virtuous war

"We are what we pretend to be,
so me must be careful about what we pretend to be."
- Kurt Vonnegut

"Why is it we have finite resources for health care but unlimited money for war?

The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer's money while firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businesses money to survive.

People are losing their homes, their jobs, their health, their investments, their retirement security; yet there is unlimited money for war, Wall Street and insurance companies, but very little money for jobs on Main Street.

Unlimited money to blow up things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and relatively little money to build things in the US.

The Administration may soon bring to Congress a request for an additional $50 billion for war. I can tell you that a Democratic version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is no more acceptable than a Republican version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trillions for war and Wall Street, billions for insurance companies... When we were promised change, we weren't thinking that we give a dollar and get back two cents."
- Dennis Kucinich 11/09

"Through many decades and many wars, the United States military has been honing its training skills, learning to take a civilized human being and turn him into a killing machine. A traditional way of doing this was to motivate the soldier to hate the enemy and want to kill him. After World War II, this approach was shaken by the Army's official World War II historian, Samuel Marshall, who in 1947 upset the entire military establishment with a slim book called "Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War." In this book, he claimed that in World War II, at best one in four combat soldiers ever fired their weapon at the enemy, and in most combat units only about 15% of the available firepower was ever used. Recently, I was discussing the Marshall book with two World War II veteran friends. The one who had not been in combat found the report hard to believe, but the other, who had served in the infantry in Europe, said, "I had a machine gun. I never fired the thing." "Why not?" the other asked. "If you fired it, they'd shoot back at you." Many in the military challenged Marshall's fmdings. But military training became focused on how to improve what Marshall had called the "ratio of fire." Starting with the Vietnam War, the ratio of fire has greatly increased through training techniques that involve simulated combat - so that the soldier acts without thinking. Soldiers today often will commit acts that they regret and will be uncertain about why they did them. In a documentary I saw recently, a confused American soldier in Iraq said he was not sure why he had intentionally run over a woman and killed her; his only explanation was that he had been trained to respond that way in that situation." - Mark Kurlansky

"The meme-bearers, us flesh and blood humans acting as repositories for these abstract bodies, are never wholly free in our actions or in control of our world and our selves." - Edward Wilson & Wes Unruh

From its original conception as the reproduction of reality through dance, ritual, theater, image, and writing, mimesis has thrived as an aesthetic concept, capturing the perceptual and representational powers of mimicry, imitation, and metaphor.

The linguistic roots of mimesis go back to fifth century Greece, to mimos, whose many derivatives convey a dramatic act of representation through imitation. At the outset, mimesis attracted philosophical criticism, as one would expect from any powerful form of representation that created whole imaginary realities, that made one thing into some thing other, even if it was done through symbolic actions.

We know best the figure of the 'mime' -one who depicts life ‘as it is', but with a satirical twist: he or she 'fools' people. As imitation mimesis emerged as a fundamental force in human development.

In a highly condensed, almost poetic fashion, Walter Benjamin presented his case in the 1933 essay On the Mimetic Faculty," Language, play, mystery and violence are evinced as mimetic manifestations. Nature creates similarities. One need only think of mimicry. The highest capacity for producing similarities, however, is man's. His gift of seeing resemblances is nothing other than a rudiment of the powerful compulsion in former time to become and behave like some thing else. Perhaps there is none of his higher functions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role."

This character of mimesis, ranging in effects from theatrical artifice to political deception, came under renewed scrutiny in the period between the I and II World Wars when modes of violence took an aesthetic turn.

Walter Benjamin, acutely aware that new technologies were changing the nature of politics and that social-cultural-ethical theory was not keeping pace said, "One may say that the harshest, most disastrous aspects of imperialist war are the result of the gaping discrepancy between the gigantic power of technology and the minuscule moral illumination it affords."

This was most apparent in the marrying of new technologies of killing with new technologies of representation; radio, film and the popular press.

