WAR AS AN ECONOMIC STIMULUS

The answer to why such policies continue may have more to do with economics than politics. Even the most cursory examination of past military actions shows a distinct correlation between such warfare and the national economy. Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler, writing in the 1930s, stated, “War is a racket…War is largely a matter of money. Bankers lend money to foreign countries and when they cannot pay, the president sends Marines to get it.”

In the same vein, many historians and economists have argued that America's emergence from the Great Depression was made only possible because of World War II.

The controversial Report From Iron Mountain is prophetic on this point. This secret 1963 policy paper, leaked to the press and later published as a book in 1967, makes clear that war is not only necessary to maintain societal control but to prop up a sagging financial system. The study that led to this famous white paper reportedly began in 1961 with Kennedy administration officials such as McGeorge Bundy (CFR, Bilderberger and Skull and Bones), Robert McNamara (Trilateralist, CFR and Bilderberger) and Dean Rusk (CFR and Bilderberger). Knowing of Kennedy's goal of ending the Cold War, these men were concerned that there had been no serious planning for long-term peace.

Although denounced as a literary hoax in some circles, Report From Iron Mountain is an amazing document, written at the onset of our national experience in Vietnam. It most certainly reflects the elitist views of those who are said to have solicited the study. According to the report, “War itself is the basic social system, within which other secondary modes of social organization conflict or conspire. It is the system which has governed most human societies of record, as it is today.” The report's authors saw war as both necessary and desirable as “the principal organizing force” as well as “the essential economic stabilizer of modern societies.”

The report writers concluded, “…we must first reply, as strongly as we can, that the war system cannot responsibly be allowed to disappear until (1) we know exactly what (forms of social control) we plan to put in its place and (2) we are certain, beyond reasonable doubt, that these substitute institutions will serve their purposes…”

Most significantly, the report states, “The elimination of war implies the inevitable elimination of national sovereignty and the traditional nation-state,” and added, “The possibility of war provides the sense of external necessity without which no government can long remain in power…The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers.”

The report goes on to say that war “has served as the last great safeguard against the elimination of necessary social classes”… and war functions serve to control “essential class relationships.”

A former high-ranking Pentagon officer, Col. Donn de Grand Pre, has stated, “I’m talking about what happened to my boss, [then] Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. He commissioned a study to be done. It was later generally known as the ‘Report From Iron Mountain.’” He added, stated in a 2001 interview, “One of the policy makers that I was associated with at the time—for good or for ill—was Henry Kissinger. At that time Henry was an untenured professor at Harvard University and he was also working for the Operations Research Office at the Pentagon, which was paying him a stipend for that work. Simultaneously, Henry was also working for the Council on Foreign Relations under Nelson Rockefeller… Henry would come to the Pentagon and since my boss, General [Robert] York was his contact there, I became Henry's contact [while Gen. York was off on a lengthy study in Vietnam]. It evolved into informal luncheons where Henry would come down from the Hudson Institute, which is close to Iron Mountain, where he and 14 others were working on this study. Henry was a little bit reluctant to talk about this study, but he gave us enough information to enable us to realize that there was such a study going on. It lasted anywhere from eight to 10 months….The Iron Mountain study was not fiction by any means.

“Here was the overall purpose of the study: to analyze different ways a government can perpetuate itself in power, control its citizens and prevent them from rebelling. Their major conclusion was that, in the past, war was the only reliable means to achieve that goal. Remember, this study was in the process of being formulated in early 1963. Kissinger's intellectual buddies from Harvard and also from Yale were already formulating this no-win war in Vietnam.”

A document authenticity expert, who asked for anonymity expressing fear of government reprisals against his consulting business, told this author that after comparing the report to the 1967 book The New Industrial State and other works by John Kenneth Galbraith, he became convinced that the Report From Iron Mountain was written by Galbraith based on “idiosyncrasies and stylistic comparisons.” This expert said the two books almost certainly could not have been authored by two different educated and highly perceptive writers. He concluded that the Report From Iron Mountain “is pretty much the sole and exclusive work of John Kenneth Galbraith…” He added that the term “special studies” has been a “preferred open rubric or code for military cover and deception planning and operations, indeed, historically, not limited to the US armed forces but also including the NSC, Department of State, CIA and others.”

Interestingly, Galbraith, while denying he participated in the Iron Mountain study itself, nevertheless admitted in 1976 that he had acted in the capacity of a consultant and vouched for the report's authenticity.

Regardless of its origin or author, the tone of the Report is certainly conspiratorial and it most certainly reflects the mindset and class-conscious views of men connected to the secret societies. These same men were responsible for the involvement of America in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and their mindset was behind the attempt to foment war in Central America in the 1980s as well as the conflicts of the 1990s in the Middle East and Balkans. Is what we are seeing in Iraq and Afganistan today merely a continuation of the policies of such men?

