I alluded to above.

[kelliekat44]

66. I believe the US government does. Look who we sell arms to. We just don't call them "terrorists."

But they all behave just like the people we call "terrorists."

[Initech]

71. And yet the republicans will predictably blame Obama while drumming up the war machine.