In his highly influential essay, 'The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility,' Walter Benjamin warns of the evolution of warfare into an art form. War was becoming the deadliest exhibition of art, in which self-alienated humans "enjoy their own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the highest order".

This is the aesthetics that the politics of fascism manufactures.

This form of realism is dangerous in that it purports to be realistic, yet takes no account of differing realities, whether they are culturally, historically or virtually produced and runs the risk of propagating unintended and potentially dangerous consequences.

"The genuine liberation from an epoch that has the structure of awakening is entirely ruled by wisdom. Only with wisdom can we work free of the realm of dreams. There is a false liberation from dreams; its sign is violence." Walter Benjamin wrote, "A ‘social problem' such as an influx of refugees can escalate into a ‘security issue' and a whole group of people can become a ‘problem' leading to violent final solutions. These dreams, described as reality, have become a shortcut to the banality that starts wars. No longer do these dreams reveal an eternally blue horizon."

Literary theorist Rene Girard looked at mimesis in an anthropological light and investigated how every desire is desire for that which the ‘other' also desires, which, unmediated, inevitably leads to hatred, rivalry and violence.

Walter Benjamin's and Rene Girard's study of mimesis gives considerable philosophical depth to the idea that we are prepped for war from an early age.

We are left with all-too-real effects of virtual violence: representations can kill.

Opinion: It is realistic to expect nations and tribes to war with one another.

This version or form of 'reality' treats human nature as immutable, unchangeable and solidifies conceptual constructs of the ‘reality' of previously experienced historical ‘snapshots' of ‘reality' which may or may not be valid here and now.

This form of 'reality' requires an expression of the will born out of resentment, fear, terror and a need to control or to isolate the ‘other'. It has a long intimate history with violence and requires us get up close to the virtual representation, preparation, and execution of war.

In the realm of diplomatic and strategic theory, this version of 'reality' creates a fluctuation of appearances, at one moment fleeing into the ideal of a "democratic peace" underwritten by an expanding neoliberal global order, and at the next, retreating into a "fortress America" protected by a ballistic missile defense.

The appropriation of the video game Doom by the Marine Corps was significant . Usually the technology transfer goes in the other direction, with military applications leading the way in research and development, from the earliest incarnations of the computer in simulation projects like "Whirlwind" at MIT's Servomechanisms Laboratory during World War II, to "SAGE," the first centralized air defense system of the cold war. (1)

We could say there has been from the very first a close "link" between military simulations, the development of the computer, and the entertainment industry.

In 1931 the navy purchased the first aircraft simulator from its designer, Edward Link. By 1932, the military still had only one Link Trainer; the amusement parks had bought close to fifty.

Now the developmental lag between the real thing and its simulation has just about disappeared. From the F-16 to the F-117 A, the MIA2 tank to the Bradley armored vehicle, the Aegis cruiser to the latest nuclear aircraft carrier, the video-game version arrives on the shelves almost as soon as the weapon system first appears. Indeed, a Pentium chip and a joy-stick will get you into the Comanche helicopter, the F-22, and the newest Seawolf SSN-21 submarine.

I/ITSEC 2000: Highly visible-and offering the best food and drink at its reception - was "The Solution Group," a consortium of close to twenty industries formed by Paradigm Simulation in 1994 to integrate product, services, and support for the simulation consumer.

Judging from current trends, one could imagine two, maybe three enormous booths filling the hall at I/ITSEC 2001: if you're not part of the Solution, you're part of Lockheed Martin Raytheon or Boeing Northrop Grumman.

And even if there are no more enemies in sight by the year 2001, one could surmise that there would still be a 'Solution' in search of a problem.

Niche synergy was another way to go. One member of the Solution Group was leading the way, infiltrating the military-industrial-entertainment nexus by creating an ever-expanding database of hyperreal, real-time 3-D simulations.

