Stuart Moore's A Thousand Flowers: Flagg, United Fruit, History, and Deja Vu

[MattBrady]

A THOUSAND FLOWERSComics, Pop Culture, and the World OutsideInstallment 26by Stuart Moore

The Return of El Octopo

Americans didn’t pay much attention to politics in the ‘90s, and we’re all paying for it now. (I’m as guilty as the next idiot.) It really is true: If you don’t remember history, it comes back to bite you -- hard.

Comics from the ‘80s might not seem like the best place to start for historical perspective, but indulge me for a minute. In our last column, we discussed Howard Chaykin’s ground-breaking American Flagg! series, which combined an innovative home-base setting -- the Chicago “PlexMall” living/working/shopping quarters -- with an international political backdrop.

The second Flagg! storyline took Reuben Flagg to Brazil where, in one bit of casual satire, he passed a street sign labelled “United Fruit Avenue.” In issue #11, a reader wrote in to complain about Chaykin’s perceived homophobia, and cited the sign (calling it “United Fruit Boulevard”) as an example. Editor Mike Gold replied:

“I have a policy of not explaining jokes: no sophisticated gag in any of our books is likely to be understood by our entire readership. But the point is, you missed the point entirely with ‘United Fruit Boulevard.’”

What did it mean? Let’s follow the trail to Brought to Light, a “graphic docudrama” published by Eclipse in 1989. This unique volume features two separate stories. The first, by Joyce Brabner (who appears in the new American Splendor film) and Tom Yeates, is a straight documentary account of the death of several international journalists in Costa Rica as a result of a CIA plan, and of a resulting lawsuit launched by the Christic Institute against the U.S. government. In a 2000 interview, Alan Moore tells the sad result of the case: the government basically bankrupted the Christic Institute with countersuits. (See bibliography.)

The second story, Shadowplay – The Secret Team, is a nightmarish history of America’s involvement in foreign revolutions, written by Alan Moore with savage art by Bill Sienkewicz. Moore recounts this catalog of dirty tricks through the narrative device of a drunken, raging, coke-snorting eagle representing the CIA, sitting in a Central American bar, bragging about his macho acts around the world. Among the story’s conceits is a running index of how many swimming pools full of blood the dead in each war would fill, graphically illustrated by Sienkewicz’s plain red rectangles juxtaposed with realistic images of war.

On page seven of Shadowplay, among the CIA eagle’s dialogue, we find this little gem:

“Guatemala had been ours since ’54, when we protected the innerests o’ the United Fruit Company by overthrowing the socialist government and suppressin’ the banana worker’s union.”

History time. I’ll make it brief.

In 1944, Guatemala experienced the Central American equivalent of a miracle: a genuine people’s revolution, led by the middle class, university students, and young army officers. Juan Jose Arevalo was elected president in a free, democratic election, succeeded in 1950 by Jacabo Arbenz Guzman. Neither man had strong links to Russia, or any particular alliance with the Soviet Bloc or its ideology. But both were self-proclaimed socialists…which provided their enemies with a stick to attack them with.

The U.S.-based United Fruit Company -- UFCO, now United Brands -- had conducted extensive operations in Central America for decades, largely in Honduras, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. United Fruit was known in the region by several nicknames, including “El Octopo” -- The Octopus -- because of its long reach and crushing grip.

By the early ‘50s, United Fruit owned 42% of Guatemala’s land, operated the country’s railroads, and paid virtually no taxes. The company’s role in Central America is controversial: Representatives claimed that it paid its workers better than anyone else, and it’s arguable that the company raised standards of living throughout the region.

But United Fruit demanded loyalty for those rewards. When the Arevalo/Arbenz government started chipping away at its favored status -- taking back land, demanding the company pay import taxes -- United Fruit took extreme measures. It went directly to the Eisenhower administration, painting the Guatemalan government as Indochina-style Communist collaborators (which they weren’t) and describing the situation as urgent. CIA head Allen Dulles -- who had served on United Fruit’s board of trustees -- launched a campaign to portray the Communist presence in Central America, and Guatemala in particular, as “more dangerous than open physical aggression.”

