From the White House and the
Office of the President of the
United States we present an
address by Dwight D. Eisenhower.
This is the farewell address for
president Eisenhower, whose...
eight years as chief executive
come to an end that noon Friday.
Good evening, my fellow Americans.
We now stand 10 years passed
the midpoint of the century,
that has witnessed four major
wars among great nations.
Three of these involved our own country.
We have been compelled to create a...
permanent armaments industry
of vast proportions.
Three and a half million men and women are
directly engaged in the defense establishment.
Of this conjunction, of an
immense military establishment...
and a large arms industry is
new in the American experience.
We recognize the imperative
need for this development.
Yet we must not fail to comprehend
its grave implications.
What are we fighting for?
Why do we bury our sons and fathers in
lonely graves, far away from home?
Our men are dying to preserve a way of life.
This religion, these rights, they are precious
enough to fight for, precious enough to die for.
WHY WE FIGH
The United States is the greatest
force for good in the world.
And we have not an obligation to
go out and fight and start wars,
but certainly do everything we can to spread
democracy and freedom throughout the world.
We shall pay any price, bear any burden...
to assure the survival and
the success of liberty.
- What are we fighting for?
- Freedom.
Freedom.
I think we're fighting because it's
necessary and because it's right.
We are not talking simply
about the price of gas,
we are talking about the price of liberty.
We seek neither territory nor bases.
We fight for the principle
of self-determination.
America's strength and military power
have been a force for peace, not conflicts.
By keeping our military
strong, by using force where...
we must, America is making a difference...
... for people here and around the world.
Our course is just. And no
matter how long it takes,
we will defeat the enemies of freedom.
I was on my way to work and
I was taking the subway,
which is elevated subway.
And as the subway heads to
New York it comes a point...
where it makes a very abrupt lefthand
turn, almost a 90 degree turn.
And when it does that the wheels
of the subway always screech loudly.
If you look out of the window that's when
you can see the World Trade Center.
I was sitting on subway, reading as I always do.
Train made a lefthand
turn, the wheels screeched,
everybody jumped up and start to gasp...
'Oh.'
And I look up and there's the building
with smoke pouring out of it.
I didn't know if that was my
son's building, because...
tower 1 and tower 2 were in perfect symmetry.
And I didn't know which tower I'm looking at.
And I'm just thinking to myself you know,
'How did my son get out of there?'
I don't know how, but he got out of there.
There's no two ways about that.
He can't be in there. Cause anybody
who's in there is gonna die.
Blowback.
It's a CIA turn.
Blowback does not mean simply the
unintended consequences of foreign operations.
It means the unintended
consequences of foreign operations,
that were deliberately kept
secret from the American public.
So that when the retaliation comes,
the American public is not...
able to put it in context, to
put cause and effect together.
That they come up with questions like
'Why did they hate us?'
The forces of evil declared
war on the America...
Since Pearl Harbor has there
been so much national...
Bringing the democracy under attack.
'Why do they hate us?'
That's the question everybody's asking.
Our government did not want the forensic
question asked 'What were their motives?'.
And instead shows to say
'Thy were just evil doers.'
And the towers keep falling. Every
five minutes they go to tower again.
I've Come on the phone, I call the NBC.
I'm listening to your newscast. How many times
you gonna show those goddamn towers coming down?
Don't you have any respect for the people,
who have family and friends in those towers?
Do we have to keep watching
them fall down? I watch them...
fall down fifty times already.
When are you gonna stop?
Please stop. You are ripping my heart out.
...I guess people, that hate freedom.
God gave me two greatest sons
any parent could ever ask for.
Why he took one back?
I'll never know.
I can hear you.
The rest of the world hears you.
And the people..
And the people, who knock these
buildings down will hear all of us soon.
Yeah!
USA!
USA!
Somebody has to pay for this.
Somebody has to pay for 9/11th.
I want enemy dead. I wanna see their bodies...
stacked up, for what they
did, for taking my son.
On September 12, 2001, The President's
national security team met...
to discuss a military response to
the attacks of the previous day.
The discussion included the prospect of a...
preemptive military strike
against the nation of Iraq.
There was a moment when
the entire world was behind us.
There was a million people,
demonstrating in the streets of Teheran
in favor of the United States.
We had the world behind us.
Now kids are dying.
Billions are being spent every month.
Animosity against United States is stronger
now than it ever has been in history.
What happened here?
Is it just the experience of September 11th?
Or is there something else going on here?
When something like this
happens you got to take stock...
of this, you got to understand
what went wrong here.
We live here in the United States of Amnesia.
No one remembers anything before Monday morning.
Everything is a blank.
We have no history.
Guatemala 1954.
The United States intervened
unilaterally, to protect its vital interests.
Lebanon 1959, the United
States fills its policy of...
containment and the Middle East is threatened.
They response openly an unilaterally.
The United States intervened
in Laos, Boetoeng, Brazil.
There are so many theories
about what happened in Iraq.
And why we really went in.
But when you look at the history of the
United States, almost every president,
there is something we
don't like, somewhere in...
the world and we've got to
dispense military force.
Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada in 1983.
Last night I ordered US
military forces to Panama.
This is not about one president or one party.
We fight as a nation because
we perceive it is our interest to fight.
And we then mention words like freedom...
and nice common values.
Who can be against freedom?
When in fact much more has
been going on privately.
Just completed the meating
where our national security...
team and we've received the
latest intelligence updates.
The deliberate and deadly attacks, which
occurred yesterday against our country
were more than acts of terror.
They were acts of war.
September 11th, 2001 provided a group of people,
deeply committed to the
expansion of the American empire.
The opportunity to implement plans
that they had been laying since 1992.
At that time a young Paul Wufowitz
was working in a subordinate position
under Dick Chaney, then
Secretary of Defense, in the Pentagon.
With the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991 Chaney orders
Wufowitz to write a plan,
to write a grand strategy.
That it was now our destiny that
without the Soviet Union...
there is no one who can possibly
approach us in military terms.
It says, that's the way it ought
to be and our policy must...
be to maintain and expand
that. That we are the new Rome.
That's their strategy, on 9/11
they began to implement it.
It's not just simply a matter of capturing
people and holding them accountable,
but removing the sanctuary is removing...
the support systems, ending
states response territory...
The people who came in with the
president, there are many of them anyway,
were certainly prepared to
shift direction in a...
radical direction, I think
it's fair to say radical.
When September 11th happened,
the President and...
his top advisors said to
themselves, correctly I think,
'We need to rethink American foreign policy'
And I think that would have happened
even without the September 11th.
But September 11th was really the event,
that changed American foreign policy.
When I was in a Pentagon, when we
got hit, you know, yes it did change.
It was a very dramatic and terrible thing.
And it does change the perspective. But the war
in Iraq had nothing to do with war on terrorism.
There was a huge leap, a
manufactured leap. In order to...
implement a very calculated and
predeveloped foreign policy.
We must take the battle to the
enemy, disrupt his plans...
and confront the worst
threats before they emerge.
The Bush doctrine is that
preemptive strikes or preemptive...
conflicts, which would never
contemplated in the past,
now have to be contemplated
under certain scenarios.
If you saw the missile about to
be launched and you could...
kick it over before it could be
launched, you'd do it, of course.
If you saw someone about to
shoot at you and you thought...
you can shoot first, you'd
do it. It's common sense.
I don't know anybody who
doesn't agree with that.
So what's the big fuss about preemption?
March 19th is a night I will never forget.
March 19th is one for the history books.
It's one for my personal history books.
