2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHalf For'n Policy Experts Signing Clinton's Anti-Sanders Letter Have Ties to Military Contractors
by Lee Fang
The Intercept, Jan. 21, 2016
Hillary Clintons campaign released a letter this week in which 10 foreign policy experts criticized her opponent Bernie Sanders call for closer engagement with Iran and said Sanders had not thought through these crucial national security issues that can have profound consequences for our security.
The missive from the Clinton campaign was covered widely in the press, but what wasnt disclosed in the coverage is that fully half of the former State Department officials and ambassadors who signed the letter, and who are now backing Clinton, are now enmeshed in the military contracting establishment, which has benefited tremendously from escalating violence around the world, particularly in the Middle East.
Here are some of the letter signatories current employment positions that were not disclosed in the reporting of the letter:
Former Assistant Defense Secretary Derek Chollet, former Pentagon and CIA Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash, and former Deputy National Security Adviser Julianne Smith are now employed by the consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies, a firm we profiled last year. Beacon Global Strategies staff advises both Clinton and Republican candidates for president, including Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. The firm makes money by providing advice to a clientele that is primarily military contractors. Beacon Global Strategies, however, has refused to disclose the identity of its clients.
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https://theintercept.com/2016/01/21/clinton-foreign-policy-experts/
pangaia
(24,324 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Perhaps war would go away if the profit disappeared.
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2015/03/18/companies-profiting-the-most-from-war-2/2/
Let's nationalize defense sector.
nolabels
(13,133 posts)Even establishment dog catchers have seemed to come out against Bernie. Not sure what it is exactly, but it almost appears to be some kind of Kool-Aid they drank or something. It's really kind weird because Bernie's #'s go up even faster because of it
Ferd Berfel
(3,687 posts)The other half is in trouble now....
It's also a vote for the Military Industrial Complex.
EdwardBernays
(3,343 posts)Own a lobbying firm, with his brother, that has weapons manufacturers, big pharma, the Iraqi "government" and Saudi Arabia as clients.
"Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation."
"The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration."
The State Department formally approved these arms sales even as many of the deals enhanced the military power of countries ruled by authoritarian regimes whose human rights abuses had been criticized by the department. Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar all donated to the Clinton Foundation and also gained State Department clearance to buy caches of American-made weapons even as the department singled them out for a range of alleged ills, from corruption to restrictions on civil liberties to violent crackdowns against political opponents.
http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The Knights of the Revolving Door
When War is Swell: the Carlyle Group and the Middle East at War
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
CounterPunch, Weekend Edition September 6-8, 2013
Paris.
A couple of weeks ago, in a dress rehearsal for her next presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, the doyenne of humanitarian interventionism, made a pit-stop at the Carlyle Group to brief former luminaries of the imperial war rooms about her shoot-first-dont-ask-questions foreign policy.
For those of you who have put the playbill of the Bush administration into a time capsule and buried it beneath the compost bin, the Carlyle Group is essentially a hedge fund for war-making and high tech espionage. They are the people who brought you the Iraq war and all those intrusive niceties of Homeland Security. Call them the Knights of the Revolving Door, many of Carlyles executives and investors having spent decades in the Pentagon, the CIA or the State Department, before cashing in for more lucrative careers as war profiteers. They are now licking their chops at the prospect for an all-out war against Syria, no doubt hoping that the conflagration will soon spread to Lebanon, Jordan and, the big prize, Iran.
For a refresher course on the sprawling tentacles of the Carlyle Group, heres an essay that first appeared in CounterPunchs print edition in 2004. Sadly, not much has changed in the intervening years, except these feted souls have gotten much, much richer. JSC
Across all fronts, Bushs war deteriorates with stunning rapidity. The death count of American soldiers killed in Iraq will soon top 1000, with no end in sight. The members of the handpicked Iraqi Governor Council are being knocked off one after another. Once loyal Shia clerics, like Ayatollah Sistani, are now telling the administration to pull out or face a nationalist insurgency. The trail of culpability for the abuse, torture and murder of Iraqi detainees seems to lead inexorably into the office of Donald Rumsfeld. The war for Iraqi oil has ended up driving the price of crude oil through the roof. Even Kurdish leaders, brutalized by the Baathists for decades, are now saying Iraq was a safer place under their nemesis Saddam Hussein. Like Medea whacking her own kids, the US turned on its own creation, Ahmed Chalabi, raiding his Baghdad compound and fingering him as an agent of the ayatollahs of Iran. And on and on it goes.
Still not all of the presidents men are in a despairing mood. Amid the wreckage, there remain opportunities for profit and plunder. Halliburton and Bechtels triumphs in Iraq have been chewed over for months. Less well chronicled is the profiteering of the Carlyle Group, a company with ties that extend directly into the Oval Office itself.
Even Pappy Bush stands in line to profit handsomely from his sons war making. The former president is on retainer with the Carlyle Group, the largest privately held defense contractor in the nation. Carlyle is run by Frank Carlucci, who served as the National Security advisor and Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Carlucci has his own embeds in the current Bush administration. At Princeton, his college roommate was Donald Rumsfeld. Theyve remained close friends and business associates ever since. When you have friends like this, you dont need to hire lobbyists..
Bush Sr. serves as a kind of global emissary for Carlyle. The ex-president doesnt negotiate arms deals; he simply opens the door for them, a kind of high level meet-and-greet. His special area of influence is the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia, where the Bush family has extensive business and political ties. According to an account in the Washington Post, Bush Sr. earns around $500,000 for each speech he makes on Carlyles behalf.
One of the Saudi investors lured to Carlyle by Bush was the BinLaden Group, the construction conglomerate owned by the family of Osama bin Laden. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Bush convinced Shafiq Bin Laden, Osamas half brother, to sink $2 million of BinLaden Group money into Carlyles accounts. In a pr move, the Carlyle group cut its ties to the BinLaden Group in October 2001.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/06/when-war-is-swell-the-carlyle-group-and-the-middle-east-at-war/