Dwight Eisenhower: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired in the final analysis, is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and not clothed.

Dwight Eisenhower: I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Moshe Dayan: If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

Abraham Lincoln: Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

This just in...."The Bush administration will ask Congress to expand multibillion-dollar aid and weapons sales packages to friendly nations in the Middle East, partly to counteract Iran, senior administration officials said Friday." (MSNBC News Services)

So, I guess you probably won't find those eloquent quotes posted anywhere in the Bush White House.

But you might find this one:

Thich Nhat Hanh: In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.

Once again we see that the first tool of choice in the Bush administration diplomacy toolbox is weapons and the military. Characterized by not engaging any opposition in dialogue to resolve conflicts, George W. Bush plans on arming the "friendly" nations of the Middle East to "defend" themselves against an ever growing threat from Iran. Sound familiar? It should. Same song second or third verse. It was this kind of pre-emptive action to "defend" the U.S. against a perceived threat that got us into Iraq. Is this a good idea? Arming the nations of the Middle East so they can fight each other? And of course, how our government defines "friendly" is not how you and I would define it. A friendly nation to our government is one whose leader will do whatever our government says. It says nothing about their human rights record or what kind of government they have. Saudi Arabia has one of the worst human rights records on the planet and yet the Saudi royal family has maintained favored nation status by cooperating fully with the U.S. government. Further, how can we limit the use of these weapons to defense? We can't. And how do you think the U.S. is handling Israel's fears about the U.S.selling advanced weaponry to it's Arab neighbors? By offering them a substantial increase in military aid and by "asking" the Saudis to restrict the range, size, and location of the satellite-guided bombs we are about to sell them.

Sound insane? Not when you consider the profie motive of those pushing such policies. Then it all only seems incredibly immoral, unethical, and yes....evil.

U.S. weapons sales help outfit non-democratic regimes, soldiers who commit gross human rights abuses against their citizens and citizens of other countries, and forces in unstable regions on the verge of, in the middle of, or recovering from conflict.

U.S.-origin weapons find their way into conflicts the world over. The United States supplied arms or military technology to more than 92% of the conflicts under way in 1999. The costs to the families and communities afflicted by this violence is immeasurable. But to most arms dealers, the profit accumulated outweighs the lives lost. In the period from 1998-2001, over 68% of world arms deliveries were sold or given to developing nations, where lingering conflicts or societal violence can scare away potential investors.

Of course, a loss of investment opportunities is not the only way Americans are impacted by the weapons trade. In addition to paying billions of dollars every year to support weapons exports, Americans may also feel the impact of increasing instability overseas. The United States military has had to face troops previously trained by its own military or supplied with U.S. weaponry in Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, and now in Afghanistan. Due to the advanced capabilities these militaries have acquired from past U.S. training and sales, the U.S. had to invest much more money and manpower in these conflicts than would have otherwise been needed. (http://www.fas.org/asmp/fast_facts.htm)

According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, total world spending on defense budgets amounted to $ 1,158 billion USD in 2006, with nearly half of the total amount spent by the United States. None of our so-called enemies even makes the list of the top fifteen spenders with number fifteen spending just 10% of what the U.S. does.

It is estimated that yearly, over 1 trillion dollars are spent on arms. Many industrialized countries have a domestic arms industry to supply their own military forces. Some countries also have a substantial legal or illegal domestic trade in weapons for use by its citizens. The illegal trade in small arms is prevalent in many countries and regions affected by political instability. Sometimes legally purchased weaponry is re-sold for illegal purposes.

Contracts to supply a given country's military are awarded by the government, making arms contracts of substantial political importance. The link between politics and the arms trade can result in the development of what US President Eisenhower described as a military-industrial complex, where the armed forces, commerce, and politics become closely linked. Various corporations, some publicly held, others private, bid for these contracts, which are often worth many billions of dollars. Sometimes, such as the contract for the new Joint Strike Fighter, a competitive tendering process takes place, where the decision is made on the merits of the design submitted by the companies involved. Other times, no bidding or competition takes place.

In the Cold War Era, arms exports were used by both the Soviet Union and the United States to influence their standings in other countries, particularly Third World Countries. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, global arms exports initially fell slightly, but have since grown again to cold war levels. Russia is the world's top supplier of weapons, a spot it has held since 2001, accounting for around 30% of worldwide weapons sales, followed by the United States, France, Germany and Britain. (Wikipedia)

Finally, this from the following article by Hartung and Sciarocca. "...If the majority of top policymakers have longstanding ties to the companies that will benefit from the Bush administration's "war without end" approach to foreign policy, the development of a missile defense "shield" and a new generation of nuclear weapons, who will represent the public interest?"