On March 19, 2003, the U.S. Air Force
Stealth Fighter Wing was ordered...
to conduct a precision airstrike
on a location in southern Baghdad.
When we first got the phone call, all what
they told us, we have a high priority mission.
A high value target. It was one of those SAS,
it was a leadership target.
The F-117 is an extraordinary
machine and it is only ordered...
forward on the order of the President
or the Secretary of Defense.
First night od the conflict, the
All they had to do is be briefed,
have the weapons put on.
The whole mission up to this point
was kept at the top secret levels.
I think they really didn't expect both of us
to come back, which is why they sent two jets.
It's now 3:30, we have to hit the
target at 5:30 or all bets are off.
The President of the United States
called it a target of opportunity,
and they wanted to take
advantage of it and they did.
It's quite chilly and cold,
I'm looking southwards,
expecting any attack to come in from the south.
The choice in the timing is entirely now
in the hands of the allies.
The Bush doctrine is certainly not something
unprecedented, unknown in American life.
This statement that we are going to
dominate the world through military power,
that we reserve to ourselves
the right of preemptive war.
It is an extreme statement of what
has been there in the works for a long time.
World War ll is without question
the formation of the American military empire.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme
Commander in Chief of
allied expeditionary force.
I have complete confidence
that the soldiers, sailors...
and Army of the United Nations will demonstrate
that an aroused democracy is almost quantifiable
fighting machine that can be devised.
Eisenhower was there and saw it happening.
He had seen the build up of the
American military to fight World War ll.
I this war, more than any
other in history, we are...
on the side of decency
and democracy and liberty.
He believed very deeply in the
necessity for World War ll.
And felt that Nazism was a terrible tyranny.
And he brought this conviction
to defeating Nazi Germany.
People waited for this moment the
culminating victory, the end of the war.
We were on top of the world.
We were only unwrecked major power on earth.
Europe was bleeding to death, Japan was gone,
those paper cities had all been burned up.
So what are we doing?
At 2:45 in the morning August 6th,
It is an atomic bomb, it is a harnessing
of the basic power of the universe.
The United States bombed the Japanese city
of Hiroshima on August 6th 1945.
And three days later, they detonated
another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.
What has been done is the greatest
achievement of organized science in history.
I can remember in the Pacific, when the word
spread, that the bombs had been dropped.
delighted, because we'd been...
convinced that if Japan was
not hit by nuclear weapons,
one million of us would be killed.
Drop those bombs and they will surrender.
Well they were trying to surrender
all that summer, Truman...
wouldn't listen, because Truman
wanted to drop the bombs...
To show off, to frighten
Stalin, to change the balance...
of power in the world, to
declare war on communism.
Perhaps we were starting a preemptive World War.
Eisenhower hated the dropping of them
and thought it should not have been done.
We just thought war was
terrible enough as it was.
I can not trace evolution of my dad's thinking.
He was complex, he was a five star general,
but he was never military fanatic, never.
One night in July of 45, that day
the Secretary of War had told...
my father about the development
of atomic weapon, atomic bomb.
He was sitting up in his bedroom
and he said that his all first...
impression, his all emotions
had been to be feeling down low.
He wished we hadn't adverted it.
In the background was the
growing conflict between...
two great powers to shape the postwar world.
Already an Iron Curtain had dropped
around Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia.
You see, we had to fight communism
wherever it was in the world.
So a decision was made that the
United States will remain militarized...
... permanently.
We lack the weapons to defend ourselves, build,
prepare as required.
Quickly the government springs an election
and initiate the gigantic rearmament programme,
a programme designed to make
America the arsenal of democracy.
From that moment on the American empire
was in every corner of the earth.
In Burma and Iceland...
We were going to maintain dominance not just of
Europe, not just of Japan,
but of the entire globe.
'Oh gee I wish, that I
could be with you tonight.'
'Gee I wish'
'And gee I know, that
everything will be alright.'
'The crickets are singing a love song.'
What are we fighting for?
Fighting for continued freedom.
That's the only way we're
gonna have it, I think.
Why do we fight? I think that the...
I honestly don't have an answer for it.
It's just... the people who start the war,
who know what they are fighting about.
I think we fight for ideals and what
we believe in. I hope that so what it is.
Today we don't have a broad based American
feeling about why we are fighting in Iraq.
People's confidence in the United
States is not what it was...
was during the World War ll.
Yesterday USA precious celluloids, such as...
'Why we fight' orientation
films, depicting our soldiers...
You know it's interesting 'Why we fight' was...
actually the title of series
of World War ll films.
They were done by one of the great directors.
Master of the of the art of motion
picture entertainment, Frank Cappra.
The Frank Cappra films, even
back then were propaganda.
To kind of build up a war fewer.
Americans fighting.
But given that it was
during a global Word War...
there were a lot of reasons
that Americans embrace.
We are fighting for liberty,
the most expensive luxury known to man.
Today, if you went downtown, to
my local town and you ask five...
people 'Why we are fighting in Iraq?'
you get five different answers.
Why do we fight? I 'm not quite sure,
but I think it's for
powering control, for greed.
I'm not sure if we are fighting for the
oil or not. We could be, we could not be.
Our government has more knowledge than I know.
I think everybody has the
different idea why we are there.
And a lot of people think we shouldn't be.
What we're seeing is a disconnection
of our American foreign...
policy from the citizen, from
average American citizen.
Why do we fight?
I wish we didn't.
Sometimes you have to though.
This is one of my favorite pictures of all time.
Smiling with his two teeth.
Man Jason.
What can I do for my son's memory?
I'm not a millionaire.
I can't build schools and libraries.
We're just a regular couple on pension.
I want to be able to do something.
So that hopefully one day,
I can go over to my son's grave...
and tell him that I've done
something in his memory
that hopefully will be a step in
preventing another attack like that.
After September 11, the Pentagon unveiled
a new weapon for use against terrorists.
The bomb is designed to be
delivered inside a target.
My expertise is an explosive technology.
And so are a lot of my
colleagues here at Indian Head.
When Pentagon called, my position then was
the head of what we call 'the pay load team'.
A bomb, it's the Norman cliche for bomb.
I find it's sometimes
amusing when people ask me,
'where do you work?' and I would
say explosive. And they would...
But our mission was to quickly weaponize
what was called a 'penetrator'.
It basically was a big bomb, engineered
to enhance its blast effect...
inside confine structures, such
as tunnels, caves, et cetera.
We're gonna attack somebody, we're gonna
bomb some place, there's no question about that.
The question is, where are
we gonna do it and why?
Do you think that after an
advisory gets nuclear weapons...
is a better time to engage that
advisory then now without?
Iraq continues to flaw in its hostility
toward America and to support terror.
This is a regime that has something
to hide from the civilized world.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003, is to
a very considerable extent about...
repositioning the United States as
the country that must be obeyed.
It's an easy way to send the
signal to the planet, that the
United States is in charge and
it's going to what it wants.
And anybody who defies the
United States will be punished.
The decision to attack Iraqi
leadership at the opening selva,
it was a bold new, it was
a new way of making war.
And technology was able to provide
our leadership that opportunity.
Now we have received this new weapon,
called the 'Enhanced gutter bomb unit 27'.
And it was like the new
candy at the candy store.
We needed something that was gonna give us
a capability to strike through the weather
and don't worry about having
to bring the bombs home.
The whole of the city is
still lit very brightly.
But nobody's moving on the streets whatsoever.
It's like everybody here
is holding their breath.
We really didn't know who was there and...
who was gonna take the blow
of what we're about to do.
We both probably had our
suspicions about who it was.
We've got some indications that
maybe sons maybe Saddam himself.