We've noted that Georgia Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney was figuratively eviscerated in the mass media for charging that friends of George W. Bush and other corporate big wigs were profiting from the War on Terrorism.

Yet on December 20, 2001, when war hero Senator John McCain chided his fellow senators about pork and profits accumulated since 9/11, there was no comparable media reaction. McCain was particularly miffed at a proposal to lease 100 Boeing 767s as refueling tankers for 10 years and then spend $30 million to reconfigure the planes as commercial airliners and return them to Boeing. “This is the wrong thing to do,” groused McCain. “We're going to spend $20 billion plus over a 10-year period and 10 years from now are going to have nothing to show for it.”

“This kind of behavior cannot go on,” he later told the Senate. “You will lose the confidence of the American people. This is called war profiteering.” Only a few conspiracy researchers thought to ask is this huge pay-off to Boeing might have less to do with national defense and more to do with hushing Boeing executives expressing doubt about the explanation for the demise of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island.

Only on several Internet sites and in some alternative media were there snickers of understanding. For some time, rumors had flown that Boeing was being offered a sweetheart money package as a bribe to keep quiet about the fatal crash of TWA 800.

Controversy has continued to swirl around the crash, which involved a Boeing 747 passenger jetliner that crashed off Long Island on July 17, 1996. Although hundreds of witnesses reported seeing a streak in the sky prior to the plane exploding and the fact that military exercises were being conducted in the area at the time, the government concluded that a spark had somehow gotten into a central fuel tank and caused the explosion which killed 230 passengers and crew.

Books, magazine articles and the Internet have been filled with speculation that TWA 800 was accidentally shot down when its late departure took it into a weapons testing zone. Boeing officials initially objected to the conclusion that somehow their craft were defective, yet later became strangely silent giving birth to rumors that the aircraft company was being paid off for its silence.

The last minute and little publicized add-on to a defense spending bill which caused McCain such concern only added to such speculation. Apparently McCain and other senators had not heard this speculation. Junior Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania naively asked a colleague why the Air Force could not simply keep the Boeing 767s after they were paid for. He was told, “We can't do that. It will queer the deal.”

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Americans were asked to give up many things including some constitutional rights in the War on Terrorism. However, government contractors, especially those delivering military goods, gave up nothing. If fact, they gained plenty, even those companies that had been caught in past scandals.

Take the Lockheed Aircraft Company, for example. In the mid-1970s, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was forced to resign from the secretive and exclusive Bilderbergers, which represented the inner core elite of more than one secret society. In London, just after World War II, Lord Rothschild and Dr. Joseph Hieronim Retinger encouraged Prince Bernhard to create the Bilderberger group. The prince personally chaired the group until 1976 when he resigned following revelations that he had accepted large payoffs from Lockheed to promote the sale of its aircraft in Holland. Today, Texaco Inc. has sold its US gas stations to Dutch Shell, drawing yet another American firm into even closer ties with the global economy.

Despite the bribery scandal involving the Dutch prince and other public officials worldwide, Lockheed continued to enjoy the largess of the US government. Despite pledges to institute ethical reforms, Lockheed officials again came under fire in the mid-1990s. The company pled guilty to making payoffs to an Egyptian official to win approval for a deal involving C-130 cargo planes. Since 1995, Lockheed, which has since changed its name to Lockheed Martin, has been named in 33 more court cases involving charges of overcharging on government contracts, improper technology transfers to China, falsifying the results of nuclear safety tests, job discrimination, environmental pollution and more.

This dismal public record did not deter the US government, from awarding Lockheed Martin a contract in October 2001 to build the nation's newest military jet, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The contract was expected to exceed $200 billion during its decades-long life. It was called “the richest military contract in history.”

Lockheed Martin and the previously discussed Halliburton are not alone in repeatedly violating both laws and regulations while continuing to collect vast amounts of public money. According to U.S. News & World Report, “In the past dozen years, 30 of the 43 largest federal contractors have racked up more than 400 enforcement cases, resulting in at least 28 criminal convictions, 286 civil settlements, mostly involving their government contracts…Allegations included price fixing, bogus testing, polluting, overcharging, hiding product defects, violating export laws and withholding financial data from the government. They also represent more than accounting quibbles: Company workers have been killed and seriously injured and national security potentially put at risk.”

Yet four out of every ten federal procurement dollars go to these same companies. “If it was a food-stamp recipient, they'd go to jail,” complained Oregon Democrat Rep. Peter DeFazio. “It's an extraordinary double standard.”

In research conducted by U.S. News & World Report, it was determined that only one of the government's 30 largest contractors—General Electric Co.—has ever been denied new contracts and that punishment only lasted a few days.

Due to the cost, bureaucratic paperwork and apparent indifference—not to mention undiscovered bribes—no government agency keeps tabs on which company has broken the law. So the fat contracts just keep coming.

