World War, Inc.: Loyal to Royal OIL to the End?

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - Three retired generals challenged a dozen members of Congress in a new ad campaign, saying the politicians can’t support President Bush’s policies in Iraq and still expect to win re-election.

"I am outraged, as are the majority of Americans. I’m a lifelong Republican, but it’s past time for change," retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste told reporters.

"Our strategy in Iraq today is more of the same, a slow grind to nowhere which totally ignores the reality of Iraq and the lessons of history," Batiste said. "Our president ignores sound military advice and surrounds himself with like-minded and compliant subordinates."

Batiste and Paul Eaton, also a retired major general, are featured in the ads by VoteVets.org. They challenge the president’s argument that he listens to his commanders on the ground in Iraq and say the president’s Iraq policies endanger U.S. security.

"The fact is, the president has never listened to the soldiers on the ground effectively," said retired NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, who ran for president in 2004. "This administration is not listening to the troops and is not supporting them."

Other veterans promoted the campaign at a news conference in Manchester, the start of a six-state publicity tour targeting Sens. John Sununu of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and John Warner of Virginia, plus nine House members. All are Republicans.

Many in the group, including Sununu, have criticized various aspects of administration policy, but all have opposed legislation to establish a timetable for withdrawing American troops.

"Telling members of al-Qaida, militias or insurgent groups the date we will begin and end troop withdrawals is irresponsible," Sununu said.

Separately in Manchester, about a dozen peace activists staged a sit-in at Sununu’s office to oppose the war. They read the names of 22 New Hampshire troops who died in Iraq. They also stood around a pile of shoes. Attached to each pair was the name of an Iraqi killed in the conflict. Outside, about 30 protesters waved signs.

When VoteVets.org ran ads in February, Sununu said critics of the war have every right to speak out, "but no group or individual should claim to speak for all the patriotic Americans serving in Iraq and around the world in our armed forces."

The House members targeted by the new ads are Mary Bono of California, Phil English of Pennsylvania, Randy Kuhl and James Walsh of New York, Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri, Timothy Johnson of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Michael Castle of Delaware.

Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have done everything that’s been asked of them. They’ve performed their duties with courage and professionalism. We honor their sacrifices, patriotism and dedication.

Unfortunately, their sacrifice has not been matched by the actions of some large U.S. companies in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have declared an open season on American taxpayers. In the first war in our nation’s history in which so much has been outsourced, hundreds of millions of tax dollars are unaccounted for; many services and products were paid for but never delivered; and there are all too many examples of gross overcharging for everything from food, gasoline and water to vehicles.

At least ten companies, with contracts worth billions of dollars to provide goods and services to our troops in Iraq, have already paid more than $300 million in penalties over allegations of bid rigging, gross overcharging, fraud and delivery of faulty military parts. For U.S. companies to engage in unscrupulous business practices when they’re being paid to support American men and women in combat is war profiteering at its most grotesque.

That’s why I introduced the War Profiteering Act of 2007 (H.R. 400) to crack down on contractors, particularly in Iraq, who have defrauded or attempted to defraud the U.S. government by overcharging for goods and services. My legislation would make profiteering - overcharging in order to defraud or profit excessively from war, military action or reconstruction efforts - a felony, subject to up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $1 million or twice the illegal profits of the crime.

While there are anti-fraud laws to protect against the waste or theft of U.S. tax dollars in the United States, there have been no statutes prohibiting such actions overseas. Most of the contract fraud has been uncovered by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, with a staff of 55 auditors and investigators to oversee billions of dollars in contracts awarded to U.S. companies. I and other Members of Congress fought hard to create the office in 2004. When the then-majority attempted to terminate the Iraq Inspector General’s Office late last year, I fought to expand its oversight and accounting authority instead.

For too long Congress has failed in its duty to provide congressional oversight on policies and spending in Iraq or Afghanistan. As Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Air and Land Forces, I am determined to change that. The War Profiteering Act of 2007 is a big step in that direction.

Aloha, Neil

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!"

Monday, May 21st, 7 pm
Smith Memorial Union Ballroom
Portland State University
1825 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201

David Ray Griffin, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Religion and Theology at the Claremont Graduate School and co-Director of the Center for Process Studies.

He is the author of more than 20 books, including: The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11

*Ask Guiliani what happened to his REINFORCED COMMAND CENTER in Bldg. 7 WHICH WAS NOT HIT BY A JET, yet was reduced to MOLTEN RUBBLE WITHIN HOURS, despite only minor fires. This is AMERICA’S MOST GLARING, CORRUPTED ANOMOLY, the ultimate "Smoking Gun" evidence.