Assassination, people sometimes
think with precision weapons
that maybe you can now assassinate
people from very hard place.
First of all, if it's a fixed
target like a building...
you have the time to understand its location.
The next hardest target is
one that moves around...
and a single hardest target
of all is a human being.
Sometimes, before you can
bring about democratic change,
you have to remove the
obstacle to democratic change.
You have to remove Saddam Hussein, because...
there is no hope for
democracy with Saddam there.
The point in many ways
for these guys wasn't just
to target Saddam, it was to
transform the Middle East.
They wanna take the US military and go in and...
show up American interest in
the key area of the world.
And that's their vision.
They wanna spread democracy around
the world on the point around Baghdads.
- Do you want Iraq to be like America?
What can I say? Some people
do and some people don't.
I want American streets,
her gardens, her buildings.
That's what I want.
In the beginning we stood against America,
but there are people...
...who were welcoming America.
They said, 'America is a democracy
and really they will liberate us.'
Before the war, frankly,
many of us were clapping.
'Live, Live Bush!'
'Die, Die Saddam!'
'Live, Live Bush!'
'Die, Die Saddam!'
I think most Americans don't
want to police the world,...
...but I think most Americans
understand that if we don't...
at least help to police the
world then no one's going to.
Where the debate and controversy begins...
... is how far does the United
States go, when does...
it go from a force for good
to a force of imperialism?
People complain a lot about American
arrogance and American power.
But the great threat for the future is not
American power or American strength.
It would be American weakness
and American withdrawal.
They do believe that this is not only for
the long term benefit for the United States...
... but it's for the long term benefit
for everybody else as well.
We'll bring them American values,
prosperity, peace, all the rest of it.
But the way we're gonna do that is to take over,
even more than we did it at
the height of the cold war.
Three, two, one.
Fire.
After the second World War the United States
literally divided the world up into commands.
And some American officer was
responsible for every region of the world.
There was the subdominant theory that
if any of these places fall to communism,...
... then the next place, and the
next place, and the next place...
will fall as well. And the next
thing you know they're in Missouri.
Once upon a time your hometown was safe.
But not now. It is possible for a rocket...
to strike your home, right
now, today, right now.
And what defense remains?
Strength, strength ready if we need it.
When my dad first became president, he came in
at the beginning of the third nuclear age.
I think we have to put the
We look back today and we think that 1950's
was a period of Elvis Presley and poodle skirts.
But in fact it was very
dangerous period of time.
Defense budgets throughout the western world,
doubled or tripled in four years in 1948-52.
The Soviets are outproducing
Americas aircraft factories.
There is a threat, but we
can't measure how much...
is enough defense spending
to stop the Soviet Union.
So by the time Eisenhower is president, there is
a huge new flow of cash into defense industries.
He was the first to
acknowledge that a permanent...
military establishment would be
required during this period.
But then unless we could find
some kind of breakthrough,
that in fact it would end up
creating a terrible cost.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this.
In modern brick school more than 36.
It is two electric power plants
serving at 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
We pay for a single fireplane
with a half million a week.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes
that could have housed more than 9,000 people.
This is not a way of life at all.
And then the truth is...
Under the cloud of threatening war it is
humanity hanging from across the violence.
My father is president, yet
withdraws guiding principles.
He used to say weapons take food from
the hungry and shelter from the homeless.
So he was fighting with
the Pentagon all the time.
For asking how much is Congress giving to.
I don't think we should pay one cent for
defense more than we have to.
Eisenhower saw a starting to build programme
after programme, that was just out of control.
And his own ability to shape
national security policy...
was being hemmed in by these
forces, he couldn't control.
And he was the President.
On at least one occasion Eisenhower
was heard to say by those in the room,
'God help this country when
somebody sits at this desk,
who doesn't know as much
about the military as I do.'
January 17, 1961 Presided Eisenhower's
farewell address to the American people.
My fellow Americans, this evening I come to you
with message of leave taking and farewell.
And to share a few final thoughts
with you, my countrymen.
We have been compelled to create a permanent
armaments industry of vast proportions.
engaged in the defense establishment.
The total influence, economic,
political, even spiritual...
is felt in every city, every state house,
every office of the federal government.
We recognize the imperative need
for this development.
Yet we must not fail to comprehend
its grave implications.
In the councils of government we must guard
against, the acquisition of unwanted influence,
whether sort or unsort by
the military industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.
You have to realise, this is
one of the greatest presidents,
great military leaders on his way out the door.
At the end of his second term he says...
'By the way, watch out for the
military-industrial complex'.
People know that he invented the
phrase 'military-industrial complex'
But very rarely you see the whole thing and...
realise how utterly
straightened his warning was.
I think it's one of the most profound statements
ever made by an American President.
Just like George Washington gave his warnings
about foreign tackles and things like that.
My dad was giving his warning against...
this military-industrial
complex, get out of hand.
We must never let the wait of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
BLUE ANGELS AlR SHOW Pensacola, FL
CELEBRATE FREEDOM AlR SHOW Camden, SC
Today, the United States spends
more on defense than on...
all other discretionary parts
of the federal budget combined.
President has asked Congress for
Our country spends more on
defense than all of the...
other 18 members of NATO plus China and Russia.
From my point I think numbers
almost are distracting.
This is the medium machine gun,
I'm here to see hit-to-kill technology,
I'm not familiar with it.
It's a missile that goes up and shoots a
tactical ballistic missiles out of the sky.
These are my two daughters.
President Eisenhower's
concern about the military...
industrial complex, his words
have unfortunately come true.
He was worried that priorities are set by
the what benefits corporations...
is opposed to what benefits the country.
Name any plane part that would come
into your mind. 1,2,3 name a part...
Perfect, now we've never
met before, no collusion.
Which is really odd, because
collusion is our business.
Yes, collusion with the military.
You know, people sometimes
think of the defense...
budget as you got to arm the
troops, defend the nation.
But for most people who are involved
in that, you realize this is business.
Competition for contracts between
very large corporations.
Industry has to have a bottom line that's black,
otherwise their shareholders don't like that.
So they have to find ways to interest the
government in continuing to buy the product.
Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas
and Boeing throughout America.
There are factories, there are corporations,
that are involved on a daily basis...
...to produce the weaponry, the ammunition,
to carry out the American way of war.
Raytheon Missile Systems Tucson, AZ
The overall rate here on mission
in general, is to be the...
premier supply of solutions
that meet our customers' needs.
Our job is to provide tactical missiles
for our practical purposes.
Laser-guided bombs, Tomahawk
missiles, Stinger...
missiles, veilings, which is
actually a great big gun.
The American way of war has been described as...
overwhelming firepower, supported
by overwhelming logistics.
For every shooter out there, every man with a
gun there are hundreds behind supporting,...
... providing the ammunition, the
boots, the gas for the tanks, the oil.
I don't guess I'm real proud
of the fact that I make...
bombs, you know, for what they're used for.
I think about when I see
something explode out there,
that my hands actually help make that, you know.
I'd rather really be helping Santa make
toys is what I'd really rather be doing.
We're trying connect our people
with the actual guy in the field,
in the plane, some of them are
their sons or their daughters.
Is your son is reservist?
Yes, he is reservist with the 6/52, engineer.
Sometimes I'm okay, another
times I can cry a river.
You wrap the flag around every weapon system,
every weapon system is
supposed to be for the troops.
Give the soldier the tools they need.
But it ends up becoming a product competition.
If you had the same car year
after year, if industry...
didn't change the car at all,
would you buy a different car?
No. But when they come up with something
that's got extra bells and whistles...