The Ties that Bind:
Arms Industry Influence in the
Bush Administration and Beyond

A World Policy Institute Special Report
by William D. Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca
October 2004

Executive Summary

As the presidential campaign moves into its final days, one industry that has done particularly well during the Bush administration has a strong interest in the outcome: the arms industry. A new report from the World Policy Institute tracks how this critical sector has exerted influence over administration policies, and how it is " voting with its dollars" in the 2004 campaign.

"These have been boom years for the arms industry, with contracts for the top ten weapons contractors up 75% in the first three years of the Bush administration alone," notes William D. Hartung, the co-author of the study and the director of the Institute’s arms project. "While some of this funding is related to the war in Iraq or the campaign against terrorism, much of it relates to Cold War relics like the F-22 combat aircraft or nuclear attack submarines that have little or no application to the threats we now face or the wars we are now fighting."

Among the report’s key findings are the followings:

Contractors Have Thrived Under Bush Policies: Contracts to the Pentagon’s top ten contractors jumped from $46 billion in 2001 to $80 billion in 2003, an increase of nearly 75%. Halliburton’s contracts jumped more than nine times their 2001 levels by 2003, from $400 million to $3.9 billion. Northrop Grumman’s contracts doubled, from $5.2 billion to $11.1 billion, over the same time frame; and the nation’s largest weapons contractor, Lockheed Martin, saw a 50% increase, from $14.7 billion to $21.9 billion.

Ties That Bind – Contractor Connections to the Bush Administration: When the Bush administration first took office, it appointed 32 executives, paid consultants, or major shareholders of weapons contractors to top policymaking positions in the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the Department of Energy (involved in nuclear weapons development), and the State Department. Since that time, the "revolving door" has continued to spin, including a high profile scandal in which Air Force procurement official Darleen Druyun pled guilty to criminal charges for negotiating for a position at Boeing while simultaneously negotiating with the company on the terms of a controversial scheme to lease 100 more Boeing 767 airliners for modification and use as aerial refueling tankers. Another controversial move involved Pentagon acquisition chief Edward "Pete" Aldridge’s decision to move straight from Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon to a position on the board of Lockheed Martin.

Who says it doesn't pay to be connected?
Despite extensive discussion to date on the costs and consequences of the war in Iraq, several key issues have not been discussed in the presidential campaign: 1) the size and composition of the Pentagon budget going forward; 2) the need for greater accountability on the part of major defense contractors that have been the prime beneficiaries of recent increases in military spending.

Although he campaigned as a military reformer in 2000, President Bush has overseen the biggest increases in defense spending since Ronald Reagan. In the name of fighting a global war on terrorism, the Bush administration has increased the military budget from just over $300 billion when it took office to $420 billion now. This holds true even without counting the $177 billion in emergency appropriations to pay for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, spending on homeland security has jumped from $19 billion per year to $47 billion per year since 2001.

President Bush's military budget increase coupled with ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the War on Terror have created an environment in which weapons makers can enjoy the best of both worlds. They can continue making money off Cold War style weapons systems of the past and the unmanned aerial vehicles and smart bombs of the future.

As the logic goes, with the steady rise in defense spending, the nation's largest defense companies have seen substantial increases in their government contracts. The Pentagon's top ten defense contractors received more than $80 billion in 2003 -- the most recent year for which statistics are available -- almost double what those same ten companies received in 2000, $46 billion. And that's not counting contracts these companies have received from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy -- which deals with nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors for the Navy -- or from recent contracts awarded for the rebuilding of Iraq.

The biggest winner to date is Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton. In one year, Halliburton went from being the Pentagon's number 37 contractor with just $500 million in contracts to lucky number 7 and $3.9 billion in defense contracts. And that's just the beginning, the company now has over $8 billion in contracts for Iraqi rebuilding and Pentagon logistics work in hand, and that figure could hit $18 billion if it exercises all of its options.

The Spinning Door: Coincidence or Not?
Accompanying this massive growth in defense spending is a large presence of former executives, consultants or shareholders of weapons contractors in key policymaking posts in the Bush administration. During the first George W. Bush administration, at least 32 administration appointees had ties to the arms industry, including 17 appointees with links to major defense contractors, including Secretary of the Navy Gordon England, a former General Dynamics vice president and Secretary of the Air Force James Roche, a former Northrop Grumman executive.Today, more than any administration is history the Bush administration has relied on the expertise of former arms industry officials in outlining U.S. defense needs. While the role of former energy executives in the Bush administration received considerable scrutiny in connection with the Enron scandal and the operations of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, little has been said about the administration's even more extensive ties to the defense industry. As Senator John McCain (R-AZ), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee best summed it up, "In the Boeing case we have seen compelling evidence that there is an incestuous relationship between the defense industry and defense officials that is not good for America."