Viewpoint DataLabs might not have high name recognition, but anyone who has viewed, over the last few years, an advertisement, a television show, a hit movie, or a video game with computer-generated graphics has probably sampled Viewpoint's product. Their booth's promotional video was riveting and revealing, for the eclecticism of the content as well as the monotony of the style.

The promotional video opens with the memorable scene of the alien fighters swarming the F-18's in Independence Day, which buzz-cuts into a pair of attacking mosquitoes in a Cutter Insect Repellent advertisement, then to spaceships attacking in Star Trek Voyager, followed by some requisite mega-explosions, a simulation of a missile launch from two helicopters, the dropping of a fuel-air dispersal bomb from Outbreak, and a trio of Eurofighter 2000s doing maneuvers that are aerodynamically impossible.

Ethical inquiry into the relationship of this form of 'reality' to organized violence begins with an inquiry into rationality of the necessity of, or need for, government sanctioned violence.

European philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche, and American philosophers, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, are valuable in understanding this version of 'reality' because they provide a philosophical perspective that links public space with responsive as well as responsible private choices.

Modern philosophers have not kept up with the avant-garde of the war machine, which is continually at work to define the ethics and politics of state-sanctioned killing and patriotic dying. In spite of the call for new world orders, declarations of democratic peace and celebrations of globalization, war continues to be the rule of this corrupted form of reality.

-adapted from James Der Derian, Virtous War

"Maybe the only way to break through this paralysis of analysis would be to stop talking about weapons exports as a trade at all. Maybe we shouldn't be using economic language to describe it. Yes, the weapons industry has associations, lobby groups, and trade shows. They have the same tri-fold exhibits, scale models, and picked-over buffets as any other industry; still, maybe we have to stop thinking about the export of fighter planes and precision-guided missiles as if they were so many widgets and start thinking about them in another language entirely - the language of drugs.

After all, what does a drug dealer do? A drug dealer creates a need and then fills it. A drug dealer encourages an appetite or (even more lucratively) an addiction and then feeds it.

Arms dealers do the same thing.

Arms dealers suggest to foreign officials that their military just might need a slight upgrade. After all, arms dealers point out, haven't you noticed that your neighbor just upgraded in jets, submarines, and tanks? And didn't you guys fight a war a few years back? Doesn't that make you feel insecure? And why feel insecure for another moment when, for just a few billion bucks, we'll get you suited up with the latest model military… even better than what we sold them - or you the last time around." - Frida Berrigan

"Without the media, without television, the Lebanese war or the Yugoslavian war wouldn't have happened. The trigger of the operations of the civil war was linked to the media, to those who controlled television, to their crime inducing role, to their ability to provoke and start a war." -Paul Virilio

"Americans have, for the most part, been exempt from the genuine tragedy of war and, as a consequence, appear more ready to accept myths about war. Modern Americans have never endured the reality against which other nations readily measure the cost of combat. And this makes us a very dangerous people." -Richard A. Gabriel

"War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace." - Thomas Mann

"What experience and history teach is this -
that nations and governments have never learned any thing from history
or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it." - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"War is nothing but a continuation of politics by other means." - Carl von Clausewitz

"Bombs do not choose. They will hit everything." - Nikita Khrushchev

military Keynesianism

"In the past nine years, non-industrial production in the US has declined by some 19 percent. It took about four years for manufacturing to return to levels seen before the 2001 recession - and all those gains were wiped out in the current recession. By contrast, military manufacturing is now 123 percent greater than it was in 2000 - it has more than doubled while the rest of the manufacturing sector has been shrinking. It's important to note the trajectory - the military economy is nearly three times as large, proportionally to the rest of the economy, as it was at the beginning of the Bush administration. And it is the only manufacturing sector showing any growth. Extrapolate that trend, and what do you get?" - Daniel Tencer

Military Keynesianism, as it is now known in academic circles, was first theorised by the Polish economist Michal Kalecki in 1943. Michal Kalecki argued that corporatists and their political champions tended to bridle against classic Keynesianism; achieving full employment through public spending made corporatists nervous because it risked over-empowering the working class and the unions.