*SILVERSTEIN (WTC Owner) ADMITS ON LIVE TV IT WAS A DIRECTED DEMOLITION ("We gave the order to PULL." We have this from two different channels on DVD!) This means the "SET-UP" TOOK AT LEAST 2 WEEKS!

*BILLIONS WORTH OF GOLD BULLION STORED BY COMEX, KUWAITIS, CHASE/ROCKEFELLER, ROYALS, stored under TRADE CENTERS FULLY INSURED,"Dissappeared" in the LARGEST GOLD HEIST in history!!! Somebody ring 007!

*Silverstein makes a cool billion on his WTC insurance, bought only in the previous months...huge trade and accounting funds transfer in hours before the jets hit. Forensics show massive fraud evidence on WTC computers...

*Bush Jr’s unpopularity & "troubles" over 2000 Florida election fraud & conservative Justice vote-count intervention wiped away with LAUNCHING OF PERMANENT "WAR ON TERROR." Fascism ensues immediately...

*As long as these criminals are allowed to continue with "business as usual" they will keep pushing their accelerators to the limit... from the JFK assassination to the bombing of Baghdad, the Bush family & CIA- corporate warlords have been making a killing! Corporate MEDIA is complicit, of course, as is "National Propaganda Radio"...

*If America were running as intended, with true representation instead of a MILITARIZED POLICE STATE monkey-wrenched by corporate criminals, Speaker Pelosi would already have been appointed President, and the PEOPLE would be made aware of the CRIMINAL EVIDENCE of profound historic significance (think "Reichstag," only MUCH MORE heinous) sitting right out in the open. WTC Bldg. 7, call CSI, Quincy, Bones, Jordan, anybody— seriously.

Listen my American co-conspirators
and European counterparts in crime
we are now turned to neo-nazi endings
by our superior machinery and agitprop
now willing to drop bombs on children
burn villages with napalm and nukes
twist hatred into terror and torture
we are the new world war criminals

the terrorist is evil as necessary
using second-hand parts for vengeance
but our screaming jets blasting buildings
our acres of warheads threatening the world
our willingness to annihilate people
from the sky on secret screens is
a horror which sucks our holiness
into a festering hell of oblivion
there’s no God there and no humanity
surviving the corruption of murder

So stop elevating barbarism to heroism
while pushing buttons on deadly remotes
remember our old white war culture
once a Roman Legion now World War, Inc.
with multinational arms merchants lined up
their skeleton smiles glinting with gold
joking and gloating before great eagle wings
remember as my relatives roll in mass graves
if we don’t stop the stench of war crimes now
this wounded millennium will be our ending

"What does your war culture gain for mankind,
if you win the body count but sell your soul?"
we have made the entire world a graveyard
and ourselves have become ghosts of men
spitting in the face of God with science
willing to allow weapons to wipe away
entire landscapes and towns turned to ash
we pay the price and repeat the lies
applaud the criminals in chief and look on
as our entire planet’s in peril we play
our war games and sell the devil our sanity

"Buying the War," a documentary film from Bill Moyers, examines the media’s coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy. And four years after the invasion, Mr. Moyers wonders what has changed? Truthout provides the full documentary and a transcript of the program.

Listen and see if Servum’s words resonates with a child within yourself who wants the same thing.

Listen and take action.

"I am Only A Child"

A Must Watch 6 Minute Video

BBC - 05/08/2007 13:14:00 PM PDT
An attack by a US helicopter against suspected insurgents in Iraq has killed a number of children at a primary school, Iraqi security sources say.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6637307.stm

Everything that opponents of a pullout say would happen if the U.S. left Iraq is happening already, says retired Gen. William E. Odom, the head of the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration. So why stay?

By William E. Odom

If I were a journalist, I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren’t they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better.

Here are some of the arguments against pulling out:

1) We would leave behind a civil war.

2) We would lose credibility on the world stage.

3) It would embolden the insurgency and cripple the move toward democracy.

4) Iraq would become a haven for terrorists.

5) Iranian influence in Iraq would increase.

6) Unrest might spread in the region and/or draw in Iraq’s neighbors.

7) Shiite-Sunni clashes would worsen.

8) We haven’t fully trained the Iraqi military and police forces yet.

9) Talk of deadlines would undercut the morale of our troops.