Bush's Security Policy Written Long Before 9/11
In addition to former defense executives staffing the Bush administration, a tightly knit group of conservative ideologues and right-wing think tanks (which have defense CEOs on their boards) have also been influential in shaping and developing President Bush's security policy. From the doctrine of preemptive strikes and regime change in Iraq to deploying a Star Wars style missile defense and a new nuclear weapons policy to overall U.S. national security strategy, the fingerprints of groups like the Project for a New American Century, the National Institute for Public Policy and the Center for Security Policy can be seen. In fact, every major element of the Bush administration's national security strategy was developed in significant part before Bush took office, and before the September 11^th terror attacks.

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) was founded in 1997 to advocate a neo-Reaganite, "peace through strength" policy that stresses force and the threat of force over treaties and cooperation as the primary tool for projecting U.S. influence in the world. Signers of PNAC's founding statement included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, and other key members of the current Bush foreign policy team. Current key players in PNAC include neo-conservative hawks like Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, unilateralist ideologue Robert Kagan, and former Lockheed Martin Vice President Bruce Jackson (who also helped draft the Republican foreign policy platform at their 2000 convention). In the run-up to the 2000 elections, PNAC published a 96-page report that advocated a far more muscular (and far more costly) U.S. national security strategy that included agenda items such as "regime change" in Iraq. So much for the idea that this was an idea dreamed up by Bush policymakers in the light of the nation's newfound sense of vulnerability after the 9/11 terror attacks.

Since its inception in 1988, the Center for Security Policy has been dedicated to promoting its vision of "peace through strength," with a particularly strong emphasis on opposing international arms control agreements and promoting the deployment of an extensive missile defense system. Center founder Frank Gaffney, a disciple of the quintessential conservative hawk Richard Perle, left the Reagan Pentagon after opposing the administration’s decision to pursue nuclear arms reduction agreements like the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). According to the Center’s own annual reports, it has received millions of dollars in corporate donations since its founding in 1988, which represents more than 25% of its total funding in the sixteen years it has been in existence. Corporate contributors to CSP have included Boeing, General Dynamics, Litton, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Textron, and TRW, all major weapons contractors that benefit from the policies advocated by the Center. CSP's Board of Directors and National Security Advisory Council has a strong corporate presence as well, including Dr. Charles M. Kupperman, Vice President, Strategic Integration & Operations, Missile Defense Systems at Boeing, Stanley Ebner, former Senior Vice President of Washington Operations for Boeing, Brian Dailey, senior vice president for Lockheed Martin Washington Operations, and a number of others.

With the 2000 election of George W. Bush, Gaffney’s Center moved from an outside advocacy group trying to influence policy to a friend of the administration. The Center’s web site brags that no fewer than 22 close associates or members of its advisory council now hold positions in the Bush administration, including the former Chair of the Center’s Board of Directors, Douglas Feith, now Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; J.D. Crouch, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, who has been involved in articulating the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review; and Richard Perle, former Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, to name a few.

Funding the Wrong Priorities
The fact that such a narrow, ideologically driven network now has a dominant role in crafting U.S. security policy is cause enough for concern. The links between this hardline unilateralist faction and arms manufacturers with their own extensive ties to the Bush administration raises an additional set of issues: who will render independent judgments on the strategy and weapons systems best suited to protecting the United States? If the majority of top policymakers have longstanding ties to the companies that will benefit from the Bush administration's "war without end" approach to foreign policy, the development of a missile defense "shield" and a new generation of nuclear weapons, who will represent the public interest?

Many Americans assume that the bulk of these new funds are being spent wisely, to protect them. But a growing chorus of independent experts has suggested that much of what is being done in the name of fighting terrorism is either beside the point or actively making matters worse. Former Bush administration counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke has persuasively argued that the war in Iraq has been a diversion from the task of dismantling and isolating the Al Qaeda terrorist network that was behind the 9/11 attacks. The prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies in London has gone one step further, arguing that the U.S. intervention in Iraq has actually served as an aid to recruitment for Al Qaeda and other like-minded terror networks, and hence a new loss for American and international security.