Re: US strike options on TSP

devesh · Post by **devesh** » 04 Jul 2012 23:32

^^^
all the "anxiety" and hand-wringing is about how to deconstruct the enormous amounts spent on services/legal/support sectors. US committed the cardinal mistake of allowing these sectors to blossom into enormous power centers. problem is they're taking increasing cuts from the pie, which is really not good when you consider that they are not innovators. they are essentially the constraints imposed by modern constitutional democracy under the rubric of legalism/rights, but ultimately don't add anything of value to the economy.

now they are wondering how to put some kind of controls on those guys without jeopardizing status-quo or kick-starting a revolution. they have to take it slow or they might have the intellectual/legal class joining the lower classes in their disgruntlement. upholding the "individual mandate" by John Roberts follows the same logic. Roberts delivered a huge blow to judicial/legal activism. and this will have ripple effects in the private law institutions. overall, the prestige of lawmen as a power center with ability to wield power, took a considerable blow due to Roberts' voting in favor of the mandate.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 05 Jul 2012 07:19

How Americans Vote

SBajwa · Post by **SBajwa** » 05 Jul 2012 22:24

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SBajwa · Post by **SBajwa** » 05 Jul 2012 22:26

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SBajwa · Post by **SBajwa** » 05 Jul 2012 22:27

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ramana · Post by **ramana** » 05 Jul 2012 22:38

Sbajwa, How are the above posts related to Understanding the US? They are more about training to recognize IEDs. I think they should be in Mil Forum.

SBajwa · Post by **SBajwa** » 05 Jul 2012 23:10

OK. I will delete and move them into MIL forum.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 06 Jul 2012 09:11

Book Review: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. IV: The Passage of Power by Robert Caro

Yogi_G · Post by **Yogi_G** » 07 Jul 2012 08:21

Mormons quit church in mass resignation ceremony

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 11 Jul 2012 09:00

Is Hillary Clinton a great secretary of state?

pentaiah · Post by **pentaiah** » 11 Jul 2012 09:24

abhishek_sharma wrote:Is Hillary Clinton a great secretary of state?

Please read the comments by Alanchristopher who eludes to what I have been saying now terrorists and Islamists are having near free run from TSP to the coasts of Ghana including Somalia, Kenya, Nigeria, In the far east Indonesia, Philippines are having their own closet terrorists waiting in the wing...

all thanks to the power to Sunni wahabis bestowed by unkil.

SBajwa · Post by **SBajwa** » 11 Jul 2012 20:10

NO! she is the worst!

member_23626 · Post by **member_23626** » 11 Jul 2012 20:14

SBajwa wrote:NO! she is the worst!

She's an arrogant idiot to say the least... meanwhile some MUTU has finally come up with soemthing sensible I personlly have experienced this phenomenon where immigrants have to work many times harder to get to positions the natives go to (most of them don't even deserve it)

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... insourcing

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 12 Jul 2012 09:04

The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama

War Is Betrayal: Persistent Myths of Combat

ManjaM · Post by **ManjaM** » 12 Jul 2012 16:49

An excellent book to read to understand the US interventions across the world in the last century is a book "War is a racket" by Maj Gen(Retd) Smedley Butler. The author is a twice recepient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

AbhiJ · Post by **AbhiJ** » 14 Jul 2012 23:50

Arab Lobby and How it influences US Foreign Policy

Multatuli · Post by **Multatuli** » 19 Jul 2012 02:38

The Pentagon's grip on Hollywood

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/lis ... 84778.html

The military entertainment complex is an old phenomenon that binds Hollywood with the US military. Known as militainment, it serves both parties well. Filmmakers get access to high tech weaponry - helicopters, jet planes and air craft carriers while the Pentagon gets free and positive publicity.

The latest offering to come from this relationship is Act of Valor and it takes the collaboration one step further. The producers get more than just equipment – they have cast active-duty military personnel in the lead roles, prompting critics to say the lines have become so blurred that it is hard to see where Hollywood ends and Pentagon propaganda begins.