In the McCarthy-scare era of the early ‘50s, these tactics proved successful. In 1954, U.S. troops and CIA tricks combined to force a counterrevolution in Guatemala -- overthrowing the democratically elected President, and replacing him with a dictator. This dictator, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, was of course much friendlier to U.S. companies, including United Fruit, which moved back in with a vengeance.

Castillo Armas, however, did not enjoy popular support, and was assassinated just three years later. Guatemala entered a period of great instability and economic hardship. But from 1954-1970, the U.S. pumped more money into Guatemala -- in aid, military support, and private investment -- than any other Central American nation. United Fruit was happy. Bananas and coffee flowed freely once again.

Scholar Pedro Gliejeses described the situation from 1944-1954 this way:

"Even without the hazy prospect of a communist takeover of Guatemala -- and the more real threat to Guatemala's neighbors -- Arbenz posed an intolerable challenge. In the heart of the American sphere of influence…this president and his communist friends were successful. The agrarian reform was proceeding well…and basic freedoms were being upheld. It was an intolerable challenge to America's sense of self-respect.”

In his book Inevitable Revolutions, Walter LaFeber says, “The fruit firm’s success in linking the taking of its lands to the evil of international communism was later described by one UFCO official as ‘the Disney version of the episode.’”

Arbenz’s government fell swiftly, not because of any lack of popular support, but because…well, he didn’t really have much connection to the Soviet Union at all. It’s pretty hard for a small country to defend itself, alone, against the U.S. once we decide to invade.

Allen Dulles, United Fruit trustee and CIA head. The twisting of facts to make Arbenz’s Guatemala seem closely allied to the Soviet Union. The rapid invasion of a small country. The use of American troops to pursue a private company’s agenda. Huge amounts of American money pouring into the small country post-invasion.

Is any of this sounding familiar yet?

If not, let’s look at a recent Washington Post article headlined “HALLIBURTON’S DEALS GREATER THAN THOUGHT,” by Michael Dobbs. The link is in the bibliography, and I encourage you to read it all, but here are a few choice excerpts:

“Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom…The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors.”

“[A]ccording to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and other critics, the Iraq war and occupation have provided a handful of companies with good political connections, particularly Halliburton, with unprecedented money-making opportunities. ‘The amount of money [earned by Halliburton] is quite staggering, far more than we were originally led to believe,’ Waxman said. ‘This is clearly a trend under this administration, and it concerns me because often the privatization of government services ends up costing the taxpayers more money rather than less.’”

“Often dressed in Army fatigues with civilian patches on their shoulders, Halliburton employees and contract personnel have become an integral part of Army life in Iraq.”

The article describes the administration’s repeated promises to open private contracts for bidding -- contracts which are then slipped under the table, consistently, to Halliburton and its subsidiary, Brown and Root. Perhaps most disturbingly, the article notes that when traditionally military functions are outsourced to private companies, those companies are likely not to perform their duties when conditions get hazardous:

“‘At the end of the day, neither these companies nor their employees are bound by military justice, and it is up to them whether to show up or not,’ [P.W. Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar] said. ‘The result is that there have been delays in setting up showers for soldiers, getting them cooked meals and so on.’”

To bring this briefly back to comics: Over the course of American Flagg’s first year, Reuben Flagg discovers that the Plex -- the governing authority, based on Mars -- is selling off the United States piecemeal to private corporations. This, too, is Bush’s pattern, from the time he was governor of Texas: privatize formerly government-controlled operations (many of which employ large numbers of African-Americans and other minorities), then award the contracts under the table to his friends. The result, consistently, has been inferior services and, ultimately, greater costs to the taxpayer. Private companies are smart enough to bid low at the beginning, then increase their demands once the process is too far along to return the services to government operation.

In American Flagg!, the Plex pumps video entertainment full of subliminal messages that keep the masses pumped up and violent, to distract them from what’s really going on. Welcome to Fox News, with its tank fetishism, screaming male anchors, female reporters with platinum porn-star hair, and manipulative, flashy music. And it’s aimed at the ordinary Joe who wants to make sense of this new, dangerous world -- exactly the person who’s getting screwed most by the Bush administration.

Remember the justifications for the war in Iraq: An imminent threat. A spurious, disproved link between the target and a known enemy (al-Qaeda).

