Glenn Greenwald keeps unveiling stunning information about U.S. foreign policy. The following video by General Wesley Clark is jaw dropping, especially in light of the events that have unfolded since the conversations he reveals. The bottom line is that a pro-war U.S. foreign policy is repeatedly enacted without any national debate. The U.S. considers the Middle East to be U.S. property. How else can you explain that we are operating armed drones in six Muslim countries, and that politicians are actively discussing the “need” to invade Iran?
If a die hard general becomes the voice of reason, without changing his positions, then there is something seriously wrong in a country.
Mmmm….always consider the source. Clark says that the agenda was to take over and control the Middle East.
Seems logical. But, we didn’t take over the middle East,did we? Do we want to take them over? Or just get our big mutinational companies in them? Burger King…Pizza Hut…Domino’s…
Bush fought a wussy war…left the oil fields to everyone…Iraq is back to being it’s old civil/war self. Nation building to me is having the American taxpayer fund big expensive rebuilding infrasturtures in other countries so that GE, and other international companies like McDonalds and Ford can get into those markets. Watch ANY big CEO on Charlie Rose and their eyes light up at the sheer numbers of population: in the Middle East, In India. They all travel on Air Force Run to have Obama help them work out their business deals.
They cannot sell their products if the country is unstable.
It’s all about the money. We are run by rich men working for rich men.
The “democracies” where the leaders who were against the Americans were all voted in. If Bush wanted to take over these countries he would place in puppets. (and for a while they do)Not give them the choice to have elections…we didn’t do that in Japan now did we?
Nobody has any respect for Bush, or Obama, or the Clintons, or any of them. Look into them all, and they are getting rich working with these companies by passing laws that fill their off-shore hidden bank accounts. They are all giving more and MORE power to the office of the Presidency. Bush..Obama, Clinton.
How much did Bill Clinton get for selling the Chinese our nuclear missle capablilies? Along with Boeing? Treason– and yet, Bush protected him.
Of course, the people in the Middle East were given free elections and they picked the Islamic people that hate us. And why shouldn’t they hate us? Islam is non-tolerant of any other system. They have been raised from birth to think the way they do.
Clark was part of the Clinton oversight. Kosovo? Remember Kosovo? And yet, Clinton did nothing about Rwanda. So sorry. You know why? The Lippo group, which wanted vast amount of land filled with copper in Rwanda …needed that land… and they gave the money to Clinton for his first electon.
He owed them.
It’s all about the money. Clark attacks Bush. Cheney attacks Obama. They are all mere puppets in the globalization of big international bankers and companies wanting to get their products into everywhere as a monopoly, and thus control. GE, BP, and also, the global military which are now being paid by those same companies. Our troops will come home, but a huge army of well paid private soldiers will always remain.
Obama went into Libya..(yes, we did have troops there) his name is not Bush.
This was 2007. Clark, makes very good points, but is trying to influence an election….2008. And he did. And the war game continues, Obama..you watch…will help bomb Iran. He will run on it…being the great military leader.
It’s good cop, bad cop, and we are all suckers…and the state and the companies will continue to be joined at the hip.
I’m going to collect books…because someday, when everything is on the electronic internet,and only the leaders write the history, all of this will be lost in cyperspace.
I’ve followed news about Iraq since the late 70s, and I am read up on the history of the place.
In the 50s, The US CIA help Saddam Hussein stage a coup against the former Democratic government of Iraq, probably with the intent of creating a buffer state against the soviet satellite countries. Saddam made a major economic move that pleased his people when he nationalized the country’s oil industry, and used the oil profits to finance the government. One of the major benefits was that Iraqi citizens paid no taxes. yet enjoyed the benefits of public education, modern highways, a robust economy.
In the 60s and 70s Iraq emerged as one of the more secular of the middle eastern nations, drawing much derision from many of the Islamic kingdoms and emirates that the US counted as allies. Most of these allies were controlled by royal families who had worked out “Profit sharing” agreements with foreign oil companies, where the oil companies would operate the fields, extract the oil and kickback a sizable chunk of wealth the to ruling family.
Complicating matters was Kuwait, which had agreements with BP and Gulf oil through partnerships with the Kuwait oil company, drew from oil deposits that spanned the Iraq-Kuwait border, and according to a treaty between the two countries, was obliged to match oil production with Iraq.
Shortly after Iranian Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi’s regime fell to Islamist revolutionaries lead by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iraq attacked neighboring Iran, fearing the spread of revolution into Iraq.
After the 8 year long war, it was Iraq’s inability to repay its war debts, and along with suspicions that Kuwait had employed slant drilling to effective steal oil from Iraq. Iraq invaded Kuwait which eventually lead to US involvement in the first gulf war.
Fast forward to 2001, when deregulation and a new globalism nurtured by both Bush Presidencies and Clinton as well, had ushered in a form of corporate imperialism never seen before, GWB declares war on Iraq, with a massive propaganda machine pushing a plethora of unsupported excuses. Apparently, corporations realized that war would enable them access to a flood of money.
Also by taking corporate control of the Iraqi oil industry, the oil companies would not need to compete against the lower priced Iraqi oil. This became clear when the first attempts to create a new governing body for Iraq were former oil company employees who favored the inequitable and corrupt profit sharing deals used in other Arab nations.
Joyanna,
Its good to see a conservative view that is not entirely snowed by the belief push by many of the extreme right, that capitalism, the idea that everything and everyone in the world should be owned by a few individual who extract wealth not through earnings but through rent, is not in any way analogous with the free market.