In this week’s feature, the Listening Post’s Nic Muirhead looks at the ties between the US military and Hollywood.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 23 Jul 2012 00:50

America is a Violent Country

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 23 Jul 2012 20:06

http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/ ... s-of-death

Homicide deaths in US

Check by county stats

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 24 Jul 2012 06:34

Nickel And Dimed*: On (not) getting by in America.

Lilo · Post by **Lilo** » 25 Jul 2012 13:06

You still eat with your hands? Oprah’s magical mystery tour of India- FP, Rajyasree Sen

lakshmikanth · Post by **lakshmikanth** » 25 Jul 2012 14:35

^^^ I used to have a canned answer to this:
"No we used to eat with our assholes, the Brits civilized us and made us eat with our hands"

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 29 Jul 2012 20:41

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 01 Aug 2012 08:34

Adam Wheeler Went to Harvard

Widow recalls Marine husband's despair and suicide

As U.S. troops leave Iraq, an officer honors the memory of a young interpreter

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 03 Aug 2012 08:17

The Pentagon goes to Hollywood

Multatuli · Post by **Multatuli** » 03 Aug 2012 11:19

Afghanistan's 'Auschwitz-like' hospital

Starving patients left with maggots on open wounds - what went wrong at the Dawood Khan hospital and was it covered up?

Starving patients left with maggots on open wounds - what went wrong at the Dawood Khan hospital and was it covered up?

Emaciated patients left to die in their hospital beds with open sores and maggots in their wounds. These were the conditions in Afghanistan's Dawood Khan military hospital that were finally uncovered by a few members of the US military in 2010.

The hospital is run by the Afghan government, but it is mainly funded by the US. Its doctors and nurses are also being trained and overseen by the US and NATO.

One US colonel involved in the investigation into the conditions at the hospital described what he saw there as "Auschwitz-like".

Officials began documenting the widespread corruption at the hospital - including stolen pharmaceuticals and counterfeit medicine being used on Afghan soldiers - as far back as 2006.

By 2010, military staff began documenting maggots on open wounds, patients starved for weeks, surgery performed with no sedatives and bedsores so deep that bones showed through.

However, several military officers told a congressional hearing last week that attempts to launch an investigation were prevented by Lieutenant General William Caldwell.

Caldwell was one of the highest-ranking commanders in Afghanistan, and the officers testifying at the hearing allege that he was concerned about the political repercussions of an investigation ahead of the 2010 congressional elections, as well as the effect on his own career.

Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis published an 86-page report in January, claiming that US generals in Afghanistan were giving rosy estimates of the situation in the country when, in fact, the opposite was true.

"Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognisable," Davis said. "This deception has damaged America’s credibility among both our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan."

In this episode, we ask: What went so wrong at the Dawood Khan military hospital? And what does the alleged cover-up tell us about transparency in the US military?

Joining the discussion with presenter Shihab Rattansi are guests: Schuyler Geller, a former command surgeon in the NATO training mission in Afghanistan; Maria Abi-Habib, the Wall Street Journal reporter who first broke the story; and Gareth Porter, a veteran investigative journalist on national security.

ABUSES AT DAWOOD KHAN HOSPITAL:

US officials found problems at Dawood as early as 2006
Patient neglect continued for months after it was discovered
Afghan patients regularly died of starvation
Other patients died of simple infections due to unchanged bandages
Multiple patients had bedsores and maggots in their wounds
Staff reportedly refused to help amputees to the bathroom
Nurses and doctors at Dawood reportedly repeatedly demanded bribes
US officials complained to the Afghan government about the problems at Dawood hospital
Doctors at Dawood complained about defective morphine in 2008

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/ins ... 43132.html

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 04 Aug 2012 08:42

Locking up the innocent. Arresting his critics. Racial profiling. Meet America's meanest and most corrupt politician.

vera_k · Post by **vera_k** » 04 Aug 2012 12:43

Child labor: Small hands legally picking our food

vera_k · Post by **vera_k** » 08 Aug 2012 10:42

School's policy requires girls to take pregnancy tests

The state-funded school in Delhi, La., says in its “Student Pregnancy Policy” that pregnant girls should leave school or study at home.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 12 Aug 2012 09:28

Racial Profiling Rife at Airport, U.S. Officers Say

johneeG · Post by **johneeG** » 13 Aug 2012 16:43

The Oval Office Liars’ Club
By Robert Higgs | Posted: Sun. November 24, 2002

When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie. Since the end of the 19th century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war. The enormous losses of life, property and liberty that Americans have sustained in wars have occurred in large part because of the public’s unwarranted trust in what their leaders told them before leading them into war.