There comes a point where too much evidence accumulates to dismiss the facts as mere conspiracy -- especially when they’re backed up by the weight of history. In 1954, America overthrew a democratically government in Guatemala for the United Fruit Company. In 2003, we fought a war in Iraq for Halliburton.

There's no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime was a horrific dictatorship, rife with torture, murder, and oppression of innocents. Looking at a catalog of Saddam's atrocities, one can see how right-minded officials could be talked into supporting his overthrow. Except for two things:

(1) Saddam's record of torture and murder pales next to the horrific situations in Niger, the Congo, and Liberia, whose government has for years practiced systematic amputation of the limbs of major parts of the population. (In the ‘90s, Rwanda -- probably Clinton's biggest failure -- was a similar bloodbath.) When asked why, faced with even greater human rights crises, we don't invade those countries, Donald Rumsfeld's customary response is: "We can't be everywhere." But that leaves the crucial question unanswered: Why are we here?

(2) As my father used to say: You have to not only want what you want, you have to want what it leads to. Overthrowing Saddam's brutal dictatorship sounded like a rallying cry that free people could all get behind. But what happens in a poor, chaotic country once that regime is gone? And what's the United States's place in that "new" country?

There's no easy way out of Iraq, now. If we pull our troops out, we condemn the country to anarchy, civil war, and a continued existence as the haven for anti-American terrorists -- a situation we ourselves have created with our arrogance and our uninvited invasion. If we stay, we're a constant occupying presence for the Iraqis to hate, and the terrorists to stage attacks against.

But none of that matters to United Fruit -- I mean, to Halliburton. They get the lucrative contracts and, eventually, control of the oil flow, either way. Regardless of what kind of corrupt, anticompetitive process got them those contracts in the first place. Regardless, even, of whether they actually do the jobs they're contracted for, and whether our exhausted, relief-starved soldiers get food and water.

If it doesn't matter to Halliburton, it doesn't matter to Dick Cheney. The American media are always careful to note that Cheney stepped down as Halliburton’s chief executive when he decided to run for Vice-President. But his tax returns show that he still receives “deferred compensation” from them -- between $100,000 and $1 million per year. In my book, that’s an employee, and a pretty highly placed one at that.

And if it doesn't matter to Dick Cheney, it doesn't matter to George W. Bush.

Make no mistake: this is big corporations using the government to fight their wars. It's an administration filling its friends' pockets and strutting arrogantly around the globe, while ruining our nation's economy. It's legalized graft; it’s blood spilled to make the richest few even richer. It's war profiteering.

The Republicans have a very successful tactic for dealing with any criticism along these lines. They get indignant. More specifically, they practice a kind of paternalistic outrage: How dare you suggest the President might lie to the American people?

Here’s a newsflash: Presidents lie all the time. Democratic Presidents, Republican Presidents, Whig Presidents. Clinton lied about blowjobs. Nixon lied about coverups. Bush Sr. lied about Iran-Contra. Kennedy lied about a lot of things (including blowjobs, probably). It’s a fact of life.

The trick is deciding when the lies are important. When they’re actively hurting you and me.

I’d like to see more overtly political entertainment right now. Comics is the perfect outlet; TV, music, and movies are scared, afraid that their sponsors will pull out or that they won’t get played on Clear Channel radio stations. We’re still small enough, and outlaw enough, to get away with it.

So let’s make some noise.

‘Cause I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the Iraqi people living in United Fruit’s Guatemala. And I sure as hell don’t want to live in Dick Cheney’s private PlexMall.