But consider this:

1) On civil war. Iraqis are already fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That’s civil war. We created the civil war when we invaded; we can’t prevent a civil war by staying.

For those who really worry about destabilizing the region, the sensible policy is not to stay the course in Iraq. It is rapid withdrawal, re-establishing strong relations with our allies in Europe, showing confidence in the UN Security Council, and trying to knit together a large coalition including the major states of Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, and India to back a strategy for stabilizing the area from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until the United States withdraws from Iraq and admits its strategic error, no such coalition can be formed.

Thus those who fear leaving a mess are actually helping make things worse while preventing a new strategic approach with some promise of success.

2) On credibility. If we were Russia or some other insecure nation, we might have to worry about credibility. A hyperpower need not worry about credibility. That’s one of the great advantages of being a hyperpower: When we have made a big strategic mistake, we can reverse it. And it may even enhance our credibility. Staying there damages our credibility more than leaving.

Ask the president if he really worries about US credibility. Or, what will happen to our credibility if the course he is pursuing proves to be a major strategic disaster? Would it not be better for our long-term credibility to withdraw earlier than later in this event?

3) On the insurgency and democracy. There is no question the insurgents and other anti-American parties will take over the government once we leave. But that will happen no matter how long we stay. Any government capable of holding power in Iraq will be anti-American, because the Iraqi people are increasingly becoming anti-American.

Also, the U.S. will not leave behind a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq no matter how long it stays. Holding elections is easy. It is impossible to make it a constitutional democracy in a hurry.

President Bush’s statements about progress in Iraq are increasingly resembling LBJ’s statements during the Vietnam War. For instance, Johnson’s comments about the 1968 election are very similar to what Bush said in February 2005 after the election of a provisional parliament.

Ask the president: Why should we expect a different outcome in Iraq than in Vietnam?

Ask the president if he intends to leave a pro-American liberal regime in place. Because that’s just impossible. Postwar Germany and Japan are not models for Iraq. Each had mature (at least a full generation old) constitutional orders by the end of the 19th century. They both endured as constitutional orders until the 1930s. Thus General Clay and General MacArthur were merely reversing a decade and a half totalitarianism — returning to nearly a century of liberal political change in Japan and a much longer period in Germany.

Imposing a liberal constitutional order in Iraq would be to accomplish something that has never been done before. Of all the world’s political cultures, an Arab-Muslim one may be the most resistant to such a change of any in the world. Even the Muslim society in Turkey (an anti-Arab society) stands out for being the only example of a constitutional order in an Islamic society, and even it backslides occasionally.

4) On terrorists. Iraq is already a training ground for terrorists. In fact, the CIA has pointed out to the administration and congress that Iraq is spawning so many terrorists that they are returning home to many other countries to further practice their skills there. The quicker a new dictator wins the political power in Iraq and imposes order, the sooner the country will stop producing well-experienced terrorists.

Questions for the administration: "Why do the Iranians support our presence in Iraq today? Why do they tell the Shiite leaders to avoid a sectarian clash between Sunnis and Shiites? Given all the money and weapons they provide Shiite groups, why are they not stirring up more trouble for the US? Will Iranian policy change once a Shiite majority has the reins of government? Would it not be better to pull out now rather than to continue our present course of weakening the Sunnis and Baathists, opening the way for a Shiite dictatorship?"

6) On Iraq’s neighbors. The civil war we leave behind may well draw in Syria, Turkey and Iran. But already today each of those states is deeply involved in support for or opposition to factions in the ongoing Iraqi civil war. The very act of invading Iraq almost insured that violence would involve the larger region. And so it has and will continue, with, or without, US forces in Iraq.

7) On Shiite-Sunni conflict. The US presence is not preventing Shiite-Sunni conflict; it merely delays it. Iran is preventing it today, and it will probably encourage it once the Shiites dominate the new government, an outcome US policy virtually ensures.

8) On training the Iraq military and police. The insurgents are fighting very effectively without US or European military advisors to train them. Why don’t the soldiers and police in the present Iraqi regime’s service do their duty as well? Because they are uncertain about committing their lives to this regime. They are being asked to take a political stand, just as the insurgents are. Political consolidation, not military-technical consolidation, is the issue.

The issue is not military training; it is institutional loyalty. We trained the Vietnamese military effectively. Its generals took power and proved to be lousy politicians and poor fighters in the final showdown. In many battles over a decade or more, South Vietnamese military units fought very well, defeating VC and NVA units. But South Vietnam’s political leaders lost the war.