The military was a much more desirable investment from the elite corporatists point of view, although justifying such a diversion of public funds required a certain degree of political repression, best achieved through appeals to patriotism and fear-mongering about an enemy threat - and, eventually, an actual war - as unused weapons systems seldom need replacing.

"Theories of Military Keynesianism and the Military-Industrial Complex became popular after the Second World War, and perhaps for a good reason. The prospect of military demobilization, particularly in the United States, seemed alarming. The U.S. elite remembered vividly how soaring military spending had pulled the world out of the Great Depression, and it feared that falling military budgets would reverse this process. If that were to happen, the expectation was that business would tumble, unemployment would soar, and the legitimacy of free-market capitalism would again be called into question. Seeking to avert this prospect, in 1950 the U.S. National Security Council drafted a top-secret document, NSC-68. The document, which was declassified only in 1977, explicitly called on the government to use higher military spending as a way of preventing such an outcome." - Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler

National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) drafted under the supervision of Paul Nitze, then head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department was dated April 14, 1950 and signed by Harry S Truman on September 30, 1950. In its conclusions, NSC-68 asserted: "One of the most significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of living".

"Previously administration officials had encountered stiff resistance from Congress to their pleas for a substantial buildup along the lines laid out in NSC-68. The authors of this internal government report took a Manichaean view of America's rivalry with the Soviet Union, espoused a permanent role for the United States as world policeman, and envisioned U.S. military expenditures amounting to perhaps 20 percent of GNP. But congressional acceptance of the recommended measures seemed highly unlikely in the absence of a crisis. In 1950 the fear that [the North Korean] invasion was just the first step in a broad offensive by the Soviets proved highly useful when it came to persuading Congress to increase the defense budget. As Secretary of State Dean Acheson said afterwards, "Korea saved us." The buildup reached its peak in 1953, when the stalemated belligerents in Korea agreed to a truce." - Robert Higgs

"This is military Keynesianism - the determination to maintain a permanent war economy and to treat military output as an ordinary economic product, even though it makes no contribution to either production or consumption." - Chalmers Johnson

"Inevitably, having surrendered to militarism as an economic device, we will do what other countries have done: we will keep alive the fears of our people of the aggressive ambitions of other countries and we will ourselves embark upon imperialistic enterprises of our own." - John T. Flynn

By 1990 the value of the weapons, equipment and factories devoted to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in US manufacturing.

military analysts get rich

or the Pentagon pundit program performs

Pentagon pundit program run by Victoria Clarke, Lawrence DiRita, Allison Barber

"Escalation" is a word for a methodical process of acclimating people at home to the idea of more military intervention abroad - nothing too sudden, just a step-by-step process of turning even more war into media wallpaper - nothing too abrupt or jarring, while thousands more soldiers and billions more dollars funnel into what Martin Luther King Jr. called a "demonic suction tube," complete with massive violence, mayhem, terror and killing on a grander scale than ever." - Norman Solomon

"Politicians in their war rooms, with all their talk of enemy combatants and collateral damage in pursuit of freedom, security, and the good, create a reality of violence and horror." - Charles Eisenstein

"The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation. Permanent war extinguishes liberal, democratic movements. It turns culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media, and wrecks the economy. The liberal, democratic forces, tasked with maintaining an open society, become impotent." - Chris Hedges

Defense and military industries in permanent war trash economies.

Those who profit from permanent war erase the line between the state and the corporation.