**

Bibliography

Books

John H. Coatsworth, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE UNITED STATES (Twayne/Macmillan, 1994)

Pedro Gliejeses, SHATTERED HOPE: THE GUATEMALAN REVOLUTION AND THE UNITED STATES, 1944-1954 (Princeton University Press, 1991)

Walter LaFeber, INEVITABLE REVOLUTIONS: THE UNITED STATES IN CENTRAL AMERICA (2nd edition, W. W. Norton & Company, 1993)

Ernest van den Haag and Tom J. Farer, U.S. ENDS AND MEANS IN CENTRAL AMERICA: A DEBATE, (Plenum Publishing, 1988)

Articles

Robert Bryce and Julian Borger, “Cheney is still paid by Pentagon contractor,” Guardian Unlimited, March 12, 2003:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...912515,00.html

Michael Dobbs, “Halliburton's Deals Greater Than Thought,” Washington Post, August 28, 2003:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Aug27.html

Alan Moore interview re the Christic Institute:
http://www.blather.net/articles/amoo...to_light2.html

“Banana Republic: The United Fruit Company”:
http://www.mayaparadise.com/ufc1e.htm

United Fruit Historical Society Bibliography:
http://www.unitedfruit.org/bibliography.html

Comics

Howard Chaykin, AMERICAN FLAGG! (First Comics, 1983-1989). Out of print.

Alan Moore, Bill Sienkewicz, Joyce Brabner, & Tom Yeates, BROUGHT TO LIGHT: A GRAPHIC DOCUDRAMA (Eclipse Books, 1989). Out of print. An audio adaptation was published in 2000 by Codex Books (http://www.codexbooks.co.uk/brou.html ); this is also out of print.

**

Stuart Moore has been a writer, a comics editor for Vertigo and Marvel Knights, a kitchen worker, a book editor, and the nighttime manager of the Lawrenceville, NJ Woolworth's curtain department. He has won the Will Eisner award for Best Editor 1996 and the Don Thompson Award for Favorite Editor 1999.

My current comics work: LONE, a new future-western series from Dark Horse/Rocket Comics coming September 17th. It’s drawn by Jerome Opena, this year’s Russ Manning Award-winner for best newcomer, and you can read half the first issue, free, right now here. (If you get the solicitation page, just click the link labelled “e-comic.”)

My own political comic -- which, in the words of one former President, is much “kinder and gentler” than the above column -- is GIANT ROBOT WARRIORS, coming in December from AiT/PlanetLar. Details on that and other new projects, including VAMPIRELLA and PARA,here. And check out Ryan Kelly’s great double-page International Robot spread from GIANT ROBOT WARRIORS here .

Next time: No history. Just comics. Well, maybe some comics history…!

[Jeremy Williams]

Fantastic column, Stuart.

Reading this makes me wish for a political comic outthere. It would be interesting if say...a Captain America book would be that political.

[the4thpip]

Yes, great piece indeed. Thanks for posting a link on Joe Quesada's politics board. By a strange coinicidence, I mentioned United Fruit there just this week in a thread about farm subsidies of all things.

I came across a very obscure comic book the other day, the only published issue of Solson Publications T.H.U.N.D.E.R , which tried to do a Watchmen like thing with Wally Wood's agents.

I typed out the introduction because I found it kind of eerie how well they predicted the Ashcroft/Bush years back in 1987:

The country is ripe for a change and we are it – New Republic.

New Republic – also known as “People For A New Republic,” “The New Republic Party,” “The Right Way,” “American Pride.”

Group responsible for the defeat of Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party in the 1980 elections, the trend of conservatism that followed those elections, and the national wave of isolationism that has surfaced in the past 15 years.

“America is weak because of all the outside interests that control her industries, her banks, her government. Real Americans have no voice in the affairs of their own nation. Now is the time that we should change that. Protect your own, root out the foreign interests, deport the millions of aliens which are stealing our jobs, taking all the space in our schools. Now is the time of the Real American! Now is the time for the New Republic!”

How Americans responded to the call to protect the “National Pride” varied. But New Republic reached enough to start a move that would result in the complete expulsion of the United Nations from the United States. And US activities outside its borders increased; where before she had moved only to protect interests that were actively being threatened, the US now moved against any threat, real or imagined, as if to warn other nations not to cross the mighty eagle that represented all hope for freedom in the world.

UNESCO was one of the first casualties of the new American attitude toward other nations. Funding was drastically cut when the US withdrew from that UN agency. Then came the series of diplomatic “expulsions;” the US would expel 10 Russians, the U.S.S.R. would then expel 10 Americans. World opinion of Americans dropped to its lowest levels ever.

