[littlebigman]

eh maybe we can try this agin a different way... :o
eh...we coulda shoulda woulda learned all we needed long b4 now but 4 r facination and hunger 4 r creature comforts at the expence of others...we call it freedom and choice as we silience another voice or maybe 100,ooo might b the # on 2days invoive...the glasscows we harvest cant produce enough flak jakkets, cuz every1 should know that "war is a racket"

WAR IS A RACKET

http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

[FDRfollower]

I know that we should all be paying strict attention to the sad :crybaby2: fate of Britney Spears (or whoever that bimbo is in the news), but this has popped up. Too bad its being buried. I think Jane D'arc would love to put this on her A-list since its right up her alley. Its got everything, HUGE weapons companies, all sorts of government officials, Saudi princes, tons of money in bribery, the shadowy world of drugs/weapons/terrorism, you name it, this has got it. Funnily enough, LBM started this thread with his usual weirdness, but the title was perfect, so what the heck.

Saudi/Cheney/British scandal (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_050916bae.shtml)

Gaurdian (sort of) (http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,1972795,00.html)

Another Brit involved (http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2007/070608symons_bae.html)

Follow da money (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=9008)

Deals (http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/breaking_news/2007/06/11/bae_armor_holdings.asp)

another Guardian article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,2032506,00.html)

[MAGI]

I know that we should all be paying strict attention to the sad :crybaby2: fate of Britney Spears (or whoever that bimbo is in the news), but this has popped up. Too bad its being buried. I think Jane D'arc would love to put this on her A-list since its right up her alley. Its got everything, HUGE weapons companies, all sorts of government officials, Saudi princes, tons of money in bribery, the shadowy world of drugs/weapons/terrorism, you name it, this has got it. Funnily enough, LBM started this thread with his usual weirdness, but the title was perfect, so what the heck.

Saudi/Cheney/British scandal (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_050916bae.shtml)

Gaurdian (sort of) (http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,1972795,00.html)

Another Brit involved (http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2007/070608symons_bae.html)

Follow da money (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=9008)

Deals (http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/breaking_news/2007/06/11/bae_armor_holdings.asp)

another Guardian article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,2032506,00.html)

Gee,
You mean it wasn't all about getting big bad Hussein out and a strong Democracy established in Iraq?
:rolleyes:

Some Hi lites from FDRfollower's above listings:

http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2007/070608symons_bae.html
Baroness Symons was already deeply into international arms intrigues as early as 1998. Then a Foreign Office minister, she was blasted for misleading the Parliament over sanctions-busting sales of weapons to catastrophically war-torn Sierra Leone. As Tony Blair's Minister of State for Defence Procurement from 1999 to mid-2003, Baroness Symons pushed British arms sales in the Middle East and South Asia. She negotiated and approved a $200-billion contract with Lockheed Martin, just before the company's board member Lynne Cheney saw her husband inaugurated U.S. Vice President. Symons is a leading member of the British-American Project for a Successor Generation, that coordinates strategy between Cheney-neoconservative circles and the City of London oligarchy.

She ran British military procurement when the governemnt privatized QinetiQ, a giant defense company supplying Iraq War weapons, and turned it over to the Bush family's Carlyle Group, BAE's American partner company, after which sales of Qinetic's armor and copters through Symons' ministry could enrich them all.

In 2003 the London Observer exposed Symons' role in a scheme to sell BAE jets containing U.S.-made engines to Iran, an attempted end-run around U.S. sanctions.


and



Scandal-ridden BAE's Takeover of Armor Holdings Is Subject to Investigation
June 11, 2007 (LPAC)--LPAC has confirmed that the proposed takeover of the U.S. company Armor Holdings Inc. by BAE, announced May 7, is being reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), part of the U.S. Treasury Department.

According to Armor's May 7 announcement, the deal is subject to what is called "the Exon-Florio National Security Test for Foreign Investment," which means that Armor Holdings is a national security sensitive entity, and therefore must be reviewed by the CFIUS.

Most Americans only remember CFIUS from the 2006 case where the United Arab Emirates--owned Dubai Ports World purchased the P&O Steam Navigation Company of the UK, which gave the contracts to provide terminal services at some of the terminals at several US ports, including New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans. The Dubai Ports World contracts were cancelled due to national security issues.

Technically, the CFIUS review and investigation is required to begin within 30 days of notification and must be completed within 45 days. However, some observers expect the review could take up to four months, since this involves the takeover of the country's largest "armored tactical wheeled vehicles" supplier (i.e., uparmored Humvees, etc) by a foreign company.