Even if we were able to successfully train an Iraqi military and police force, the likely result, after all that, would be another military dictatorship. Experience around the world teaches us that military dictatorships arise when the military’s institutional modernization gets ahead of political consolidation.

9) On not supporting our troops by debating an early pullout. Many US officers in Iraq, especially at company and field grade levels, know that while they are winning every tactical battle, they are losing strategically. And according to the New York Times last week, they are beginning to voice complaints about Americans at home bearing none of the pains of the war. One can only guess about the enlisted ranks, but those on a second tour – probably the majority today – are probably anxious for an early pullout. It is also noteworthy that US generals in Iraq are not bubbling over with optimistic reports they way they were during the first few years of the war in Vietnam. Their careful statements and caution probably reflect serious doubts that they do not, and should not, express publicly. The more important question is whether or not the repressive and vindictive behavior by the secretary of defense and his deputy against the senior military — especially the Army leadership, which is the critical component in the war — has made it impossible for field commanders to make the political leaders see the facts.

Most surprising to me is that no American political leader today has tried to unmask the absurdity of the administration’s case that to question the strategic wisdom of the war is unpatriotic and a failure to support our troops. Most officers and probably most troops don’t see it that way. They are angry at the deficiencies in materiel support they get from the Department of Defense, and especially about the irresponsibly long deployments they must now endure because Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff have refused to enlarge the ground forces to provide shorter tours. In the meantime, they know that the defense budget shovels money out the door to maritime forces, SDI, etc., while refusing to increase dramatically the size of the Army.

As I wrote several years ago, "the Pentagon’s post-Cold War force structure is so maritime heavy and land force weak that it is firmly in charge of the porpoises and whales while leaving the land to tyrants." The Army, some of the Air Force, the National Guard, and the reserves are now the victims of this gross mismatch between military missions and force structure. Neither the Bush nor the Clinton administration has properly "supported the troops." The media could ask the president why he fails to support our troops by not firing his secretary of defense.

So why is almost nobody advocating a pullout? I can only speculate. We face a strange situation today where few if any voices among Democrats in Congress will mention early withdrawal from Iraq, and even the one or two who do will not make a comprehensive case for withdrawal now.Why are the Democrats failing the public on this issue today? The biggest reason is because they weren’t willing to raise that issue during the campaign. Howard Dean alone took a clear and consistent stand on Iraq, and the rest of the Democratic party trashed him for it. Most of those in Congress voted for the war and let that vote shackle them later on. Now they are scared to death that the White House will smear them with lack of patriotism if they suggest pulling out.

Journalists can ask all the questions they like but none will prompt a more serious debate as long as no political leaders create the context and force the issues into the open.

I don’t believe anyone will be able to sustain a strong case in the short run without going back to the fundamental misjudgment of invading Iraq in the first place. Once the enormity of that error is grasped, the case for pulling out becomes easy to see.

Look at John Kerry’s utterly absurd position during the presidential campaign. He said “It’s the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time," but then went on to explain how he expected to win it anyway. Even the voter with no interest in foreign affairs was able to recognize it as an absurdity. If it was the wrong war at the wrong place and time, then it was never in our interest to fight. If that is true, what has changed to make it in our interest? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

The US invasion of Iraq only serves the interest of:

1) Osama bin Laden (it made Iraq safe for al Qaeda, positioned US military personnel in places where al Qaeda operatives can kill them occasionally, helps radicalize youth throughout the Arab and Muslim world, alienates America’s most important and strongest allies – the Europeans – and squanders US military resources that otherwise might be finishing off al Qaeda in Pakistan.);

2) The Iranians (who were invaded by Saddam and who suffered massive casualties in an eight year war with Iraq.);

3) And the extremists in both Palestinian and Israeli political circles (who don’t really want a peace settlement without the utter destruction of the other side, and probably believe that bogging the United States down in a war in Iraq that will surely become a war between the United States and most of the rest of Arab world gives them the time and cover to wipe out the other side.)

The wisest course for journalists might be to begin sustained investigations of why leading Democrats have failed so miserably to challenge the US occupation of Iraq. The first step, of course, is to establish as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the US interest and has not become so. It is such an obvious case to make that I find it difficult to believe many pundits and political leaders have not already made it repeatedly.

Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army’s senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

"In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a thinly veiled attack on the United States, comparing American foreign policy to the "Third Reich” in a speech on Wednesday.

