Chuck Spinney (Pentagon analyst) with Bill Moyers-READ THIS AND SEETH

[indigobusiness]

MOYERS: Earlier this summer Chuck was recognized for his work by POGO, Project On Government Oversight.

MILLER: Hard not to be impressed with a guy like Chuck who can accuse the Department of Defense of cooking the books on national television and then return to his office without the locks being changed.

snip

SPINNEY: They don't know where the money's going.

Well, guess what the Senate Armed Services and the House Armed Services agree to do in their infinite wisdom? They decided to waive the Pentagon's requirement for these annual audits in their authorization bills. So the Pentagon no longer has to do it.

Now the rationale was that we all know that this is a problem, we don't need to be told every year. Of course the one good thing about these audits was it would generate a small burst of news stories every April or May when the audits were due saying the Pentagon can't follow it's money. You know, there's a trillion dollars unaccounted for.

MOYERS: What does this do to the national ethos?

SPINNEY: Oh, I think it corrupts it. I think it corrupts it. Essentially you have all the pretensions of a democracy, we're really a democratic republic where you have representatives of the people in the government, and you have the representatives are under certain strictures to behave in a certain way. And in fact they're not behaving that way.

MOYERS: Your own…

SPINNEY: It's a fundamental moral issue.

MOYERS: Yeah, you've said it's a moral sewer there on the Potomac.

SPINNEY: That's correct.

MOYERS: What do you mean moral sewer?

SPINNEY: Well, fundamentally we take an oath of office to preserve the Constitution and we are in fact… in effect undermining the Constitution because we won't address this issue of accountability.

A lot of the people that are involved in this don't realize the moral implications of what they're doing. They regard what they're doing as being for the most patriotic of motives.

You know, "We've got to get the money out of Congress. And if we have to lie to get it, we'll do it. If we have to cook the books in order to sell a program, we'll do it because we're trying to save the country from the hoards," the Communist hoards(sic) or whatever…

snip

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_spinney.html

---

"To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them."

Michael Parenti
--------------------------------------------

Corporate Control of American Democracy
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Controlling_Corporations/ControllingCorporations.html

Introduction to Defense Death Spiral
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/defense_death_spiral/intro.htm

The Defense Budget Time Bomb Has Been Outted By the Congressional ...
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c468.htm

Deception at the Pentagon
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~canfrobt/spinney.html

Soinney - Frontline
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/future/interviews/spinney.html

http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/12-06-03/discussion.cgi.2.html

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/index.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3045658

---

"Four sorrows ... are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal 'executive branch' of government into a military junta. Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens."

Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire

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Dick Cheney and the Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone
p27
The revolving door between the government and weapons contractors isn't new, but it has reached new heights (monetarily) and depths (ethically), in recent years. Cheney's relationship with Halliburton is a perfect case study of all that is wrong with the relationship between our democratic form of government and the corporations that finance our elections and feed at the government trough on a daily basis.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/CarlyleGroup_HMOWD%3F.html

[TexasLawyer]

1. Great interview and articles

thanks for pulling these together

[indigobusiness]

3. Thanks, I'm glad you caught it.

I've been struggling to get this in front of eyeballs. It seems worthy of shouting from the rooftops. Spooky stuff.

[Wind Dancer]

2. Chilling.

Thanks for posting, I wonder if it's time to relocate.

I've watched these people gain so much power in the last 30 years and I don't see a way to fight this empire.

[indigobusiness]

4. Isn't it though?

Never did I ever dream that I'd feel this way. I thought Vietnam was a hard lesson learned well. Guess not. When does the pendulum swing left?

[codswallop]

5. Spinney on Condoleezza Rice

Among her many misleading statements are her insistence that she never received reports from the CIA casting doubt on whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Niger, even though her staff had received memos from the agency; and her claim that the Iraqi military was capable of launching on short notice attacks with weapons of mass destruction, a claim derided by observers as ridiculous.

Commenting on this last allegation, Chuck Spinney, the veteran Pentagon insider (now retired) who has made a career out of debunking misleading claims made by the Defense Department, wrote on his Web site: "Today's Sydney Morning Herald contains an absolutely mind-blowing economic revelation. The mystery surrounding how Saddam successfully hid his Weapons of Mass Destruction has been resolved by America's National Security Advisor, Ms. Condoleezza Rice. Her revelation goes beyond the need for a pre-emptive war, however. It provides a vision that could have a profound impact on the evolution of our industrial culture and future prosperity. ... Ms. Rice revealed that Saddam's weapons programs are 'in bits and pieces' rather than assembled weapons. In her words, 'You may find assembly lines, you may find pieces hidden here and there,' she said. According to the wording of this report, 'ingredients or precursors, many non-lethal by themselves, could be embedded in dual-use facilities.' But there is more! If the Herald's reportage is correct, Ms. Rice implied Saddam's distributed and seemingly inefficient production system represented a current threat serious enough to justify preemptive war. She implied Iraq could quickly assemble and launch these weapons. The key to her vision of this rapid reaction capability (a quick OODA loop) lies in Saddam's 'just-in-time assembly' and 'just-in-time' inventory systems. If her words are accurately portrayed by the Sydney Morning Herald, Ms Rice is suggesting that Saddam Hussein may be an economic genius on a par with Henry Ford and Taichi Ohno." (4)

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/rice/rice.php

[TexasLawyer]

6. kick

[Vitruvius]

7. Kick

:kick:

[indigobusiness]

8. Thanks for the kick...n/t

[DrZeeLit]

9. Aw...you continue to post amazing info. Thank you and...

... I soooo owe you a critique. When you wrote the other day to welcome me back from vacation (yes, CA was warm in 80 degrees as opposed to the -22 here in Vt when classes re-upped)... I was like a deer caught in a San Ysidro cross walk. oi vey.

So, I'm sifting thru my mailbag -- I do have your work, rest assured. This weekend, brace yourself.

ttfn

[indigobusiness]

10. No worries

I'm just glad you survived your vacational. If you are too busy to fool with my draft, don't bother. It can wait, or whatever. I really don't want to impose on you, I know you're busy. I have worked on it a bit and could send you an updated version, if you wish to deal with it. Everytime I look at it I catch mistakes. I'm just glad you haven't already looked at it and were avoiding me out of its abject badness.

I want to talk to you about the graphic pattern on your Mondrian bag. There is an artistic insight/aspect you might find interesting.

Cheers. Stay warm, it's almost watermelon season.

[indigobusiness]

12. ps I know how to spell SEETHE

Thanks for not mentioning it. (I would've given you the business.)

[indepat]

11. All unaccountability by elected officials and their minions undermines

the Constitution which they've sworn to uphold and preserve IMHO.

[indigobusiness]

13. This is how our Country is dismantled from within.

This is precisely what Eisenhower warned us of.