... and it suits what you need it to do,
then you'll buy more.
If you look at the weapons that were buying,
new aircraft carriers, new
submarines, F22 fighters.
You know for an attack, that
if FBI estimates probably...
cost of Al-Qaeda or Osama,
We are now spending more
than we did at the peak of Vietnam.
A lot of what's going on is
simply because people don't...
understand the larger architecture
of how the Pentagon operates.
Mister Chairman and distinguished
members of the committee,...
I am the US Air force programme
manager for the Boeing company.
Let's use the example of buying a weapon
like a new fighter plane for the Air Force.
The action usually starts in the Pentagon,
maybe at the contractors initiatives.
But essentially, everybody's working together.
The KC-7678 can carry up to 190 troops.
Basically what you do is you come
in and you lowball the initial estimate.
The actual venue cost is
about half that estimate.
You over promise what it's gonna do and you...
underestimate the kind of
burns it's gonna impose.
We separately met with the companies
and both proposals are very good
Once the Air Force buys off on
it, then you start flooding...
money to as many congressional
districts as possible...
... as quickly as possible.
The B2 bomber has a piece that
is made in every single state.
To make sure that if you ever
try to face that project out...
... you will get howls from among
the most liberal Members of Congress.
I believe in this military, I am urging
the Senator support this bill,
Well I just want to thank the
Chairman for working with me...
... and aiding a hundred million dollars
to upgrade 10 aditional B1 bombers.
And that B1 has been a great asset
for the projection of power.
The F35 joined strike fighter, the FH22 raptor.
Because the military industral
complex has not two legs...
it's three. It's a military
and the industry and Congress.
For a Congressman defence spending means jobs.
These are manufactured in my
district, in Indiana by...
Losing hundred defence jobs in his
district could mean five hundred votes.
It's not just a hundred workers,
it's the their spouses, their children.
It's the representative's duty
to bring home the bacon.
I am also greatful for the work that
the health arms services commitee
has done to fully fund the
FH22 programme this year.
God bless our contractors.
It is our conclusion that
a Lockheed Martin team...
is the winner of the joined
strike fighter programme.
We have a snapshot in time after September 11th,
where at least 71 companies...
... that we're able to identify were starting to
get contracts to go in Afghanistan and Iraq.
All of the top 10 companies
had former US officials, who...
had worked in the Pentagon or
other parts of US government...
.. on the board as directors
or as their top executives.
It's known as a revolving door
and people cashing all the time.
Public officials go to work for companies
and they make triple, quadruple, ten times...
... sometimes as much money as
they used to make in public service.
There's too close relationship
and there's outright.
I hate to use the word 'corruption'...
... but it borders on it.
The behaviour of some...
of these individuals both in
industry and in the Pentagon.
The number one recipient of contracts was vice
president Chaney's former company Halliburton...
... and subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root.
KBR
We're the army's contractor on the battlefield.
Currently 65 thousand KBR people
around the world, assisting the troops.
You know the military industrial
complex isn't just the...
people in the Pentagon and
people, producing the weapons.
It's now increasingly got a
very large service sector.
Ham and eggs.
Things that troops used to do by peel potatoes
and do laundry we now have contractors doing.
Somebody has to do this work.
And the Halliburton thing is just an outrageous
effort to associate the vice president with...
... the activities of a company with which
he has no connection, no connection at all.
Congressional critics are questioning whether
Dick Chaney held Halliburton to get billions...
The FBI has revealed, it is expanding its
investigation into how Halliburton company
built tax payers for its contract in Iraq.
And it now appears some of
those contracts were rewarded...
with a knowledge and approval
of vice president's office.
Which would seem to contradict
his previous statements.
As vice president I have absolutely
no influence of involvement...
of knowledge in any way
sharing perform of contracts.
We did a report that took 2,5
years, 600,000 dollars, 33 people,
including ten investigate
reporters on 6 continents,...
...looking at private military companies and
outsourcing war all over the world.
And we noticed that in 1992 there was a contract
of 9 million dollars, giving out to a company...
... Kellogg Brown and Root,
to study the idea should the
Pentagon start using the private
sector to do some of the...
... support type functions
like food service, latrine...
duty, but even maybe some
military things as well.
And the Secretary of
Defense at that time was one
Dick Chaney. So Chaney goes the contract out.
Kellogg Brown and Root comes back
and says 'This is a terrific idea'.
For the next ten years they get 7 or
I ran Halliburton and I'm
proud of Halliburton's...
This company brought in a
Rollerdeck's guy, a former
US Congressman Defense Secretary
Chief of Staff to President
to make sure that he could get doors opened...
not only in Washington but in
capitals all over the world.
And yes, he becomes
personally wealthy from that.
No question about it.
Isn't that worth when from
million dollars or less...
to 60 or 70 million dollars
that he spend in five years.
Are you ready to take the oath?
I am.
Please raise your right
hand and repeat after me.
So we've elected a government
contractor as vice president.
This could be Indonesia, it sounds like Russia,
Nigeria, no it's the United States of America.
And everything I just said is entirely legal.
And it is our system of legal corruption.
If I am sure of anything I'm sure of this.
Vice president Chaney had nothing to do with
the award of any contract of Halliburton.
He wouldn't pick up the
phone, he wouldn't whisper...
in someone's ear, I know
it, he just wouldn't do it.
It looks bad, it looks bad
and apparently Halliburton...
more than once has overcharged
the federal government.
That's wrong.
How would you tackle from that?
I would have a public
investigation of what they've done.
So...
What's that? Vice president's
on the phone. Okay.
You probably have to take the call from him.
Whenever you get into a situation where
anybody's got unwanted influence,
it has the potential to be deeply distorting.
It corrupts our system.
You don't have to show that he directly
came in and hit the cash register button.
The door flew open and he took some
money out and put in his pocket.
It's to say anybody allocating
things at the Department...
of Defense knows who the vice president is,...
... knows what his connections
are in Halliburton.
We have a process that has a seamlessness where
the corporate interest that stand to benefit...
... are so intertwined and interwoven
with the political forces.
The financial leads and the politically
leads, have become the same people.
You do have to follow the money.
If you follow the money here it's not so
much that Halliburton wanted a war...
... so they told Dick Chaney
to go get one for them.
It wasn't that. But you do get
a willingness to go to war.
On October 10, 20002, the U.S. Congress passed
Joint Resolution 114, granting the President the
right to use force against
Iraq at his discretion.
YEAs are 296 the NAYs are 133. The Joint
Resolution has passed without objection.
You get a willingness to look
at the cost benefit scenario.
American people, who have a son or
a daughter, that's going to be...
deployed and maybe shot and
maybe killed or maimed in Iraq.
They look at the cost benefit and they
go 'Hm, I don't think that's good.'
When politicians, who understand
contracts, future contracts,
when they look at war, they have
a different cost benefit analysis.
The defense budget is 3/4 of a trillion dollars.
Profits, went up last
year, well over 25 percent.
I guarantee you, when war becomes that
profitable, you're going to see more of it.
I don't know how you would want to assess
the reasons United States went to war in Iraq.
But ultimately you have to
ask yourself at the end of...
the day, 'Does any of this
contribute to whether or not...
... we are making valid and appropriate
decisions about our conductive foreign policy?'
Why do we fight?
I don't know why do we fight.
Being a military officer,
I really don't set back...
and look at who's with me and who's against me.
My job is to make sure that my squad
and my unit is ready to go to war.
There's always gonna be people
that disagree with what...
we do. And we can't stop that.
That's a part of democracy.
From a soldier's perspective and stuff, it
gets all listening to the debates on policy.