The New York Times reported on May 15,2007 that the BAE/Prince Bandar bin-Sultan bribery investigations now going on in Britain could put the Armor Holdings acquisition "under additional scrutiny from the U.S. Congress."



and
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=9008

A New Al-Yamamah
In spite of the recent bribery revelations, BAE is intent on pressing ahead with a new Al-Yamamah deal with the Saudis, according to a statement by the Swiss investment bank UBS.

In the last decade and a half the Saudis have had difficulties holding up their end of the arms-for-oil bargain, as the price of petroleum has fluctuated and the Saudi domestic debt has continued to mushroom, while arms purchases gobble up a third of the national budget. However, recently Saudi Arabia's fortunes have been buoyed by higher oil prices, while their relationship with their other main weapons supplier has gotten chillier. "Now that the US is on the outs with the Saudis and pulling US troops out of Saudi Arabia, the Saudis are looking more to Europe for their defense needs," says analyst Frida Berrigan of the Arms Trade Resource Center in New York.

The new agreement would be to upgrade 85 Tornado fighter planes that were purchased in an earlier Al-Yamamah deal. If it goes through it would be a boost to the beleaguered weapons giant, which has been having difficulties arranging a merger with a US defense company. But it would be anything but a boon for British taxpayers, who would continue to subsidize BAE, or the Saudi populace, who would see none of the kickbacks flowing to the House of Saud -- just the further perpetuation of the royal family's corrupt rule.

Listen to the audio version of this story on Free Speech Radio News

[FDRfollower]

It gets deeper and more interesting.

Prince Bandar and 9-11
June 16, 2007 (LPAC)--Between April 1998 and May 2002, between $51,000 and $73,000 in checks and cashier checks were provided by the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and his wife to two families in southern California who in turn bankrolled at least two of the 9-11 hijackers. The story was investigated by the 9-11 Commission but never fully resolved, and remains, to this day, one of the key unanswered questions concerning the backing for the worst terrorist attack to ever occur on U.S. soil.

According to numerous news accounts and the records of the 9-11 Commission, in April 1998, a Saudi national named Osama Basnan wrote to the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. seeking help for his wife, Majeda Dweikat, who needed surgery for a thyroid condition. Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador, wrote a check for $15,000 to Basnan. Beginning in December 1999, Princess Haifa, the wife of Prince Bandar, began sending regular monthly cashier checks to Majeda Dweikat, in amounts ranging from $2,000 to $3,500. Many of these checks were signed over to Manal Bajadr, the wife of Omar al-Bayoumi, another Saudi living in the San Diego area.

Around New Year's 2000, two other Saudi nationals, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, where they were greeted by al-Bayoumi, provided with cash, and outfitted with an apartment, Social Security ID cards and other financial assistance. Al-Bayoumi helped the two Saudi men enroll in flight school in Florida. Two months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, al-Bayoumi moved to England, and shortly after that, he disappeared altogether. But before his disappearance, and within days of the 9-11 attacks, agents of New Scotland Yard, working in conjunction with the FBI, raided al-Bayoumi's apartment in England and found papers hidden beneath the floorboards, according to Newsweek magazine, that had the phone numbers of several officials at the Saudi embassy in Washington. Al-Bayoumi was suspected by the Arab community in the San Diego area of being an agent of Saudi intelligence, who kept tabs on Saudi residents in the area, particularly Saudi students attending college in southern California.

Sources have told Executive Intelligence Review magazine researchers that Basnan was also long-suspected of being an agent for Saudi Arabia's foreign intelligence service. According to the sources, Basnan was busted for drug possession in southern California and the Saudi government intervened to get the charges dropped. Basnan also befriended Alhazmi and Almihdhar prior to their deaths in the crash of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. At one point, the Basnans, the al-Bayoumis and the two 9-11 hijackers all lived at the Parkwood Apartments in San Diego.

Both Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa denied they played any role in financing the 9-11 hijackers, and claimed they were merely providing charitable assistance to the Saudi community in the United States. The two co-chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, Robert Graham (D-Fla.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) accused the FBI of failing to fully pursue this "9-11 money trail.'' Sources told EIR that the FBI refused to allow the committee to interview the FBI investigators who had probed the Basnan and al-Bayoumi links.

[FDRfollower]

Follow the money, the WaterGate investigators were told.

