The Bush Administration's Hypocrisy
Today Donald Rumsfeld made a speech in Singapore where he bluntly criticized China for spending too much money on missiles and "up-to-date military technology". He said instead that money should be used to further China's political freedom and open markets.
Does that sound hypocritical to anyone else? Considering the US is spending 8 times as much money-- $350 billion more-- on our military than they are. Who are we to tell China how to spend their money? I wish China would turn back around and tell the US to quit paying favors to big businesses like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman who we gave the largest military contract in history --$250 billion-- to build 6000 new planes and cut down on our military's size. Which will never happen because of the corporate handjobs given to all of our politicians. That $250 billion contract is the perfect picture of how much big corporations run our government-- the guy who was put in charge of choosing who to give the contract to was Air Force Secretary James Roche-- who just so happened to be a top executive at Northrop Grumman for 17 years. This is made even more humorous because of what George W Bush's campaign advisor Richard Armitage said before the 2000 election:
"George Bush has said if he is fortunate enough to be elected president, he is going to look at our whole military situation, including the tactical air account. He's noted that the 3000 number [of planes] seems a bit much."
Apparently 9000 planes isn't a bit much. So why did Bush's mind change? 9/11? Maybe-- but it seems more likely to me that he showed up in Washington and realized that the people building those airplanes were giving a lot of money to him and to pretty much everyone with any pull in Washington. It's not surprising that Lockheed spent $2.7 million on soft money contributions (more than 2/3 of that money going to Republicans) in the 2004 election. Northrop Grumman split around $4 million between the two parties. James Ukropina, a director at Lockheed, made the maximum legal contribution of $1000 to almost every republican candidate running in California and to George W. Bush for president. If that's not legal bribery then it's at least good old fashioned conflict of interest.
It just erks me that Donald Rumsfeld can keep from cracking a smile when he's telling China that they should stop spending so much money on their defense. I guarantee that the Bush administration wouldn't be saying anything if China had asked Lockheed to build their planes (unless homosexuals would be flying them)-- and, hell, he wouldn't even care what China blew up with those planes as long as they payed Halliburton to rebuild it.
I'm so tired with the hypocrisy in our system. The US telling China to stop spending so much on their military is like Ken Lay telling Martha Stewart to use ethical business practices.
Does that sound hypocritical to anyone else? Considering the US is spending 8 times as much money-- $350 billion more-- on our military than they are. Who are we to tell China how to spend their money? I wish China would turn back around and tell the US to quit paying favors to big businesses like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman who we gave the largest military contract in history --$250 billion-- to build 6000 new planes and cut down on our military's size. Which will never happen because of the corporate handjobs given to all of our politicians. That $250 billion contract is the perfect picture of how much big corporations run our government-- the guy who was put in charge of choosing who to give the contract to was Air Force Secretary James Roche-- who just so happened to be a top executive at Northrop Grumman for 17 years. This is made even more humorous because of what George W Bush's campaign advisor Richard Armitage said before the 2000 election:
"George Bush has said if he is fortunate enough to be elected president, he is going to look at our whole military situation, including the tactical air account. He's noted that the 3000 number [of planes] seems a bit much."
Apparently 9000 planes isn't a bit much. So why did Bush's mind change? 9/11? Maybe-- but it seems more likely to me that he showed up in Washington and realized that the people building those airplanes were giving a lot of money to him and to pretty much everyone with any pull in Washington. It's not surprising that Lockheed spent $2.7 million on soft money contributions (more than 2/3 of that money going to Republicans) in the 2004 election. Northrop Grumman split around $4 million between the two parties. James Ukropina, a director at Lockheed, made the maximum legal contribution of $1000 to almost every republican candidate running in California and to George W. Bush for president. If that's not legal bribery then it's at least good old fashioned conflict of interest.
It just erks me that Donald Rumsfeld can keep from cracking a smile when he's telling China that they should stop spending so much money on their defense. I guarantee that the Bush administration wouldn't be saying anything if China had asked Lockheed to build their planes (unless homosexuals would be flying them)-- and, hell, he wouldn't even care what China blew up with those planes as long as they payed Halliburton to rebuild it.
I'm so tired with the hypocrisy in our system. The US telling China to stop spending so much on their military is like Ken Lay telling Martha Stewart to use ethical business practices.
posted by spankidiots at 10:36 PM
1 Comments:
I agree.
Hope your summer is going well!
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