Perhaps the Gitmo prisoners could use some new playmates?

In 1935, Smedley Butler, one of the most decorated United States Marines in history, wrote a little book called "War Is A Racket."

In one of the most crucial excerpts of that book, Butler wrote:

"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."

Ahh yes -- "...something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people." What a perfect metaphor for how the Iraq invasion and occupation was allowed to be implemented and (initially) perceived by most Americans.

Two-time Medal of Honor winner Gen. Butler was intimately knowledgeable about war -- not just the kind of war being waged out of a valid necessity of self defense mind you, but also the kind of war based on one of human kind's oldest vices -- greed.

And in the 75 years since Butler dared speak about the small cabal of evil men and their lust for political power, obscene monetary profit and undeserved glory at the expense of human life, not a whole hell of alot has changed.

Thus, this story about Erik Prince and his mercenary army for-hire goon squad - Blackwater, which if true, would not shock me in the least.

Thank you George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condi Rice for proving beyond a shadow of doubt that Smedley Butler, and later Dwight D. Eisenhower (see video below), were right with their frighteningly prescient warnings to all of us of the dangers of allowing the unholy marriage of corporate fascism and the military complex to proliferate unchecked. The fact that they've perversely cloaked it all in the mantle of religious fundamentalist righteousness makes it all the more sickening.





----k