In 1898, President William McKinley, having been goaded by muscle-flexing advisers and jingoistic journalists to make war on Spain, sought divine guidance as to how he should deal with the Spanish possessions, especially the Philippines, that U.S. forces had seized in what ambassador John Hay famously described as a “splendid little war.” Evidently, his prayer was answered, because the president later reported that he had heard “the voice of God,” and “there was nothing left for us to do but take them all and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them.”

McKinley’s motivations had little if anything to do with uplifting the people whom William H. Taft, the first governor-general of the Philippines, patronizingly called “our little brown brothers,” but much to do with the political and commercial ambitions of influential expansionists such as Captain Alfred Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and their ilk. The official apology for the brutal and unnecessary Philippine-American War was a mendacious gloss.

The Catholic Filipinos evidently did not yearn to be “Christianized,” American style, at the point of a Springfield rifle, and resisted the U.S. imperialists as they had previously resisted the Spanish imperialists. The Philippine-American War, which officially ended on July 4, 1902, but actually dragged on for many years in some islands, cost the lives of more than 4,000 U. S. troops, more than 20,000 Filipino fighters, and more than 220,000 Filipino civilians, many of whom perished in concentration camps eerily similar to the relocation camps into which U.S. forces herded Vietnamese peasants some 60 years later.

When World War I began in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson’s sympathies clearly lay with the British. Nevertheless, he quickly proclaimed U.S. neutrality and urged his fellow Americans to be impartial in both thought and deed. Wilson himself, however, leaned more and more toward the Allied side as the war proceeded. Still, he recognized that the great majority of Americans wanted no part of the fighting in Europe, and in 1916 he sought re-election successfully on the appealing slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War.”

Soon after his second inauguration, however, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war, which was approved, although six senators and 50 members of the House of Representatives had the wit or wisdom to vote against it. Wilson promised this would be “the war to end all wars,” but wars aplenty have taken place since the guns fell silent in 1918, leaving their unprecedented carnage—nearly 9 million dead and more than 20 million wounded, many of them hideously disfigured or crippled for life, as well as perhaps 10 million civilians who died of starvation or disease. And what did the United States or the world gain? Only a 20-year reprieve before the war''s smoldering embers burst into flame again.

After World War I, Americans felt betrayed, and resolved never to make the same mistake again. Yet just two decades later, President Franklin Roosevelt began the maneuvers by which he hoped to plunge the nation once again into the European cauldron. Unsuccessful in his naval provocations of the Germans in the Atlantic, he eventually pushed the Japanese to the wall by a series of hostile economic-warfare measures and clearly unacceptable ultimatums, which may have induced them to mount a desperate military attack on Pearl Harbor.

Campaigning for re-election in Boston on October 30, 1940, FDR had sworn: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” Well, Peleliu ain’t Peoria. Roosevelt was lying when he made his declaration, just as he had lied repeatedly before. (Stanford historian David Kennedy, careful not to speak too stridently, refers to FDR’s “frequently cagey misrepresentations to the American public.”) Yet many, many Americans trusted Roosevelt with their lives; during the war more than 400,000 paid the ultimate price.

Among FDR’s many political acolytes was a young congressman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who eventually and, for the world, unfortunately, rose to the presidency. Like his mentor, he relied heavily on lying to the public. In October 1964, seeking to gain election by portraying himself as the “peace candidate“ (in contrast to the alleged mad bomber Barry Goldwater), LBJ told a crowd at Akron University: “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

In 1965, however, shortly after the start of his elected term in office, Johnson exploited the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, itself based on a fictitious account of an attack on U.S. naval forces off Vietnam, and initiated a huge buildup of U.S. forces in Southeast Asia that would eventually commit more than 500,000 American “boys” to fight an “Asian boys” war. Some 58,000 U.S. military personnel would lose their lives in the service of LBJ’s vanity and political ambitions, not to speak of the millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians killed and wounded.