Are British Mercenary Companies in Iraq Tainted With BAE Corruption?
June 16, 2007 (LPAC)--A feature story in today's Washington Post on the "surge" in mercenary/private army operations in Iraq, which parallels George W. Bush's January 2007 "surge," provides new information that implicates British Aerospace System (BAE), the center of British imperial military corruption, in the Iraq war's private army operations.

The Post story reports that more than 100 security companies are operating in Iraq. And one of the largest is the London-based ArmorGroup, which has contracts that had it protecting 32% of all non-military convoys in Iraq, and which is headed by former British Minister of Defense Malcolm Rifkind.

Executive Intelligence Review magazine, which this week broke the story of BAE Systems' $80 billion Saudi slush fund, is currently investigating ArmorGroup as part of its coverage of the British Aerospace Systems (BAE) scandal, since ArmorGroup was a division of Armor Holdings, the company targeted for takeover by BAE, until November of 2003, when Armor Holdings sold ArmorGroup to a group of private investors led by Granville Baird Capital Partners, a London-based private equity firm, which then took ArmorGroup public in September of 2004.

In the same year of 2004, ArmorGroup hired former British Defense Minister Malcolm Rifkind as non-executive chairman of the company. Because of the BAE scandal, various U.S. branches and agencies of government have begun an investigation of the BAE takeover of Armor Holdings, under the criminal statute, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Armor Holdings is also the owner of Defense Systems Limited, another notorious British mercenary company. One of the directors of Armor Holdings is Burtt R. Ehrlich, whose family securities firm of Ehrlich and Boger is owned by Cater and Allen Bank, a British off-shore outfit that operates mostly in the Channel and Jersey Islands. Ehrlich later lists his address as Smith Train Counsel, the private fund management firm of John Train, the New York investment banker who is infamous for his role in the mid-1980s frame up of Lyndon LaRouche.

Private soldiers, like those of ArmorGroup of London, operate and protect thousands of convoys every year that carry everything from arms and ammunition for the Iraqi security forces to T-shirts and baby incubators. Security companies also provide services under contract to the U.S. military including body guards for Ambassador Ryan Crocker and several high ranking military officers.

The hard data on security contractor operations in the Post story, which is appearing in some cases for the first time comes from the Reconstruction Logistics Directorate of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees contractors operating for the U.S military.

According to the Corps data, contractor protected convoys have delivered 31,100 vehicles, 451,000 weapons, 720,000 uniforms, 41 million rounds of ammunition and 3.2 million items of body armor and helmets, between August of 2004 and May 10, 2007. Those deliveries have come at the cost of 132 security employees and drivers killed, 416 wounded, 5 missing and 208 vehicles destroyed in 1,180 convoys that have been attacked or 9.2 percent of the total of 12,860 convoys. The military plans to outsource at least $1.5 billion in security operations, and for the first time, the Army is considering a plan to use security contractors on military convoys.

The article includes a profile of ArmorGroup International, a British firm that provides protection of 32 percent of all nonmilitary supply convoys in Iraq. The company started in Iraq with 20 employees and a handful of SUV's and has grown to 1,200 operatives--nearly the equivalent of two infantry battalions, and 240 armored trucks. Nearly half of its $273.5 million in revenues, last year, came from Iraq. Last year, ArmorGroup ran 1,184 convoys and reported 450 hostile actions and reported another 293 hostile actions in the first four months of 2007. The company charges $8,000 to $12,000 per day, depending on convoy size and risk and pays its Western contractors $135,000 a year.

The contractors claim that every one of them in Iraq means one more U.S. soldier freed up to be on the battlefield, but the article clearly documents that the Schultz-Rohatyn scheme for the privatization of war is proceeding apace in Iraq, and BAE Systems appears to be in on the action.

[NeoCon Newbie]

http://protestwarrior.com/nimages/store/democrat_president.gif

[JamesP]

FOCUS | Nonstop Theft and Bribery Are Staggering Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120207Y.shtml
Damien Cave reports in Sunday's New York Times that there is a growing sense that Iraq has slipped to new depths of lawlessness as "Some American officials estimate that as much as a third of what they spend on Iraqi contracts and grants ends up unaccounted for or stolen, with a portion going to Shiite or Sunni militias."

[JamesP]

National Debt Grows $1 Million a Minute
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120307J.shtml
The Associated Press reports: "like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day - or nearly $1 million a minute. What's that mean to you? It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States."