New Republic’s next move was to put forth the proposal that with growing anti-American sentiment overseas, the danger to the US and its president was greater than ever before. Threats from foreign terrorists would increase the need for a strong internal defense... And it was up to the "Patriotic Businessmen” of the US to provide funding for that defense.

(...)

“Deportation of foreign citizens would decrease the threat from within by terrorists in the guise of students and scholars!” So visas for all foreign visitors were cancelled and those people were ordered to report to immigration center for questioning and deportation. (...)

[xdemon]

"I’d like to see more overtly political entertainment right now. Comics is the perfect outlet; TV, music, and movies are scared, afraid that their sponsors will pull out or that they won’t get played on Clear Channel radio stations. We’re still small enough, and outlaw enough, to get away with it."

Bring back and support Priest's Black Panther!!!

It sounds like Morales may try to bring politics into Captain America.

[fish1000]

I read 'Shadowplay' as a teenager in my local library, and it really opened my eyes - It is a real shame this book is out of print, I think it should be on the school syllabus, just as a warning to citizens to keep their eye on whats going on in the world.

[Hebime]

Fool me once, shame on you....

Nice bait and switch there Stuart, reeling me back in with talk of one of my favorite comics of all time, then , bam, hit me with another far left polemic...

*sigh*

Oh well, I guess I've learned my lesson this time.......

[TheWriteJerry]

Excellent work, Stuart.

I normally stay so far away from politics that I never even comment on other people's comments on politics. Call it fear of confrontation, or head in the sand, or a feeling of powerlessness to change anything anyway.

But this was such an indepth, well researched, thought-provoking piece that I plan to cull through the bibliography you provided. Time to peek my head out; I hate sand in my hair anyway.

Jerry A. Novick
Political Scaredy Cat, Looking to reform

[adamania]

Stuart & Howard sittin in a tree...

Geez, man. Two straight American Flagg installments? Somebody need a little Chayk break?

[Robot H Brian]

Originally posted by Hebime
Fool me once, shame on you....

Nice bait and switch there Stuart, reeling me back in with talk of one of my favorite comics of all time, then , bam, hit me with another far left polemic...

*sigh*

Oh well, I guess I've learned my lesson this time.......

Yeah. Why craft an intelligent rebuttal when you can just dismiss it as "another far left polemic"?

Silly liberals...going on and on with their "facts" and "historical perspective" when they should be enjoying their time before Ashcroft's Patriot Act III is passed and they're all sent to Utah to face a firing squad.

[AvenGerbils Assemble]

Well-researched. Brilliant column.

I second the motion for a politically-charged Cap book. There is a precedent.

[Stuart Moore]

Thanks, everybody.

But I'm disappointed so far. Where are the Bush Republicans? Where are the right-wingers who gave us six pages of replies back here (http://newsarama.com/forums/showthre...&threadid=2875 )?

Best,
Stuart

[Dave Hudson]

Originally posted by AvenGerbils Assemble
Well-researched. Brilliant column.

I second the motion for a politically-charged Cap book. There is a precedent.

After the knee-capping Peter Milligan's Princess Di story got do you really expect Cap to be going up against Bush Jnr.?

[adampasz]

>>> hit me with another far left polemic...

Are you serious? Hey, at least he admitted Dems lie too. And I think his point about lies that really matter (i.e. cost people's jobs and lives) is dead on. Anyway, I hope these views are mainstream at this point as people finally start to see the truth of what the Bushies have been up to...

[slug N lettuce]

Im not sure why Stuart Moore thinks Americans didnt pay attention to politics in the 90's. Its about as annoying as the people who think nobody protested the first Gulf War. I was a part of many boycotts, protests, etc. as were many others who found that their leaders were not representing the people of their communities.

[lesterbangs]

Isn't Imperialism fun? For a country that's all fired up about sticking it to the terrorists (I think I'm detecting a vicious circle here) for messing with Texas and the like, the US sure seems to have a history of pissing in other people's cereal bowls. United Fruit, Allende, Cuba, Vietnam... not to mention that the CIA once helped to install the "Butcher of Baghdad" (It was in his A&E Biography so it must be true); the things that get done in the name of Ideology and profit. As a Canadian, I thank God that people haven't figured out that we're more than hockey players, maple syrup, snow and French Canadians or I'm sure we'd get hit with more than the run of the mill cultural imperialism that we are lavished with right now. Anyway, ranting aside, love the column, keep up the good work and, yeah, maybe some more political comics would be super.

