[At about the same time the Du Ponts were serving the Nazi cause in Germany, they were
involved in a Fascist plot to overthrow the United States government.
"Along with friends of the Morgan Bank and General Motors," in early 1934, writes
Higham, "certain Du Pont backers financed a coup d'etat that would overthrow the
President with the aid of a $3 million-funded army of terrorists . . ." The object was
to force Roosevelt "to take orders from businessmen as part of a fascist government or
face the alternative of imprisonment and execution . . ."
Higham reports that "Du Pont men allegedly held an urgent series of meetings with the
Morgans," to choose who would lead this "bizarre conspiracy." "They finally settled on
one of the most popular soldiers in America, General Smedly Butler of Pennsylvania."
Butler was approached by "fascist attorney" Gerald MacGuire (an official of the American
Legion), who attempted to recruit Butler into the role of an American Hitler.--R.
William Davis, "The Elkhorn Manifesto," July 4, 1996]
[The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy
and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of
killing.--Ralph Peters, "Constant
Conflict" Parameters,
US Army War College Quarterly, Summer 1997, pp. 4-14]
[If one were to look closely at the past 58 years, one would be hard pressed to
find a single U.S. military or C.I.A. intervention that has brought us one iota
of safety, or, for that matter, that has actually been done for national defense
purposes. As Butler illustrated in 1933, and it is even truer now than then, the
U.S. engages in interventions meant to protect the interests of the powerful and
wealthy of our nation and our allies, and rarely, if ever, in order to actually
protect its citizens.--Chris White, "Is War Still a
Racket?" CounterPunch, January 9, 2003]
Charlie Liteky, "An Open Letter to the U.S. Military: Congressional
Medal of Honor recipient addresses U.S. forces in Iraq," Veterans Against the Iraq War,
May 7, 2003
[Between 1850 and 1870, British exports tripled, from just over eighty million
pounds to more than 240 million pounds a year. The process was fairly
straightforward. The British imported raw materials from every comer of the
globe. They then used those raw materials, transformed them into finished
products in factories, and exported those goods throughout the world. Trade and
industry were inextricably linked. The United Kingdom needed raw materials to
produce finished goods, and it needed markets to absorb those goods abroad. In
order to profit from exports, it had to control the trade, and to do that, it
had to control the seas. In that sense, the British navy was simply an
adjunct to the British merchant marine.--Zachary Karabell, "Parting
the Desert," Knopf (May 20, 2003)]
[To measure actual spending by the United States on defense, take the federal
budget number for the Pentagon and double it.--David R. Francis, "Hidden defense costs
add up to double trouble," Christian Science Monitor, February 23, 2004]
John S.D. Eisenhower, "War Turned
Eisenhower Into a Pacifist," International Herald Tribune, June 6, 2004
VIDEO: An unflinching
look at the anatomy of the American war machine, weaving unforgettable personal
stories with commentary by a "who's who" of military and beltway insiders. The
film surveys the scorched landscape of a half-century's military adventures,
asking how and telling why a nation of, by, and for the people has become the
savings-and-loan of a system whose survival depends on a state of constant
war.--Eugene Jarecki, "Why We
Fight," Sony Pictures Classics (2005)
[A more honest estimate of ourselves as a nation would prepare us all for
the next barrage of lies that will accompany the next proposal to inflict our
power on some other part of the world.--Howard Zinn, "Lessons of Iraq War start
with U.S. history," The Progressive, March 14, 2006]
[". . . no nation had ever become great without control of foreign markets and
access to the natural resources of foreign countries."--Stephen Kinzer, "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to
Iraq," Times Books, April 4, 2006, p. 33]
[VIDEO: SAIC
personnel were instrumental in pressing the case that weapons of mass
destruction existed in Iraq in the first place, and that war was the only
way to get rid of them. Then, as war became inevitable, SAIC secured contracts
for a broad range of operations in soon-to-be-occupied Iraq. When no weapons of
mass destruction were found, SAIC personnel staffed the commission that was set
up to investigate how American intelligence could have been so disastrously
wrong.--Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, "Washington's
$8 Billion Shadow," Vanity Fair, March 2007]
Daniel Howden and Leonard Doyle, "Making
a killing: how private armies became a $120bn global industry,"
Independent, September 21, 2007
John Pilger, "The New World War -- The
Silence Is A Lie," johnpilger.com, September 24, 2008
MAP: "Intervention and
Exploitation: US and UK Government International Actions Since 1945"