Putin’s comments were the latest in a series of Russian criticisms of the U.S. on Iraq, missile defense and NATO expansion, as the Russian leader maintains that America is striving to single-handedly dominate world affairs, the International Herald Tribune reported.

Putin delivered the speech from a podium in front of Lenin’s Mausoleum on Red Square as he marked Victory Day, the 62nd anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

"We do not have the right to forget the causes of any war, which must be sought in the mistakes and errors of peacetime,” he declared.

"Moreover, in our time, these threats are not diminishing. They are only transforming, changing their appearance. In these new threats – as during the time of the Third Reich – are the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality.”

The United States, Putin has maintained, is seeking to establish a unipolar world to replace the bipolar balance of power of the Cold War era.

In a speech in Munich on Feb. 10, he characterized the United States as "one single center of power: One single center of force. One single center of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign."

Tom Bernstein went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with him. In 2004 he donated the maximum $2,000 to the president’s reelection campaign and gave $50,000 to the Republican National Committee. This year he is switching his support to Obama. He is one of many former Bush admirers who find the Democrat newcomer appealing.

Matthew Dowd, Bush’s chief campaign strategist in 2004, announced last month that he was disillusioned with the war in Iraq and the president’s “my way or the highway” style of leadership – the first member of Bush’s inner circle to denounce the leader’s performance in office.

Although Dowd has yet to endorse a candidate, he said the only one he liked was Obama. “I think we should design campaigns that appeal, not to 51% of the people, but bring the country together as a whole,” Dowd said.

Bernstein is a champion of human rights, who admires Obama’s call for action on Darfur, while Dowd’s opposition to the war has been sharpened by the expected deployment to Iraq of his son, an Arabic-speaking Army intelligence specialist.

But last week a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the antiwar Obama – that of Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Kagan is an informal foreign policy adviser to the Republican senator John McCain, who remains the favoured neoconservative choice for the White House because of his backing for the troops in Iraq.

But in an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was “pure John Kennedy”, a neocon hero of the cold war.

In his speech, Obama called for an increase in defence spending and an extra 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 marines to “stay on the offense” against terrorism and ensure America had “the strongest, best-equipped military in the world”. He talked about building democracies, stopping weapons of mass destruction and the right to take unilateral action to protect US “vital interests” if necessary, as well as the importance of building alliances.

“Personally, I liked it,” Kagan wrote.

Disagreements on the war have not stopped John Martin, a Navy reservist and founder of the website Republicans for Obama, from supporting the antiwar senator. He joined the military after the Iraq war and is about to be deployed to Afghanistan.

“I disagree with Obama on the war but I don’t think it is a test of his patriotism,” Martin says. “Obama has a message of hope for the country.”

Financiers have also been oiling Obama’s campaign. In Chicago, his home town, John Canning, a “Bush pioneer” and investment banker who pledged to raise $100,000 for the president in 2004, has given up on the Republicans. “I know lots of my friends in this business are disenchanted and are definitely looking for something different,” he said.

Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton has many Republican defectors of her own, including John Mack, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, who helped raise $200,000 for the president’s reelection, qualifying him as a “Bush ranger”. He said last week that he was impressed by Clinton’s expertise. “I know we’re associated mainly with the Republicans but we’ve always gone for the individual,” Mack said.

According to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, Obama and Clinton have vacuumed up more than $750,000 (£375,000) in individual contributions from former Bush donors.

Some of the donations reflect the natural tendency of those with power to shift to the likely White House winner. Penny Pritzker, the staggeringly successful head of fundraising for Obama, voted for John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic candidate, but also donated that year to Bush. As she was a head of the family-run Hyatt hotel chain, it was considered a prudent move.

With the Democrats widely expected to win in 2008, Clinton’s status as frontrunner is encouraging Wall Street money to migrate to her, while Obama may be picking up some mischievous “Stop Hillary” donations from still-loyal Republicans. But there is plenty of genuine enthusiasm to go around.

A poll released by Rasmussen last week showed Obama overtaking Clinton for the first time by 32% to 30%, although another poll by Quinnepiac showed her with a 14-point lead over the Illinois senator, her nearest rival.

The current issue of the New Yorker contains a profile of Obama, which highlights his appeal to conservatives.

Bill Moyers talks with comedian Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show," about how faking the news can reveal more of the truth than all of the Sunday-morning talk shows put together.