But it's not ours to decide.
We do what we are told.
The first light of dawn is breaking above me.
No exclusion to get, that the distance
sound of low rumble all across the city.
They know that something is about to happen.
- Did you know what to expect before the war?
- I swear to God, no. We don't know.
We're illiterate people.
We go out with the sheep and
we come back with them.
We knew that this time the consequences
of the war would be extraordinary.
Because the threats were intense.
This will be a campaign,
unlike any other in history.
A campaign, characterized by
shock, by surprise, by the...
employment of precise ammunitions
on a scale never before seen.
You also have to understand that in trying
to take out Saddam during OIF
we wanted the Iraqi people to
have their infrastructure...
there and not be mad at the coalition forces.
That's one of the great-great results
of the military industrial complex.
The defense industry, with the
advance in the weaponry now,
we can destroy the target of
our commander's choosing.
And minimize collateral damage, which is...
such in all composing term,
the risk to innocent life.
Nobody's out there to destroy things.
Just because I wear a uniform
makes me no different...
than anybody else, that's sitting
here in this room with me.
I have the same family, I get up,
I shave just like everybody else.
The only difference is there's
times, when I have to...
leave my family and go to
another country and go to war.
We have the greatest fighting forces
on the face of the earth.
Our nation is blessed to have
so many brave men and women...
who voluntarily risk their
lives to protect our country.
'Every generation has its heroes.
This one is no different.'
'Woke up this morning, I suddenly
realized we're all in this together.'
Hi, my name is William
Solomon. I'm 23. I have...
decided to enlist in United
States regular Army...
...and I'm gonna shipping out on January 26.
The latest stuff that I've been going
through recently, was my mother's death.
My financial hardships and my inability to...
complete my education,
those three main problems.
Plan is simple, it just gonna be solved
by my enlistment in the military.
When Will first came in he was
actually talking to the Air Force.
But he asked me a question
about the army aviation...
and once he asked me a
question I told him about it.
And then he showed me the
brochure with some of the...
helicopters and then like the
RH-66, it's a stealth helicopter.
I was like 'Wait, they got this?'
At that point of time I explained to him
our One-Author flight program.
You can take somebody right
off the street as long...
as the person has the high school diploma.
He can come in, get a good
job guaranteed to you.
I think once Will found out about that
he was pretty much locked in.
He was completely unlike what I expected
of recruiter when I first spoke with him.
Cause he told me that army recruiters
got the bad reputation of car salesmen.
The toughest part about recruiting
is gaining the person's trust.
What do we say we back-up with
black and white regulations?
There's no smokes and mirrors around here.
You fixed up my life real good man.
Because of you I'm gonna retire real nice.
Cause I'm thinking of it as a career thing.
Every little bit of strife
I've gone to in my life...
Every little inconvenience, I've always...
Since I've signed the papers anyway...
I just look at it as something that'll make
basic training that much easier.
AN ARMY OF ONE
One team. One mission. One goal.
BETWEEN 2002 AND 2003, THE
PENTAGON SPENT $1.2 BILLION
ON ADVERTISING INTENDED TO INCREASE RECRUITMENT.
You know the whole idea, you can be
all you can be if you join the army.
Look how it appealed to them.
You're gonna learn a skill, you're gonna get
a trade, you'll be able to go to college.
It gives you all these benefits,
if you go and serve your country.
We appeal to people self-interest.
And then put them into a situation
which is based on self-sacrifice.
I don't really have a much of a blood family.
My mom was the only blood...
Hold on.
Hello.
Hello?
Yeah, Jimmy.
I've got real good friends and they've been
just as good as a blood family,
but not that supportive of me going in this.
They try to give me boogie man stories
about what's gonna happen in basic.
As rough as basic can be,
this can't be as bad as they say.
I've no word.
Right now you have more of
the separation between the military
and particularly the middle class
and the upper middle class
in this country than existed
even in the draft era.
If you go back to Vietnam,
basically the inequity...
of the draft helped prolong the war.
As long as the poor and unrepresented
were dying people went along with it.
We got out of Vietnam effectively
when the lottery started
and middle class kids were getting killed.
First thing that happened was they
went to this all-volunteer army.
And that solved the draft inequity problem,
cause everybody's the volunteer.
This is supposedly a Stealth
helicopter which hopefully
will go into service by the
time I'll become a pilot.
And that makes the military much easier to use.
Because: You guys are fucking volunteers,
screw you, you signed up for this.
The objections don't carry as much water.
In a period of increased tension, the advantage
gain by flying men into position quickly
might represent the difference between
success or failure in a military operation.
I arrived in Vietnam in July of 1965.
I was part of the build-up of the 50,000 troops.
I remember saying to one of mine bodies:
You know, this keeps up, they're gonna
have a 100,000 troops over here.
And he laughed, he said: What are you nuts?
They'd have to declare war for 100,000 troops.
My fellow Americans, renew to cost elections
against the United States ships on
the highest ease in the gulf of Tomkin
have today required me to
order the military forces...
of the United States to take action in reply.
I was assigned to a helicopter company,
I was a door gunner on one of the helicopters.
It was quite an experience
for a 21 year old kid.
We're involved in taking people's lives.
From the perspective of a helicopter,
you're X number hundred to feet.
And you're shooting at little dots
that are running around.
You're not shooting at somebody face to face.
There's a blue shirt in the trees
around here. Turn right!
It's almost like they're not real human beings.
They're objects.
As the refugee of war,
I think I understand first hand
the suffering, the pain, that war could cost.
I came here when I was 15.
We left Saigon on the 28th of April 1975,
right before the downfall of Saigon.
I was very lucky to make it here intact.
I always was very much aware of why I'm here.
It's because our strong thirst for
freedom that brought me here.
And the sacrifice of other
people that brought me here.
A full scale evacuation have been ordered.
But I do remember the
desperation. A lot of people
indeed fell down, the Americans have
left them there for themselves.
America deliberately withdrew all the support.
But I step down from the American people.
I grew up knowing that
should the situation rise,
you are expected to answer the call
when you country made the call.
There was no such thing as:
Well I wonder if my country is right,
is anybody lying to me about this?
You don't grow up thinking that.
You grow up saying if the bugle calls, you go.
With time we find out this whole
goal for Tomkin thing was farce
and nobody was really attacked.
So you say to yourself:
You know what, that's really crappy,
why did somebody lie to us?
There was no need to lie.
We have been lied to in every military escapade
frankly over the last 50-60
years without exception.
There's no battery example
probably then Vietnam.
You had the President of the United States
and the top generals in Pentagon lying about the
Gulf of Tomkin incident
that got us into the war.
About the casualties, about
how the war was going.
Anyone who has ever looked
closely at the Vietnam war
can see that the public and the media
were manipulated substantially.
We don't like to think of
ourselves as the militant nation,
but we're in fact incredibly
militant and militaristic nation.
It is not a view of ourselves that we wanna
carry around, but the fact is we are.
If the President and the military industrial
complex and defense establishment,
if they all have decided that
suddenly there's a problem somewhere,
we need to drop some bombs or even put
blend forces somewhere in some country,
this is our ritual that we
have been seeing for decades.
We have toppled governments,
we've done Coup Ousts.
We've used intelligence
services for covert purposes...
and done horrible things around the world.
And we have put up with the most
human rights abusing countries.
We have prop them up, we even trained them
how to commit human rights abuses.
Today's demon was yesterday's friend.
All in the name of either the cold war
or for commercial reasons.
It's basically economic colonialism.
No one uses the colonialism word.
But instead of just taking over the
countries, we have a better way.
