NP? "War and death make for good business."

Fri Sep 20 00:54:21 CDT 2002

on 9/19/02 5:05 PM, none none at aninaction at hotmail.com wrote:

> a) i hate regan. read sometime what the fucker did for censorship in
> america.  the man had no real education.
> 
> b) our foreign policy is all about agenda and has been fucked up for a very
> long time.
> 
> 
>> From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Subject: NP?  "War and death make for good business."
>> Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 09:33:48 -0700
>> 
>> " [...] Reagan, Bush, the Iraqi dictator, and American corporations have
>> worked together over the years. War and death make for good business.
>> [...] Former Reagan official and National Security Council staffer Howard
>> Teicher [...]  offered an affidavit in the Teledyne case, a legal sideshow
>> to a larger scandal known as "Iraqgate." [...] Teicher claims the United
>> States "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis
>> with billions of dollars of credits, by providing US military intelligence
>> and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms
>> sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." Reagan
>> also sent a secret message to Saddam, which then vice president Bush
>> delivered to Egyptian President Mubarak, and Mubarak passed on to Saddam,
>> "telling him that Iraq should step up its air war and bombing of Iran."
>> Reagan CIA director Casey wanted to give Saddam cluster bombs, which "were
>> a perfect 'force multiplier' that would allow the Iraqis to defend against
>> the 'human waves' of Iranian attackers," explained the former NSC staffer.
>> He recorded Casey's comments in meeting minutes, which are now in the
>> Ronald Reagan presidential archives in Simi Valley, California.
>> 
>> In 1982, Reagan "legalized" direct military assistance to Iraq. This
>> resulted in more than a billion dollars in military related exports.
>> According to Kenneth R. Timmerman (author of The Death Lobby: How the West
>> Armed Iraq) the US government under Reagan and Bush sold Iraq 60 Hughes MD
>> 500 "Defender" helicopters, eight Bell Textron AB 212 military helicopters
>> equipped for anti-submarine warfare, 48 Bell Textron 214 ST utility
>> helicopters (sold for "recreational" purposes), and US military infra-red
>> sensors and thermal imaging scanners (sold illegally to Iraq through a
>> Dutch company). After the Gulf War, the International Atomic Energy Agency
>> found the following US equipment in Iraq: spectrometers, oscilloscopes,
>> neutron initiators, high-speed switches for nuclear detonation, and other
>> tools used to develop and manufacture nuclear weapons. [...]
>> 
>> BNL--or Banca Nazionale del Lavoro--provided more than $5 billion in
>> unauthorized loans to Iraq, including $900 million guaranteed by the US
>> government. "About half of the money allegedly went to finance the purchase
>> of US farm products, including $900 million guaranteed by the Agriculture
>> Department's Commodity Credit Corp., but investigators said much of the
>> rest had helped fuel Iraq's military buildup," wrote George Lardner in the
>> Washington Post on 22 March 1992. [...]
>> 
>> While Bush Junior declares he "will not allow... a nation such as Iraq to
>> threaten our very future by developing weapons of mass destruction," the
>> administration of his father and Reagan, as the Gonzalez revelations
>> demonstrate, apparently didn't have the future of America in mind when they
>> allowed biological and chemical weapons--as well as massive amounts of
>> conventional military hardware--to be exported to Iraq. [...]
>> 
>> The US Department of Commerce licensed 70 biological exports to Iraq
>> between 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of
>> anthrax. The French newspaper Le Figaro, in an article published in 1998,
>> said researchers at the Rockville, Maryland lab of the American Type
>> Culture Collection confirmed sending anthrax samples via mail order to
>> Iraq. After the Gulf War, Iraq made several declarations to UN weapons
>> inspectors about how they had weaponized the anthrax sent to them by the
>> American corporation. In 1985, the US Centers of Disease Control sent
>> samples of an Israeli strain of West Nile virus to a microbiologist at the
>> Basra University in Iraq. In addition, Iraq received other "various toxins
>> and bacteria," including botulins and E. coli.
>> 
>> Corporations that have sold dual-use chemicals and biological samples to
>> Iraq for its weapons program include: Phillips Petroleum, Unilever,
>> Alcolac, Allied Signal, the American Type Culture Collection, and Teledyne.
>> Teledyne pled guilty to charges of criminal conspiracy, false statements,
>> and violations of the Export Administration Act and the Arms Export Control
>> Act for indirectly exporting 130 tons of zirconium to Iraq through Chilean
>> arms manufacturer Carlos Cardoen. The zirconium was intended for use in
>> cluster bombs. In defense, Teledyne argued during the trial that the CIA
>> had authorized the shipments. The Baltimore company Alcolac was convicted
>> of illegally selling thiodiglycol--a chemical precursor used in the
>> production of mustard gas--for use in Iraq's chemical warfare program.
>> 
>> When Murray Waas and Craig Unger published an article in The New Yorker
>> about the Reagan administration and Bush's involvement with Saddam
>> Hussein--a full three years before Howard Teicher's revelatory
>> affidavit--they were roundly condemned and mocked by the corporate media.
>> [...]
>> 
>> In general, the corporate media gave but cursory notice to the revelations.
>> "There's a good reason why we in the media are so partial to a nice, torrid
>> sex scandal," said Ted Koppel, as he opened a Nightline Iraqgate report in
>> 1992. "It is, among other things, so easy to explain and so easy to
>> understand. Nothing at all, in other words, like allegations of a
>> government cover-up, which tend to be not at all easy to explain, and even
>> more difficult to understand." In short, according to Koppel and the
>> corporate media, the American people do not have the intelligence to judge
>> for themselves if their leaders are criminals. Obviously, Monica Lewinsky
>> is more important.
>> 
>> As Dubya the Junior and his coterie of chick hawks prepare to make war on a
>> Frankenstein Bush the Senior--at least in part--created, the revelations
>> exposed by Representative Henry B. Gonzalez and a handful of others need to
>> be revisited within the full context of public debate.
>> 
>> However, considering the handmaiden role of corporate media in the
>> dissemination of government propaganda--and its insistence upon offering
>> vacuous interviews by the likes of Paula Zahn--chances are the American
>> people will not be allowed to understand any time soon what the government
>> does in their name. [...] "
>> 
>> 
>> September 19, 2002
>> Bush Senior:
>> Hating Saddam, Selling Him Weapons
>> by Kurt Nimmo
>> http://www.counterpunch.org/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> "Don't forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The
>> murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to
>> non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways.
>> It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It
>> provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be
>> taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more
>> prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just
>> ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while
>> they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of
>> markets."
>> Gravity's Rainbow p. 105
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Yah Go Boy!