Now President George Bush is telling the American people we stand in mortal peril of imminent attack by Iraqis or their agents armed with weapons of mass destruction. Having presented no credible evidence or compelling argument, he simply invites us to trust him, and therefore to support him as he undertakes what once would have been called naked aggression.

Well, David Hume long ago argued that just because every swan we’ve seen was white, we cannot be certain that no black swan exists. Bush may be telling the truth. In the light of history, however, we would be making a long-odds bet to believe him.

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=433

lakshmikanth · Post by **lakshmikanth** » 14 Aug 2012 00:51

^^^ WOW!!! What a prophetic article!

pentaiah · Post by **pentaiah** » 16 Aug 2012 07:46

Paging shiv ji and SSji
Of course all others like BJi and ramana ji

Listen and relate to David Hadley role and use by unkil

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-a ... he-convert

nawabs · Post by **nawabs** » 16 Aug 2012 08:44

Policing America: The Grip on the Population Tightens Visibly – Sometimes Even Invisibly

http://2ndlook.wordpress.com/2012/08/15 ... invisibly/

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 16 Aug 2012 20:47

AMERIPAC
American Political Action Committee

I got onto their mailing list. This is an excerpt from their latest crazy. Understand it, and you'll understand a good part of America.

OF THE UN, BY THE UN, FOR THE UN
AGENDA 21 TO STEAL AMERICAN LAND

The scourge called Agenda 21, better known as Sustainable development, has morphed as planned to give strong inroads to the escalation in power to destroy sovereignty and absorb America into the global collective of the United Nations.

AGENDA 21 IS LITERALLY DESIGNED TO TAKE AWAY YOUR LAND!

THIS LAND IS OUR LAND - STOP THE UN LAND GRAB - SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS - NOW!

The truest definition of sovereignty is the ability to own property - your own land. Yet that is exactly what Agenda 21 is designed to destroy.

Maurice Strong a socialist, senior adviser to the United Nations Commission on Global Governance and driving force behind Agenda 21 "sustainability" wrote that the concept of sovereignty must yield in favor of the "new imperatives of global cooperation."

STOP AGENDA 21- SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS - NOW!

Meanwhile, the Green Economy, Non-Governmental Organizations, Public Private Partnerships, the EPA, Global warming and everyone's panic that we must "Save Our Planet" are working together to force Agenda 21 down America's throat.

If we lose the rights to our land as the Citizenry of the United States we will lose the United States of America with it. We The People must educate ourselves and take a stand to STOP AGENDA 21 OR OUR IGNORANCE WILL ENTOMB US IN ABJECT SLAVERY.

DON'T LET THE UN STEAL OUR LAND! - SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS - NOW!

The issue boils down to just one question - Is it right for the United Nations to CONTROL and TAKE land that WE own?

If your answer is NO, then you MUST now fax the Senate and DEMAND THEY STOP AGENDA 21.

NO AMERICA KILLING AGENDA 21 - SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS - NOW!

THE UN WANTS YOUR LAND

It sounds insane....but it's true. The United Nations intends to use the Agenda 21 treaty to force Americans off their own land...in order to protect "biodiversity."

TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION - SEND FAXES
TO ALL 100 SENATORS - NOW!

Take a good look at the map to the right. It was published by the United Nations as their desired plan for restricting land use in the United States.

Is your house located in a red area? Plan on moving if Agenda 21 is ratified by the Senate. Those areas, according to the UN, will have "little to NO human use."

TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION - SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS - NOW!

Even if you house is in a yellow area, the UN says use will be "highly regulated"....in other words sparsely populated.

Apparently, the UN Agenda 21 seeks to drive us all into multi-family high rise super complexes in order to "save the environment."

WE HAVE GOT TO STOP AGENDA 21. NEVER HAS THERE BEEN A MORE DEADLY THREAT TO AMERICA.

TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION - SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS - NOW!