Following the trend of the big corporations getting bigger, many defense contractors have merged into huge multinational entities, making it even more difficult for government watchdogs to detect unlawful activities and make cases. No one—either in the major news media or the government—seems capable of determining exactly which individuals are in control of these corporate behemoths.

With the sudden and burgeoning national defense buildup following the 9/11 attacks, no one expects these corporate zebras to change their stripes any time soon. But perhaps a better way to increase cash flow these days is just to—steal it.

Soon after the events of 9/11, as the dot.com bubble was bursting, and as Americans watched the unfolding of the greatest wave of corporate accounting scandals in the history of the country that were epitomized by the fall of President Bush's friends at Enron, an even larger accounting scandal was somehow lost in the shuffle of egregious corruption in Washington. According to reliable estimates from within the government itself, the Department of Defense (DoD) and other departments of the federal government were unable to account for trillions—yes trillions—in missing funds.

One can only imagine that, if there were any problems with defense appropriations in Congress over the missing money on September 10, the events of 9/11 put a quick end to any Congressman's hesitation to authorize fresh new funds for defense contractors.

One of those most responsible for bringing this and other government accounting scandals to light was Catherine Austin Fitts, former managing director of Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read and former Housing and Urban Development (HUD) assistant secretary in the first Bush administration. Fitts is now a well-known federal whistleblower and economic reformer whose website, whereisthemoney.org, details the missing-money scandal at both the DoD and HUD, including quotes like this from David K. Steensma of the DoD’s Inspector General office: “We reported that DoD processed $1.1 trillion in unsupported accounting entries to…DoD financial statements for FY 2000.”

Fitts said the figure actually tops $3 trillion: “Total undocumented accounting adjustments for reported periods for the Department of Defense [and HUD for fiscal 1998–2000] amount to a whopping $3.3 trillion, or $11,700 for every American. The Department of Defense has failed to produce independent audited financial statements since the requirement went into effect in 1995.”

At least $59 billion was also missing at HUD, said Fitts, as its Inspector General had refused—for starters—to certify HUD’s fiscal 1999 financial statements. Characterizing the depths of the scandal, Fitts said that Americans are “at the mercy of a group of creditors who are our creditors because they are financing us with the money they stole from our public and private pension funds.”

At her website solari.com, and in other writings and lectures, Fitts has explained that, beginning with the savings and loan scandal in the 1980’s which involved the stripping of nearly $500 billion from banks and government, criminalized insider elites began a rise to power that is now epitomized by their perpetration of 9/11. Now in a greater position of power in the 1990’s, “these same syndicates then stripped an estimated $6 trillion of investors’ value in pump and dump stock market and mortgage market schemes and an estimated $4 trillion of taxpayer money.” Where has the $10 trillion gone? Most likely, says Fitts, into offshore accounts that will be used to buy up assets back on shore once these elites have engineered the destruction of the dollar.

Meanwhile, the grand plan of globalization and centralization of the world's economy as envisioned by the globalists within the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations continued.

Following in the footsteps of their successful effort to combine the once sovereign nations of Europe into one union, the globalists today are putting into place a “North American Union,” all without any authorization, oversight or funding by the US Congress.

Under a CFR-sponsored unilateral agreement called the Security and Prosperity Partnership, signed by President Bush, Mexican President Vincente Fox and then-Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin at Waco, Texas, in March 2005, the United States, Mexico and Canada are being merged into one economic bloc.

Concurrently, public hearings were underway in Texas and other affected states for the construction of a CanaMex or NAFTA [North American Free Trade Area] superhighway stretching from southern Mexico up through the Midwest and into Canada. All this under the supervison of the North American Superhighway Coalition composed of representatives from Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, the Ambassador Bridge, various federal agencies and private firms. Two attempts to pass legislation authorizing this unilateral partnership in Congress failed and there has been precious little accounts of this effort in the corporate mass media.

Randy Ghent, one of a growing number of opponents to the CanaMex Superhighway, stated, “I couldn't think of a more disastrous project if I had to think all year.”

Critics say the NAFTA Superhighway scheme would add to air pollution, traffic congestion, oil dependence, global warming, roadkill and human death. Local economics and quality of life would suffer, as development moves from town centers to narrow strips along the highway while noting that NAFTA activities already have caused corporate exodus to the south, robbing the United States of more than 600,000 jobs. There is already talk of creating a “North American Parliament” to deal with the new economic union.

NAFTA and the WTO agreements have encouraged companies to move out of the country and social services continued to lag behind demand. Additionally, tremendous amounts of money including criminalized cash flows were flowing through the military-industrial complex and primarily into large corporate accounts, or into the private hands of the cronies and accomplices of the criminalized elites.

Detectives long have used the question of qui bono, who benefits, as the beginning of their investigation. Journalists also use this method, often couching it in the old adage, “Follow the money.”