"This is our policy is French IndoChina, Not one domino shall fall"
-Minutemen, "Viet Nam"

[Super Skrull]

Woh, I need to dig out my American Flagg Graphic Novels!

I read them when I was 13, and I got becuase I loved the art and thought the clothing/fashion was great on the characters. I need to reread them, my fragile little mind didn't catch on that they were about real historical events.

Although. now I'm much older, wiser, and I still care more about clothes than politics. How's that for shallow?

[blackandwhite]

Great article, Stuart.

Keep them coming.

Really learned alot here.

Thanks for a great lesson

Peace

Im with you on making "the" noise...really loud noise.

[Zonker]

GWB Republican #1765487 checking in as requested!

There's no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime was a horrific dictatorship, rife with torture, murder, and oppression of innocents. Looking at a catalog of Saddam's atrocities, one can see how right-minded officials could be talked into supporting his overthrow. Except for two things:

(1) Saddam's record of torture and murder pales next to the horrific situations in Niger, the Congo, and Liberia, whose government has for years practiced systematic amputation of the limbs of major parts of the population. (In the ‘90s, Rwanda -- probably Clinton's biggest failure -- was a similar bloodbath.) When asked why, faced with even greater human rights crises, we don't invade those countries, Donald Rumsfeld's customary response is: "We can't be everywhere." But that leaves the crucial question unanswered: Why are we here?

(2) As my father used to say: You have to not only want what you want, you have to want what it leads to. Overthrowing Saddam's brutal dictatorship sounded like a rallying cry that free people could all get behind. But what happens in a poor, chaotic country once that regime is gone? And what's the United States's place in that "new" country?

Well, thanks for at least acknowledging the historical reality of Saddam's reign. To your points...
(1) the other countries you mentioned posed no potential threat to the US-- largely because of the lack of oil revenue. So yeah, the Iraq war was about oil, but not to give Haliburton control of the oil, but to deny the Iraqi regime the oil revenue to fund its weapons programs (real or potential). Yes, Saddam was contained with sanctions, no-fly-zones and the US Military in Saudi Arabia prior the war, but understand that status quo was a source of considerable tension in that part of the world, and was at least nominally Osama bin Laden's reason for jihad against Americans: we we encamped on the Arabian peninsula too close to Mecca.

(2) it does look dark now with respect to rebuilding Iraq, but remember on what Day 3 of the war (the Sunday when the Jessica Lynch convoy was taken) when it looked like we would be bogged down militarily? Check back with the perspective of a few months and let's compare notes then. After all, the threshold for improving Iraq is set very low when you consider the previous status quo.

Regards,
Z.

[dollman]

Originally posted by Hebime
Fool me once, shame on you....

Nice bait and switch there Stuart, reeling me back in with talk of one of my favorite comics of all time, then , bam, hit me with another far left polemic...

*sigh*

Oh well, I guess I've learned my lesson this time.......

Double **sigh**

It's a shame. When presented with facts that challenge one's perceptions, rather than acknowledge there may be a flaw in one's preconceptions, and investigate the truth, the easy path is to ignore the evidence.

Well done Stuart! A very timely piece given Friday's anniversary.

[shade14]

[Double **sigh**

It's a shame. When presented with facts that challenge one's perceptions, rather than acknowledge there may be a flaw in one's preconceptions, and investigate the truth, the easy path is to ignore the evidence.]

So as long as its YOUR perception, there is no flaw. And as long as I don't have a month to write a point by point counter arguement, I'm taking the easy path and ignoring the evidence.

The truth is that politics is like sausage, closed (minded) on the left and closed (minded) on the right.

AND, bureaucracy, whether governmental or private, wastes the tax payers money.

[cyclopsfan]

"As my father used to say: You have to not only want what you want, you have to want what it leads to. Overthrowing Saddam's brutal dictatorship sounded like a rallying cry that free people could all get behind. But what happens in a poor, chaotic country once that regime is gone? "


To answer your question with another, 1. What happens in that country with the regime still in controll. Granted no wmd's have turned up, i won't (or can't) debate you on that. But to say that those people aren't better off without Saddam in Power is to say the the concentration camp prisoners were better off with Hitler still in controll.