The Obama Administration is attempting to force the United Nation's deadly Agenda 21 policies down American throats. If ratified this treaty will give the United Nations control of everything from our fishing rights, the food we eat and even where we will be allowed to live.

IF AMERICA MEANS TO SURVIVE, THE SENATE MUST STOP AGENDA 21!

I have to be honest with you.

This is the most disturbing email I have ever written. I am frightened for our country. I am frightened for its freedom-loving citizens. But most of all, I am frightened for the future of America. Obama supports beating up the U.S. Constitution and we must not let it be replaced by United Nations Agenda 21.

The UN is ruthlessly advancing a new plan that will make America a HOSTAGE to the United Nations. While Obama and the liberal media ignore gas prices streaking to $5/gal. and England is already paying $10/gal.

UN Agenda 21 could...

Wipe private property off the face of the earth.
Force you and your family to live in a multi-family energy efficient mega-complex.
Confiscate private farms and farmland.
Snatch away private landholdings.
Ban individual ownership of cars.

Tell The Senate To REJECT All Attempts To Implement UN Agenda 21!
Support the U.S. Constitution - SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS - NOW!

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 16 Aug 2012 21:41

George Soros is brillant

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 18 Aug 2012 06:34

What Does Obama Really Believe In?

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 18 Aug 2012 06:56

abhishek_sharma wrote:What Does Obama Really Believe In?

Does NYT realize the US is in the Great Recession? With a hostile Republican controlled Congress, mounting resoruce gaps, shrinking tax base what can Obama do?
Very duplicitous of the sanctimonious NYT liberals to depict Roseland and other urban pockets as Obama's failure when entire cities are in deep distress all over the country due to the Great Recession.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 19 Aug 2012 20:42

Matt Taibbi eviscerates Tom Friedman (old article)

johneeG · Post by **johneeG** » 21 Aug 2012 19:38

WAR IS A RACKET

Written by Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler USMC, Retired.

After his retirement from the Marine Corps, Gen. Butler made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech "War is a Racket". The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as a small book with the same title that was published in 1935 by Round Table Press, Inc., of New York.

CHAPTER ONE

WAR IS A RACKET

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace... War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."

Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war – anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.

Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.

Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?

Yes, and what does it profit the nation?

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.

CHAPTER TWO

WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?

The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.

Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.

Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!

Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.

There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.

Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.

Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.

Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.

A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.

Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.

For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent.

International Nickel Company – and you can't have a war without nickel – showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.

American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.

Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.

And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body.

But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.

Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought – and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.

There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it – so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.

Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!

Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam.

There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.

Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.

Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢[cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them – a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers – all got theirs.

Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them – and they will do it all over again the next time.

There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.

One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.

Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit.

The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up – and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.

It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.

The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.

Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee – with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator – to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.

Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses – that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.

There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed.

Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.

CHAPTER THREE

WHO PAYS THE BILLS?

Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.

There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement – the young boys couldn't stand it.

That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too – they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam – on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain – with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.

But don't forget – the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.

Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share – at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.

Napoleon once said,

"All men are enamored of decorations...they positively hunger for them."

So by developing the Napoleonic system – the medal business – the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.

In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.

So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed.

And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.

All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and be killed.

But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance – something the employer pays for in an enlightened state – and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all – he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.

We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back – when they came back from the war and couldn't find work – at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!

Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly – his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.

When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too – as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.

And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.

CHAPTER FOUR

HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!

WELL, it's a racket, all right.

A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation – it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers –

yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!

Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.

Why shouldn't they?

They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are!

Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else.

Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people – those who do the suffering and still pay the price – make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.

Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant – all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war – voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms – to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.

There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide – and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote.

A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.

At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.

Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.

The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.

The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.

The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.

To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.

We must take the profit out of war.

We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

CHAPTER FIVE

TO HELL WITH WAR!

I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war.

Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.

Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?

Money.

An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:

"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars.

If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money...and Germany won't.

So..."

Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars."

Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.

And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.

Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?

The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments.

The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.

There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough.

The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases.

Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too.

But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.

If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war – even the munitions makers.

So...I say,

TO HELL WITH WAR!

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