We just go and have free
markets whether we're trying...
to sell our products to their citizens
or we're trying to mind their resources.
We need to be in that country for some reason,
therefore we're gonna talk
about free markets, free trade.
But what's really going on is we want our
companies to get rich in your country.
HALLIBURTON COMPANY PROMOTIONAL FILM 1951
There she is. That's what all the fuss is about.
Oil. That's kind of pretty, isn't it?
Oil. Coming up out of the ground and
making life a bit more easy for all of us.
The United States is the world's
largest consumer of fossil fuels.
Oil is what drives the military
machine of every country.
Whether it provides the fuel, or the aircraft
for the ships, for the tanks, for the crocks.
Control of oil is indispensable.
When you run out of it, your army stops.
There is a direct connection
between events that happened
more than 50 years ago
and the war in Iraq today.
In 1953 the Prime Minister of Iran,
Muhammad Mossadegh became extremely irritated.
The British were ripping off his
country's national resources.
He wanted a greater share in it.
The British came to the new President Eisenhower
and asked for help on this.
Eisenhower very conveniently declared
Mossadegh to be a communist
and we then set the CIA to overthrow him.
Three days of bloody rioting
come to a military...
The result was we brought the Shah to power
and he created an extremely repressive regime
that within 20 years had led
to a revolution against him.
Ajtulogh Almeny creates a government
that is violently anti-American.
Then he said: I pray the God to cut
the hands off all those foreign advisors.
In the after action report by the CIA,
on what they had done in the Iran in 1953
they said: We're going to
get some blowback from this.
We then made a puppet out
of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Who was a friend of ours.
He was an asset in the CIA's computers.
We did so because he was anti-Iranian.
He was very fearful that the revolution in Iran
which spread into his country
easier for went to war with Iran.
The war was extremely bloody.
It went on throughout the 1980s.
Unfortunately for Saddam Hussein
he began to lose the war.
At that point in comes the United States
and the former Donald Rumsfeld
sent to Saddam Hussein by President Reagan...
to tell him we will supply
you with intelligence.
We will supply you with the weapons
you may need through covert means.
It is why Washington say:
We know Saddam Hussein had weapons
of mass destruction. We have the receits.
This is what we mean by blowback.
He remained a friend of ours right up to his
envasion in the summer of 1990 of Quveit.
We became alarmed when he invaded Quveit,
that he could also go on and
invade Soudi Arabia itself.
The largest preserves of oil on earth.
We station troops inside Arabia.
It was a mistake in every sense of the term.
Remember, Osama bin Laden had said:
I resent the government
of Saudi Arabia for using
Americans to defend Saudi Arabia against Iraq.
At that point we began to fear that we're going
to lose our position in Saudi Arabia.
With the second largest source of proven
reserves on earth are in Iraq.
This leads us now to demonize
our previous ally and
to prepare the American public for
the thought that we must take him out.
I'm retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel.
Retired from military after 20 years.
I initially started in the Air Force.
Then they trained me
as a communicational electronics officer
and I did that for about 15 years.
And once I joined the
Pentagon, I became political...
military affairs officer for Middle East.
Things went strange from the
very beginning of my assignment.
Within a week or so it became clear
to me that war was gonna happen.
This toppling was going to happen.
And it was just the matter of
bringing American people...
up to speed and gain them behind this effort.
A number of people from outside of the Pentagon,
political appointees were
flowing into our office.
And they were working Iraq issues.
These political appointees that we had
came from very small set of think tanks.
As Eisenhower said: The military industrial
complex is really three components.
There's a military professionals, there is
defense industry, and there is Congress.
There is now fourth component,
and that is the think tanks.
One of the little known
secrets in Washington is that
palsy isn't really generated
very much within the palsy apparatus.
A great number of the ideas come
from outside the government.
From various think tanks like the
project for The New American Century.
Saddam Hussein. Here's the
man, here he is in this box.
I wouldn't exaggerate the influence of
the project The New American Century.
That's a very small think tank.
But in some respects we argue
for elements of the Bush doctrine,
before the Bush doctrine existed or
before George W. Bush became President.
The group included principals
like Rumsfeld, but it also included
a large number of people more or less
unknown to the American public.
And these people all know each other.
They'd all work together before
the Bush admininstration.
I used to write speeches for
Don Rumsfeld in the Pentagon.
And we came up with this phrase that
weakness is provokative, strength detours.
I reported on the Rebuilding America's Defenses
even before September 11th.
The Defense budget was too low,
it looked ahead to the kinds of wars
that we've now ended up fighting
in Afganistan and in Iraq.
What think tanks do is come up with
new rationalisations and new threats.
That's what they're paid to do.
Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a terrorist state.
I think Iran is a terrorist state.
North Korea is a very special problem.
They can build nuclear weapons and
they're perfectly capable of exporting them.
And we cannot allow that.
These are states that are like host,
but in a way fund international terrorism.
Encourage international terrorism.
They have to be eliminated.
This was almost completely adopted
by the administration in part,
because the people who wrote this
had open board into the admininstration.
We must prevent the terrorists
and regimes who seek
chemical, biological or nuclear weapons
from threatening the United States.
It is not at all accidental that
when President names our enemies
in the 2002 State of the Union
message as 'the access of evil'.
He includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
So in a real way we have this new phenomenon
where think tanks are now a part of
what we used to think as the
military industrial complex.
Eisenhower may well have been predicting
these people when he talked about:
If we didn't keep an eye on
the military industrial complex,
we would see what he called a
disastrous rise of misplaced power.
People making policy, who have
zero accountability to the voter.
So throughout the summer something was
operating in the Pentagon that was unique.
In August of 2002 it was announced
to us that all those folks,
who had come in, made up this expanded Iraq...
desk would be called the
Office of Special Plans.
The Office of Special Plans was created
in the Rumsfeld Department of Defense
in order to produce the
intelligence that the President
and the vice president wanted
making an enemy out of Iraq.
The Office of Special Plans had one
primary job and that was to produce
the set off talking points on the
topic of Iraq, WMD and terrorism.
And we were to use them in
any document that we prepared,
exactly as they were written in their entirety.
We were, myself included, very familiar with
what the intelligence was saying about Iraq.
But the problem was when you look
at what was in these talking points,
you could tell it was designed
to convince the reader
that Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically
constituted a major serious terrible evil threat
to not just his neighbours,
but to the United States.
This regime has the design for nuclear weapon,
was working on several different
methods of enriching uranium
and recently was discovered seeking significant
qualities of uranium from Africa.
And that would be the statement.
He's actively seeking it and
this means that he's a danger.
But the intelligence actually said
that Saddam Hussein in the late 80s
actively sought materials
in Africa, but he hasn't...
done anything like that in the past 12 years.
The statement would act
like he did it yesterday.
Taking bits of intelligence
out of context, without...
the qualifiers, without the rest of the story.
And placing it as a bullet and
presenting it as if it's a factoid.
There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein
now has weapons of mass destruction.
And this was given to us,
action officers to use in papers that
we would prepare for our hire ups, two include
guys like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld.
The United States knows that Iraq
has weapons of mass destruction.
The U.K. knows that they have
weapons of mass destruction.
Any country on the face of the earth
with an active intelligence program
knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
These guys were manipulating public opinion
creating falsehoods and fantasies
to inspire fear in the American people,
so that they could have their war.
The President of the United States!
If war is forced upon us,
we will fight with the full force and might of
the United States military and we will prevail.
Evidence from the intelligence sources,
secret communications,
and statements by people
now in custody reveal that
Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists,
including members of Al Qaeda.