"When war was abhorrent to the American people, the military was considered only as a tool to be used if needed. Today, with our chronic state of war, and with peace becoming the unusual, the military has created for itself an image as a comforting thing to have around. In reality, however, it has become a monster bureaucracy that can grind beneath its wheels the other bureaucracies, whatever their prescribed roles in the process of government and their legitimate needs." - Senator James William Fulbright

"The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a bonanza for the American military-industrial complex. These attacks gave the perfect pretext to keep military expenses, which had been expected to fall after the demise of the old Soviet Empire, at a high level. They provided the rationale for dramatically increasing military spending, by substituting a "War on Terror" as a replacement for the "War against Communism." The military-industrial complex needs wars, many and successive wars, to "prosper."

In 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense employed 2,143,000 people, while it estimates that private defense contractors employ 3,600,000 workers, for a grand total of 5,743,000 defense-related American jobs. There are close to 25 million veterans in the United States. Assuming conservatively only two voting-age people per household, this translates into a block of some 60 million American voters who have a financial stake in the American military establishment. Thus the clear danger of a militarized society perpetuating itself politically. The selling of war-oriented policies requires the expertise that only a well-oiled propaganda machine can provide." - Rodrigue Tremblay

Many retired military officers hold a perch in the world of military contracting. These overlapping roles offer them an array of opportunities to advance corporate policy goals. These overlapping roles are left undisclosed. When an individual has been presented as impartial but in reality works within the military contracting industry and stands to reap the profits of war that individual no longer stands by his military oath of protecting the sanctity of the country - retirement is not an excuse for self-serving traitorous actions.

The Bush administration used its control over access and information to transform "military analysts" into a media Trojan horse - an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major television and radio networks. The Pentagon public relations campaign focused on the transformation of 75 military "news analysts" into "surrogates" and "message force multipliers" to help fuel the exponential growth of the totalitarian international corporatist police state.

Robert L. Maginnis concluded that the analysts were being "manipulated" to convey a false sense of certainty about the evidence of the weapons of mass destruction.

Purveyors of propaganda know that in a spin-saturated "news" culture opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as utterly independent authoritative experts.

"It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.' " - Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst (Imagine that they wanted puppets!)

The "analysts", military men ideologically in sync with the Bush administration's neoconservative brain trust framed how viewers ought to interpret events while anticipating large budget increases for military contracts of corporations they had ownership interest in.

"Analysts" were instructed not to quote their handlers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon. Harsh realities were eluded or flatly contradicted. Pentagon officials were well aware that some "analysts" viewed their special access as a business advantage.

"They have taken lobbying and the search for contracts to a far higher level. This has been highly honed." " - Brent T. Krueger, Pentagon's chief of public relations

The Pentagon also understood the financial relationship between the networks and their "analysts". Many analysts were being paid by the "hit," the number of times they appeared on television. The more an analyst could boast of fresh inside information from high-level Pentagon "sources," the more hits he could expect. The more hits, the greater his potential influence in the military marketplace, where several "analysts" prominently advertised their network roles.

"We knew we had extraordinary access." - Timur J. Eads, retired Army lieutenant colonel, Fox "analyst", vice president of government relations for Blackbird Technologies

Analysts' "news" media performances were being closely monitored by the Pentagon's paid private contractor, Omnitec Solutions. Omnitec Solutions evaluated their performances using the same tools as corporate branding experts.

David L. Grange, a retired Army general and CNN analyst claimed the "analysts" were just relaying "upfront information." When things began to look bad "analysts" were briefed in a conference call by their Pentagon handlers.

"The strategic target remains our population. We can lose people day in and day out, but they're never going to beat our military. What they can and will do is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let that happen." - James Terry Conway

Former army general Barry Richard McCaffrey and Wayne A. Downing were on the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an advocacy group created with White House encouragement in 2002 to make the case for ousting Saddam Hussein.

After September 11, 2001 Barry Richard McCaffrey made nearly 1,000 appearances on NBC and its cable sisters. Barry Richard McCaffrey was paid up to $25,000 for speeches, his commentary regularly turned up in The Wall Street Journal and he has been quoted or cited in thousands of "news" articles.

