Bush Dreams of Star Wars
At the height of the Cold War, schools held atom bomb drills that taught children to take cover under their desks in the event of a nuclear attack. That useless exercise now seems like good science compared to the fanciful Star Wars scheme first put forth by Ronald Reagan — and now being revived by Little George Bush. They’re like little boys with a set of military toys — we’ll put our missiles in Alaska or on ships or in space satellites, armed with explosives or laser beams to shoot down the missiles fired at us by the bad guys. Ka-powie!
Beside the fact that there’s no realistic possibility of such an attack, there’s also no realistic possibility that this bullet-hitting-a-bullet fantasy can work. Lawrence Korb, a top Pentagon official under Reagan, writes that since 1985, U.S. taxpayers have dumped $95 billion into the effort to pull off this trick, and “to date, those billions have yielded no tangible success.”
Hey, its only money, says George W., in his own stumbling way: “My point is, is that I want America to lead the nation — lead the world — toward a more safe world when it comes to nuclear weaponry.” In his convoluted world, safer means escalating the nuclear weapons race by deploying Star Wars technology — a boondoggle that has nothing to do with our national security and everything to do with enriching the executives of Pentagon contractors.
It will cost $60 billion more just to build the Yugo version of Star Wars that Bill Clinton developed. The Bush boy, however, wants the fully loaded Cadillac, with a price tag of $240 billion.
To help fight Bush’s Star Wars scam, call 202/332-0600.
Money In, Legislation Out
It’s a simple process, really: You put your money in, and the machine whirrs, cranks, and (kerplunk) delivers your product.
The machine is the corrupt Washington political system, and the product is legislation bought by the corporate interests that jam their money into the machine. The latest beneficiaries of this process are MBNA, Visa, MasterCard, and other purveyors of credit cards. These are the hustlers who recently rammed through a new bankruptcy law that will slam the door on working-class folks who lose a job, get a divorce, have a health problem, or otherwise get hit by something unforeseen, leaving them unable to pay off their credit card debt. The bill, written by credit card lobbyists, allows the industry to ruin these folks, denying them the chance for a fresh financial start. Wall Street analysts calculate that this get-tough-on-debtors legislation will deliver 5% more profit to the credit card giants next year alone.
This bill was bought. The industry poured more than $35 million into last year’s presidential and congressional elections. Take MBNA, the largest hawker of credit cards in the world. It also was the largest corporate contributor to George W., with its executives donating $240,000. To ice the cake, MBNA paid $100,000 to help finance George’s inaugural festivities. A grateful Bush became an ardent supporter of MBNA’s bankruptcy bill, unleashing White House lobbyists to help ram it through.
Both parties took the industry’s money last year, then voted for the industry’s bill — and against the people — this year. With our coin-operated congress, the rich get richer, and the rest of us get stiffed.
Lies the CIA Tells Us
You know the scenario by now: Some president wants to drum up a war or Pentagon contractors want to goose up military spending by several billion bucks, so suddenly the media begins to report that “classified intelligence information” shows that Grenada needs to be invaded by the Marines, or that an aspirin factory in Sudan needs to be bombed, or that a stupendous Star Wars military defense shield needs to be built. You get the feeling that these so-called “intelligence reports” are classified because our officials make the damned things up!
They do. Recently, the CIA stepped forward to admit that for more than a decade during the Cold War its dire warnings about the Soviet Union’s massive buildup of nuclear weapons was hype. The CIA now concedes that every major intelligence report on Soviet power from 1974 to 1986 — covering the Ford, Carter, and Reagan presidencies — “substantially” overestimated the Kremlin’s plans to expand its nuclear arsenal.
Whether you want to call it “overestimation” or “propaganda,” the fact is that these false CIA reports were not benign documents that sit on a shelf gathering dust. During that decade, they had a dramatic impact on U.S. policy. Presidents waved them around as “proof” of the imminent nuclear threat from the Big Bad Russkies. Key media outlets dutifully delivered the alarming “news” about the ongoing buildup of Soviet weapons of mass destruction. These CIA reports were used as the rationalization for huge increases in Pentagon spending, diverting federal funds from real domestic needs to hoked-up military needs.
If the CIA was jiving us then, why should we believe the CIA now?
Jim Hightower’s latest book, If The Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates, is now available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.
This article appears in March 30 • 2001.