I remembered when I was in Vietnam,
we use to get requests:
Can you put my father or my son's name
on the side of the helicopter?
Can you put it on a rocket?
I said: You know what?
That's a good idea.
I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna try to do that.
So I sent out e-mails to the
secretary of all the arm forces:
I'm a retired NY City
Police Department Sergeant,
and a proud Vietnam Veteran.
I lost my son on 9/11th. I
can't tell you in words...
what his loss means to me.
I would respectfully request
if you could put his...
name on some piece of armament in the Iraq War.
You know, we haven't caught Bin Laden,
but let's do something.
Who's responsible,
Come on, let's hit him!
Iraq was responsible.
Good, let's go!
You say Iraq?
Let's go!
Let's get in there,
let's kick the hell out of them.
It turns out it's not that hard
to get a country to go to war.
That even in the country
like the United States where
there is freedom of information
and multiple media channels
that an admininstration can just dominate
the debate. Dominate the argument.
We have this idea that we have
lots of information available.
There are so much that's not available
and so much of the 'truth'
is obscured by political actors who don't want
the world to see what they're doing.
Needless to say that President is correct.
What's going on, I'm sorry to say, is a belief
that the public doesn't need to know.
What your policy is?
I'm working my way over to figuring out
how I won't answer that.
Limiting access, limiting information
to cover the backsides
of those who are in charge
of the war is extremely dangerous.
And cannot and should not be accepted.
And I'm sory to say, but up to
including the moment of this interview,
that overwhelmingly it has been accepted.
And Pentagon for many
years now since the Vietnam
has worked extremely hard at shaping news
and how the media reports at news.
We train people to say certain
things in a certain way.
Our defeat and humiliation in South Vietnam...
What they learned from Vietnam above all,
was that they lost the war,
because they couldn't keep it private
from the American public.
After the Vietnam war the
Pentagon began studying.
How can we make sure there are no more
body bags in American living rooms?
And we must find the way to no longer allow
reporters in a field actually see death.
You get to the Iraq war
where they discovered this...
new typical Pentagon called it embedding.
Big gun fire coming from
the tops of the building...
We've got to know these marines very well,
we do live with them, we eat with them,
we travel with them.
But I have I think remained objective...
The embedding coverage had flies and banners,
but no one was actually finding out the truth
about the reasons the rationals for going in.
I have great respect for the media.
Our society is a good solid democracy,
because of a good solid media.
But I also understand that a lot of times
are just opinions mixed in with news.
We won't disagree with that, sir.
Must this be really be honest.
Reporters and news organisations
need access to power.
They need the President,
they need the Defense Secretary,
they need these people to speak,
to be on camera, to do interviews.
What you have is a miniature version
what you have in totalitarian state.
They produce films about how
great the great leader is,
how it's getting greater in every way every day.
There will be a day of reckoning for the
Iraqi regime and that day is drawing near.
Ladies and gentlemen, the
United States army orchestra.
Saddam Hussein and his sons
must leave Iraq within 48 hours.
Their refusal to do so will
result in military conflict.
I've only got what's left and I'd rather spend
as much time with my friends as possible.
I got my stuff in storage.
Except for this TV, a couple of weights there
and this right here, this hangers
and this Snoopy soap thing
I've had since before I can remember.
That's just stuff I won't put in storage
cause of its sentimental value.
Never really had that many feelings of place.
My mom lived here for a while.
But my mom is not here anymore,
so all the feelings I had associate with
that place went away along with my mom.
There was a point when I almost
blamed myself for my mom's passing.
I'm handing over the keys...
Because she so didn't want
me to go into service.
I had spoken with her about it.
I said: If anything goes wrong,
I'm gonna have to go into the service.
I told her that. If anything goes wrong,
if you pass away. I'm gonna
have to go into service.
Because as it is, I can't
take care of myself normally.
What I'm gonna miss the most, just a normal
day sitting down with my friends,
cause that's not what I gonna get from months
on the stretch. That I'm gonna miss.
And this view right here. This view
looking outside of the window.
I've been seeing this since 1990.
I used to hate this view,
I think somehow I still do.
But that's strange to think
I'm gonna actually miss it.
Probably not. That's just buildings.
That's my friends who I'm gonna miss.
I have two sons and I won't allow none of my
children to serve in the United States military.
If you join the military now, you are not
defending the United States of America.
You are helping certain policy makers
pursue an imperial agenda.
On February of 2003 ten
million people around the world
marched to demonstrate against the war in Iraq.
The largest demonstrations in British history.
thousand in New York city.
A million each in Berlin, Madrid, Rome.
On this February day as this nation
stands at the brink of battle,
every American on some level must
be contemplating the possibility of war.
And yet this chamber is for the most part
harmoniously, harmoniously dreadful and silent.
You can hear a pin drop. Listen.
There's no debate.
There's no attempt to lay out from the nation
prose and cons of this particular war.
We have a Congress that failed in every way
to ask the right questions,
to hold the President to account.
Our Congress failed us miserably.
And that's because many in Congress are
beholden to the military industrial complex.
I would think Eisenhower...
He must be rolling over in his grave.
In some ways the military industrial complex
may become so pervasive that it's now invisible.
This is about ideas and influence,
what's safe for your career.
Being seen in opposition to strong
defense policies is the liability.
Not just for politician who
wants to run for President,
but for an expert who wants
to make a name in town,
for a journalist who wants
to get his or her story...
on a front page of the paper.
In this way we're strickting the level of
discussion to this rush for war.
Mr. Vice President, do you
think the American people
are prepared for a long
costly and bloody battle?
I don't think it's likely to unfold that way,
because I really do believe we
will be greeters liberators.
Now we're just starting to see the
creepings of the sun coming up.
As we approach the city
low deck of clouds showed up.
In the past that would have been the bad thing,
cause in the airfront 17 we
dropped lazer guided bombs.
So if you can't see your target,
you can't drop a bomb on it.
This day I had the enhanced TV,
now I was kind of happy.
They couldn't see me, I couldn't see them.
But my bomb could find a spot on the ground.
Still people are heading towards west.
The target area was called Dora farms.
It was a Presidential type palace
along of the side of the river.
I see the river. I know I'm
in right part of the town...
where I was told I need to deliver a bomb.
And let's just have a look at the scenes live,
sirens are being sounded in the Iraqi capital.
Pressed in across the target I think
our time over target was about 0530.
And so I let the bombs go.
Let them ring.
Those sirens...
I think it's been heating up.
We dropped 4 enhanced TBU 2000
pump bunker satellite guided.
There's the large blast.
They both came off.
Seemed to come off.
I didn't notice anything at first,
I dropped bombs before.
When the weapons flew out
of the airplane, I realized
that this is the opening strike
of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
And I said: Well, if we did our job tonight,
this whole thing might be over tomorrow.
Honestly what we saw the first day
of the war astonished us.
And most of the doctors
were in a state of anger.
There were shrapnel injuries
to women and children, civilians...
...all of them were civilians.
In the first days of war,
we didn't receive any soldiers.
The first group was from Dora.
The wounded were civilians
who were in their houses at dawn...
...when an explosion happened.
There's no question the strike on that
leadership headquarters was successful.
We have photographs of what took place.
The mystery of what happened begins here,
at a palace compound called Dora farms.
One weapon clearly missed. Others landed just
outside the wall destroying other buildings.
What happened was my son and
my brother's two sons were in a house.
In Dora. They were in a
house with their friend...
...and a missile fell on them.
I think I was reading something
about the bombing in Iraq.