At the same time that Barry Richard McCaffrey spoke as an impartial observer he immersed himself in the security and war businesses. BR McCaffrey Associates, promises to "build linkages" between government officials and contractors like Defense Solutions for up to $10,000 a month. Barry Richard McCaffrey earned at least $500,000 from his lobbying work for Veritas Capital, a private equity firm in New York that has grown into a defense industry powerhouse by buying contractors whose profits soared from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Barry Richard McCaffrey is the chairman of HNTB Federal Services, an engineering and construction management corporation that often competes for national security contracts.

Barry Richard McCaffrey has consistently advocated wartime policies and spending priorities that are in line with his corporate interests. Steve Capus, president of NBC News, stated that Barry Richard McCaffrey is not required to abide by NBC's formal conflict-of-interest rules, as he is a consultant, not a "news" employee.

Barry Richard McCaffrey consistently supported George W. Bush Administration's major national security policies, especially the war in Iraq. Barry Richard McCaffrey advocated invasion, urged building up the military to sustain the occupation, warned that premature withdrawal would invite catastrophe and made a bundle of money doing so.

On September 6, 2001 Veritas announced the formation of an "advisory council" of well-connected retired generals and admirals, including Barry Richard McCaffrey. Veritas gave its advisers board seats on its military corporations, along with profit sharing and equity stakes that were attractive as Veritas intended to turn quick profits through initial public offerings. After September 11, 2001 the only question was just how big those increases would be.

Once on the air - NBC, CNBC and MSNBC - Barry Richard McCaffrey called for huge sustained increases in military spending for a global war on terror. (NBC, CNBC and MSNBC are subsidiaries of the century old war industry behemoth General Electric.)

Barry Richard McCaffrey also advocated spending for high-tech weapons, including precision-guided munitions and unmanned aerial vehicles that were important to the Veritas portfolio. Barry Richard McCaffrey called the C-17 cargo plane - also a source of Veritas contracts - a "national treasure."

"I am 100 percent behind what the administration, what the president of the United States, is doing in Iraq." - Barry Richard McCaffrey

In their corporate filings, Veritas' military corporate divisions told investors they were well positioned to benefit from a widening global war on terror.

Veritas went on a shopping spree, buying military corporations deeply enmeshed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its biggest acquisition was of DynCorp International, best known for training foreign security forces for the United States government. By 2005 operations in Afghanistan and Iraq accounted for 37 percent of DynCorp International revenues. Barry Richard McCaffrey owned special stock that allowed him to share in DynCorp International's profits, up 87 percent that year largely because of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Barry Richard McCaffrey ridiculed the Iraq Study Group recommendation of withdrawing all combat brigades from Iraq while working with James A. Marks to win the Iraqi translators contract for Global Linguist Solutions a newly created subsidiary of DynCorp International. When the Pentagon awarded the contract to Global Linguist Solutions DynCorp International'sstock jumped 15 percent.

James A Marks, an analyst for CNN, pursued military and intelligence contracts as a senior executive with McNeil Technologies.

James A Marks was named president of the DynCorp International subsidiary, Global Linguist Solutions and Barry Richard McCaffrey was designated as chairman of Global Linguist Solutions. Barry Richard McCaffrey was promised $10,000 a month plus expenses once Global Linguist Solutions secured the contract. Barry Richard McCaffrey was eligible to share in profits: the contract was worth $4.6 billion over five years, but only if the United States did not pull out of Iraq first.

Barry Richard McCaffrey published a report recommending that the United States equip Iraq with 5,000 armored vehicles provided by Defense Solutions.

Thomas McInerney sits on the boards of several military contractors, including Nortel Government Solutions, a supplier of communication networks.

Joseph W. Ralston was named vice chairman of the Cohen Group, a consulting firm headed by a former defense secretary, William Cohen, himself now a "world affairs" analyst for CNN.