Ronald Reagan was never president. He just played one on T.V.

 Nice points about the dual-use chemicals, legal military assistance to Iraq
("We can do business with this man." R Dole) etc. I question the anthrax
stuff, but the Pynchon connection to IG Farben and Royal Dutch Shell brings
it home to this list. I'm just waiting for Manucher Ghorbanifar to show up
as an under-assistant advisor to the Secretary for Homeland Defense. "...and
then Mr. Ghorbanifar brought me out to the men's room and made an indecent
proposal!"

The problem is Dubya's Iraq fixation is anti-capitalist and that will be his
downfall.  He has a hair across his ass because he cannot produce a dead
Osama Bin Laden. American oil reserves are of strategic importance to the
military and are not available to fuel SUV's. We need diesel to pull off an
invasion. A homeland publicity stunt to show how macho the draft-evading
George the Lesser is will alienate the oil-producing Middle-Eastern states.
Gas prices will soar. The European Union will resent the increased petrol
prices. The Kurds will declare an independent state. Turkey's government
will fall to Islamist "reformists". Shaky governments in places like
Venezuela will fall to extreme rightists willing to supply the Land Rovers
of Georgetown and Beacon Hill in exchange for arms. Good morning compromised
President Kerry. Four years later some asshole will find a way to blame it
on the Democrats while promising to lower taxes. The cycle will repeat. I
think I'll go for a walk in the Arboretum. Oh shit! Harvard owns that.

Recent quote from Tom Lehrer:

Q: Do you think there's hope?
A: No. Why?

Have a nice day.

Peace 
Joe