And I get this e-mail: To
major Thomas. V. Johnson...
from lieutenant commandor Stephen Franzoni.
The private to the capral
to the captain to this...
It must have been like 42 e-mails.
And some of them was saying:
Well I don't know if we can do this.
Normally we do not take personal requests.
Son died on 9/11. He wants to know
if we could put his name on bomb.
Piercing it up Harry, this is Jerry.
Do you think we can do something like that?
Joe, fairly easy, don't you think?
Well, let me go ask Harry.
And you read this whole list of e-mails.
Sorry for the delay, but business is booming.
The weapons don't stay still
long enough to write on them.
And finally it goes to this Marine Air Division.
Can do. Semper Fi.
I get back to pictures.
I'm looking at the picture
that's saying: Holy smokes!
This is a picture of bomb and
then a close-up of the same bomb.
And on the side of it:
In loving memory of Jason Sekzer.
And the story that this is
a 2000 pound guided bomb
and that it was dropped on April, 1
and it met with 100% success.
The weapons that are being used
today have a degree of precision
that no one ever imagined.
A family inside their house
sleeping and they bomb them.
Is that smart? Is that a smart missile?
For a long time the Americans
military's been emphasising
this idea of precision guided ammunitions.
That we can now wage war and
prevent casualties to civilians.
It's simply isn't true. The
bombs aren't that reliable.
The precision guidance isn't that good.
I would say is there a personal computer owner
who's not had his machine bomb on him
or loses work that day
there's not a one who
hasn't had that experience.
During the first 6 months of
the Iraq war, 50 precision...
airstrikes were conducted
against Iraqi leadership.
Of these strikes, none hit its intended target.
Now the military industrial
complex is handling it.
He provided guys with all sorts of weapons
and basically a level of technical arrogance
that we can go do anything we want
cause we got smart weapons,
that'll do the job with
minimum of collateral damage.
But it's be as far as I'm concerned.
NAJI SHEESHAN Director, Baghdad Morgue
The yard of the hospital
was filled with corpses.
The corpses that we saw, ninety
percent of them were civilians...
I have records to confirm
it. I can show you the books.
Ninety percent were civilians.
Children.
I can show you in my books.
This is the special record book
for the people killed in the war.
Housewife...
Soldier...
Student... Student...
Soldier... Student...
Civilian... Housewife...
Civilian... Civilian...
Worker... Housewife...
Worker... Worker...
Child... Child...
Housewife... Housewife...
Housewife... Female student...
There's no security, no freedom.
There's nothing.
Still seems like a dream to me.
I mean we tell stories about it,
we sit down and talk with our kids.
You get some tough questions.
You get asked by your daughter:
Did you go out and tried to kill Saddam Hussein?
And that's a tough one to
answer to a little kid.
When we saw him on TV, one said:
I guess we didn't get him.
But in the end we got him.
How many times in a lifetime does
an individual get the opportunity
to get the opening shots in a
conflict that will liberate people.
You got a weapon?
So let there be no doubt
that the liberation of Iraq...
U.S. TOLL REACHES 500
U.S. TOLL IN IRAQ CROSSES 2,000 MILESTONE
With U.S. casualties mounting in Iraq...
Bomb exploded and two men were shed
there today on a horrific scale.
Under fire from critics who charge he's been
blurring the lines between Iraq and 9/11th
President Bush was forced to clarify yesterday.
Now we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein
was involved with the Septermber, the 11th.
What did you just say?
I mean I almost jumped out of chair.
I don't know how people got the
idea that I connected Iraq to 9/11.
Was he nuts? What the hell we go in there for?
We're getting back for 9/11th.
If he didn't have anything to do with 9/11,
why we're going in there?
I was mad.
My first thought is: You're a liar.
I'm from the old school.
Certain people walk on water.
And President of the United
States is one of them.
If I can't trust the President of
the United States, I don't know...
It's a terrible thing when Americans
can't trust their President.
You begin to wonder what a
hell is with the whole system?
There's something wrong with the entire system.
The government exploited
my feelings of patriotism.
Of deep desire for revenge
for what happened to my son.
But I was so insane with wanting to get even,
I was willing to believe anything.
Undoubtedly there are people
who may listen to my statements
and think that I'm no good,
I'm a war monger, I'm this, I'm that, whatever.
I should never put my son's name on it,
I should be ashamed that
I put my son's name on it.
Am I sorry I asked for my son's name
to be put on the bomb?
No, because I acted under
the conditions at that time.
Was it wrong?
It was wrong, but I didn't know that.
So is it regrettable?
The reason we're in Iraq first has not honestly
been told to the American people.
It's certainly had nothing to do with
the liberation of the Iraqi people.
It was never part of the agenda,
and it's not part of the agenda now.
We know we did not have an exit strategy
in the invasion of Iraq,
because we didn't intend to leave.
We are in the process right now of
building 14 permanent bases in Iraq.
There is this incredible point right now,
that we are invincible
and we are the preeminent power on planet Earth.
American power and Amercan empire is actually
flaunted in people's faces around the world
where we rub our shoe in their face
and tell them that we're tough.
And you will work with us because you
sure as hell don't wanna be against us.
The world is changed and we're not
going back to where we were.
I find one of the sillier ideas
is the notion that you hear all the time
that American policy has been hijacked by people
and as soon as they're out of there
we're gonna go back to the way it was.
They're wrong about that.
Because we're not the same
people we were before.
We're walking on thin ice.
We are creating the same path
taken by the first democratic regime
ever created in the western world
namely the Roman Republic.
The Roman Republic inadvertently acquired
the empire around the world
and then they discovered
that to maintain, expand,
protect this empire
they require standing armies.
Standing armies is what
George Washington warned us against.
It's his farewell address that they will
destroy the structure of goverment
that we try to create in our constitution
to prevent the rise of imperial presidency.
The single most important article in our
constitution is the one that gives the right
to go to war exclusively to
the elected representatives...
of people, to the Congress.
Our Congress in October of 2002
voted in both houses
to give this power to a single man, including
the use of nuclear weapons if he so chose.
And of course less than 6 months later
he did choose to excercise it in Iraq.
For too long our culture has said:
If it feels good, do it.
Now America is embracing a
new ethic and a new creed.
Let's rule.
I think of the history of the
United States as a work in progress
and our attempted democracy
here is a constant struggle
between capitalism and democracy.
And there have been absent flows
where democracy looks like it's winning.
You reign in those powerful forces,
but the fundamental reality is that most
of the government's decisions
today are substantially...
dictated by powerful corporate interest.
Clearly capitalism is winning.
Due to this behavior, America will fail.
She will fail completely among the countries.
And another country will rise
and take America's place.
I am not a political man, but that is
my analysis as an ordinary person.
America will lose because her behavior
is not the behavior of a great nation.
In my lifetime I have seen the collapse
of the Nazi, of the imperial Japanese,
of the British, French,
Dutch and Russian empires.
They go down pretty easily.
What I want Americans to understand today,
the price of liberty is eternal vigilance
and we've not been vigilant.
Since Dwight Eisenhower issued
his warning to us back in 1961
about the dangers of unauthorised power in
the form of the military industrial complex.
We should take nothing for granted.
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizen
can compel the proper meshing
of the huge industrial and
military machinery of defense...
with our peaceful methods and goals.
So that security and liberty
may prosper together.
You gotta realize 20 years in
the military you're trained
always to respect authority,
to be a team player.
When the war started in Iraq,
I hit a targeting point...
where my values as an officer diverged.
I had to basically remove myself.
So, why we fight?
I think we fight cause too many people
are not standing up saying:
I'm not doing this anymore.