"There are people in Washington ... who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they’re looking for 10, 20, 50 years in the future ... the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region, and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that 10 years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq."
– former President Jimmy Carter, Feb. 3, 2006

For all the talk about timetables and benchmarks, one might think that the United States will end the military occupation of Iraq within the lifetimes of the readers of this opinion editorial. Think again.

There is to be no withdrawal from Iraq, just as there has been no withdrawal from hundreds of places around the world that are outposts of the American empire. As UC San Diego professor emeritus Chalmers Johnson put it, "One of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn’t intend to leave."

The United States maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries across the globe. They exist for the purpose of defending the economic interests of the United States, what is euphemistically called "national security." In order to secure favorable access to Iraq’s vast reserves of light crude, the United States is spending billions on the construction of at least five large permanent military bases throughout that country.

A new Iraq oil law, largely written by the Coalition Provisional Authority, is planned for ratification by June. This law cedes control of Iraq’s oil to western powers for 30 years . There is major opposition to the proposed law within Iraq, especially among the country’s five trade union federations that represent hundreds of thousands of oil workers. The United States is working hard to surmount this opposition by appealing directly to the al-Maliki government in Iraq.

The attack upon, and subsequent occupation of, Iraq can be seen as a direct result of the 2001 National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as vice president Cheney’s energy task force) that was comprised largely of oil and energy company executives. This task force — the proceedings of which have been kept secret by the administration on the grounds of "executive privilege" — recommended that the U.S. government support initiatives in Middle Eastern countries "to open up areas of their energy sector to foreign investment." As Antonia Juhasz, an analyst with Oil Change International wrote last month in the New York Times, "One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve."

The people of the United States have indicated, in the national election last November and in countless polls, that they no longer support the Bush administration’s war. The Scooter Libby trial revealed that top administration officials, including the vice president, "cherry-picked" and distorted intelligence in order to sell a "pre-emptive" war to a spooked public. The squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars, some billions of which, according to Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker, is being siphoned into "black-ops" programs being run out of Cheney’s office (a stunning redux of Iran-Contra carried out by many of the same actors), has also strained the patience and credulity of the American people.

Another betrayal is the "contracting out" of "war-related activities" to corporations such as Halliburton, Bechtel, Chemonics and Blackwater. Halliburton, Vice President Cheney’s previous employer, calls itself an "energy services company" but has tentacles reaching into nearly every aspect of the war (originally dubbed Operation Iraqi Liberation until some bright bulb among the Bushies realized that "OIL" might not be the best handle for this venture). Halliburton has also profited handsomely from no-bid government contracts awarded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the construction at the national embarrassment known as "Gitmo," and most recently, from the fiasco at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Unfortunately, all this corruption, mayhem and death are good for some (or it wouldn’t go on).

The U.S. military budget, larger than the military budgets of the rest of the world’s nations combined, continues skyward, even without all the "supplementals" passed regularly by Congress to fight the "war on terror."

The question we must ask as citizens is this: Is the United States a democratic republic or an empire? History demonstrates that it’s not possible to be both.

Lewis Seiler is president of Voice of the Environment. Dan Hamburg, a former U.S. representative, is executive director.

Shortly after the death of Hindenburg the Nazi took control of Germany and set up a parallel system of government separate from the regular German bureaucracy. This included:

a) Party police (SA, SS and Gestapo) functioning outside of regular police force chain of command
b) Party court system acting separately from the regular German courts
c) Concentration camps independent of the conventional German prison system

If these three points don’t sound familiar in modern day America, they should.

USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 included the creation of a new federal police force called the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division (USSSUD) to be headed by Department of homeland security Michael Chertoff (technically the USSSUD has been around a long time but was very limited in scope and the jurisdiction was limited to Washington DC).

National police force operating outside of regular police force chain of command, check.

The Bush administration now has the legal authority to use military tribunals for "enemy combatants." An enemy combatant can now be anyone the president decides, including American citizens. Of course the regular rights given to the accused including Habeus Corpus no longer apply.

Parallel court system to evade the regular American court system, check.

From Guantanamo Bay to secret prisons in Eastern Europe to Military brigs to FEMA camps on American soil. No shortage of places to put the “terrorists” or "enemy combatants" rounded up by homeland security and found guilty by the military tribunals.

Concentration camps outside the regular prison system, check.

These comparisons between Nazi Germany and America today are disturbing and are not limited to these few short points. The similarity between the Nazis and the neo-cons is not what concerns me because governments always strive toward greater power. The more frightening aspect is the similarities between the German people of the 1930’s and the American people of today.

Nazi archive to be opened