It's to easy to say to point a finger at a company, and stir up concerns over who is going to make a dollar. If we wanna start following money trails, you would probably find a much more interesting one involving a former vice president, and China Governmental Officials...

[Michael Norton]

It's to easy to say to point a finger at a company, and stir up concerns over who is going to make a dollar. If we wanna start following money trails, you would probably find a much more interesting one involving a former vice president, and China Governmental Officials...

You're probably right about that.

I would also remind you of who's jet Bush flew around in for his presidential campaign. One guess. If you said Enron, you are correct sir!

Or here's a better question. The 9/11 report. What did the Saudis do that had to be vetted from that report? Maybe nothing illegal. Most likely nothing extremely bad. Except we don't elect the Saudi government. It most likely reflects badly on the current adminstration. And we are suppose to elect our government.

Speaking of which...

(1) the other countries you mentioned posed no potential threat to the US-- largely because of the lack of oil revenue. So yeah, the Iraq war was about oil, but not to give Haliburton control of the oil, but to deny the Iraqi regime the oil revenue to fund its weapons programs (real or potential). Yes, Saddam was contained with sanctions, no-fly-zones and the US Military in Saudi Arabia prior the war, but understand that status quo was a source of considerable tension in that part of the world, and was at least nominally Osama bin Laden's reason for jihad against Americans: we we encamped on the Arabian peninsula too close to Mecca.

OK,how about instead of worrying about denying Saddam oil money, we worry about attacking Saudi Arabia? They are a much more potent threat to the US. Not only did 15 of the 19 Sept.11th terrorists come from there, they held a public telethon to support their families shortly after! Or do we not remember that?

Michael Norton

[cyclopsfan]

Originally posted by Michael Norton
OK,how about instead of worrying about denying Saddam oil money, we worry about attacking Saudi Arabia? They are a much more potent threat to the US. Not only did 15 of the 19 Sept.11th terrorists come from there, they held a public telethon to support their families shortly after! Or do we not remember that?

Michael Norton [/b]

Well the question isn't really where do you start, but instead when do you stop? You could make an arguement for most middle eastern countries. Hi Syria and Iran Saudi Arabia Egypt. I mean which one of them wasn't mentioned in post 9/11 fallout.

I dont follow this administration with blinders on. I simply believe that it is the lesser of all political evils. As far as large companies, I for one do not get allarmed at seeing them involved in politics. They have to know something about economics, or they wouldn't be in business. I take selling yourself to internal interests over foreign interests any day.

[Michael Norton]

I dont follow this administration with blinders on. I simply believe that it is the lesser of all political evils. As far as large companies, I for one do not get allarmed at seeing them involved in politics. They have to know something about economics, or they wouldn't be in business. I take selling yourself to internal interests over foreign interests any day.

C'mon though. Enron having Bush(and a myriad of other politicians of both parties) is why they got away with what they did. I mean, you don't see Kenny-boy in prison do you? Whether they are foreign or domestic, Bush took an oath to protect the constitution from it's enemies. And when we have such a huge jobless rate, civil liberties are being thrown out the window and yet Ken Lay and the Saudis are all fine and dandy?

Let's make a leap, let's say that the unemployment means less money which means less money to retain a lawyer, so when the FBI or Homeland Security comes knockin' to search your home without a warrant, you can't fight back.

See? It's all interconnected. Wake up people.

Michael Norton

[cyclopsfan]

Ok, to make the unemployment lines shorter, we continue to nail big companies. That makes sense. Keep wiping out large companies, and you elimiate jobs by the millions.

I know it was the acounting practices of these companies that is to blame for them going under. But whose economic structure was in place when all the deficits arose to cause the faulty book keeping?

The facts are simple, Clinton economics leaned heavily on large corporations, and cut away from defense spending. At the end of his Presidency (this current economic trend had had already started) we were left with two things. Large companies collapsing, and a country that was ill prepared for the task of defending itself both at home and abroad.