"The Cohen Group knows that getting to ‘yes' in the aerospace and defense market — whether in the United States or abroad — requires that companies have a thorough, up-to-date understanding of the thinking of government decision makers." - Cohen Group web site

Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst, who had specialized in psychological warfare had co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from "enemy" propaganda during Vietnam.

"We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped." - Paul E. Vallely

Paul E. Vallely urged the continued use of psychological operations which took aim not just at foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too.

Paul E. Vallely called his approach "MindWar" - using network television and radio to "strengthen our national will to victory."

William V. Cowan, co-founder and CEO of wvc3, inc.(a Reston, Virginia company specializing in international security), and executive vice president Carlton A. Sherwood sought contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq. In addition, wvc3 Group had a written agreement to use its influence and connections to help tribal leaders in Al Anbar Province win reconstruction contracts from the coalition.

"Those sheiks wanted access to the Coalition Provisional Authority.I tried to push hard with some of Bremer's people to engage these people of Al Anbar" - William V. Cowan

Like several other analysts, Timur J. Eads said he had at times held his tongue on television for fear that "some four-star could call up and say, ‘Kill that contract.' " Timur J. Eads believed Pentagon officials misled the analysts about the progress of Iraq's security forces. "I know a snow job when I see one," he said. Timur J. Eads did not share this on television.

"All U.S. aid, both military and what is labeled "civilian," is funneled through thousands and thousands of contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors. None of these U.S. corporate middlemen are even slightly interested in the development of Afghanistan or Iraq . Their only immediate aim is to turn a hefty superprofit as quickly as possible, with as much skim and double billing as possible. For a fee they will provide everything from hired guns, such as Blackwater mercenaries, to food service workers, mechanics, maintenance workers and long-distance truck drivers. Some corporations have become synonymous with war profiteering, such as Halliburton, Bechtel and Blackwater in Iraq , and Louis Berger Group, BearingPoint and DynCorp International in Afghanistan. Every part of the U.S. occupation has been contracted out at the highest rate of profit, with no coordination, no oversight, almost no public bids. There are now so many pigs at the trough that U.S. forces are no longer able to carry out the broader policy objectives of the U.S. ruling class. The U.S military has even lost count, by tens of thousands, of the numbers of contractors, where they are or what they are doing - except being paid." - Sara Flounders

From 2004 to 2009 the money spent by the American military on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion in 2009 - about the same amount the military spent on body armor for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2004 and 2006. In 2009 the Pentagon employeed 27,000 people for recruitment, advertising and public relations - almost as many as the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department.

In 2008, the New York Times' David Barstow reported that 75 retired military officers regularly appearing on television "have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air." Collectively, the group represented "more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants," and here's the kicker: "Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to viewers." - David Sirota

The Pentagon pundits program uses three propaganda techniques to sell the necessity of what is now called "a dynamic and evolving threat" because "portraying this as a 'global' war risks reinforcing the very image that al Qaeda seeks to project of itself - that it is a highly organized, global entity capable of replacing sovereign nations with a global caliphate" according to John Brennan, head of the White House homeland security office.

The three techniques involve the distortion of facts by the selective withholding of information; the creation of an emotional cascade beginning with fear and ending with righteous anger; and the concealment of the true source of the message by putting the message in the mouth of some seemingly independent third party.

militarily controlling American society

Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12656 of November 18, 1988 defined national security emergency as "any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States."

Under this Executive Order a Police State Occupation of New Orleans occurred after hurricane Katrina. The United States military had been training troops and police in "civil disturbance planning" for the last three decades.

The master plan, Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, or "Operation Garden Plot," was developed in 1968 in response to the major protests and disturbances of the 1960s.

"The 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys. Now they're training for the same mission at home. Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st Brigade Combat Team will be under the day-to-day control of United States Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks. . . . After 1st Brigade Combat Team finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one. . . .They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control." - Army Times, September 30, 2008 On December 17, 2008,

United States Northern Command chief General Renuart announced that "the United States military plans to mobilize thousands of troops to protect Washington against potential terrorist attack during the inauguration of president-elect Barack Obama."

"A new report by the United States Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks. The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the United States" - Phoenix Business Journal

"Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security." - Army War College report

How to respond to information about the air force

How to respond to information about the air force

"Capt. Faggard writes The Official Blog of the United States Air Force; has pages on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook; helps publicize a Second Life area called Huffman Prairie; contributes to iReport (user name USAFPA); and is on Friendfeed, Digg, Delicious, Slashdot, Newsvine, Reddit. There's Air Force widgets. And there's even a video mashup contest for high schools to show school spirit sponsored by the Air Force." - David Meerman Scott

"Other branches of the military are also getting into the social networking game, along with other branches of government. The Army also has its own Twitter feed, as does the Department of Homeland Security, the Bush White House, and the United States Joint Forces Command, the United States Department of State, and the Israeli Consulate in New York." - Sheldon Rampton

"The military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that the Pentagon was using one of its favorite public relations firms, the Rendon Group, to produce profiles of reporters requesting to embed with U.S. forces in Afghanistan; that the profiles graded reporters' past coverage as "positive," "neutral" or "negative," sometimes suggesting how to "neutralize" expected negative coverage or how to design embeds to "result in favorable coverage"; and that, in some cases, the profiles prompted military officials to reject reporters' embed requests." - The Weekly Spin, September 9, 2009

"Cyberspace favors offensive operations. These operations will deny, degrade, disrupt, destroy, or deceive an adversary. Cyberspace offensive operations ensure friendly freedom of action in cyberspace while denying that same freedom to our adversaries. We will enhance our capabilities to conduct electronic systems attack, electromagnetic systems interdiction and attack, network attack, and infrastructure attack operations. Targets include the adversary's terrestrial, airborne, and space networks, electronic attack and network attack systems, and the adversary itself. As an adversary becomes more dependent on cyberspace, cyberspace offensive operations have the potential to produce greater effects." - Air Force Cyber Command

"CYBERCOM will reach initial operating capability (IOC) not later than October 2009 and full operating capability (FOC) not later than October 2010. Ostensibly launched to protect military networks against malicious cyberattacks, CYBERCOM's offensive nature is underlined by its role as STRATCOM's operational cyber wing. In addition to a defensive brief to "harden" the "dot-mil" domain, the Pentagon plan calls for an offensive capacity, one that will deploy cyber weapons against imperialism's adversaries.

One of ten Unified Combatant Commands, STRATCOM is the successor organization to Strategic Air Command (SAC). Charged with space operations (military satellites), information warfare, missile defense, global command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), as well as global strike and strategic deterrence (America's first-strike nuclear arsenal), it should be apparent that designating CYBERCOM a STRATCOM branch all but guarantees an aggressive posture." - Tom Burghardt July 1, 2009

"All software systems have been endorsed by the National Security Agency, signifying that they are permeable to intrusions by the US intelligence services." - Thierry Meyssan

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This web site is not a commercial web site and is presented for educational purposes only.

This website defines a new religious ideology to which its author adheres. The author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has created a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This web site marks the founding of the religion aptly named The Truth of the Way of Life - a rational religion based on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to develop a personal relation with God through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of Life are spelled out in detail on this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their religious beliefs in America is considered a “hate crime.”

This web site in no way condones violence. To the contrary the intent here is to reduce the violence that is already occurring due to the international corporate cartels desire to control the human race. The international corporate cartel already controls the world central banking system, mass media worldwide, the industrial military entertainment complex of America and is responsible for the collapse of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of global ecosystems. Civilization is based on cooperation. Cooperation does not occur at the point of a gun.

American social mores and values have declined precipitously over the last century as the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general through mass media by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population through prior mass media psychological operations. The results have been the destruction of the family and the destruction of social structures that do not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of a perfect world. Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite that further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.

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