Obama's military staff denounced as 'corrupt'

That is what Robert Parry and others argue at Voltaire Net. 

The key appointments are:

• Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under Bush Jr., repeats under Obama. He is a most important element not just highlighting the continuity between both governments in this aspect but also the corrupt drive that transcends bipartisan politics in the USA nowadays (more below).
• William Lynn, Deputy Defense Secretary, a top level lobbyist for Raytheon, a large military corporation, led by William H. Swanson. Doubts were cast upon his appointment because of very questionable accounting practices against public interest, while Defense Department comptroller under Clinton ($3.4 trillion missing!)
• Admiral Dennis Blair, appointed to coordinate National Intelligence. He aggravated the Indonesian crisis of 1999 by falsely telling Indonesian leaders that they had full US support, and falsely 'informig' Congress about what was actually happening. He is a member of the Trilateral Commission (the Imperial Senate since 1972) and has worked for two weapons industries: Earl Dodge Osborne and Tyco International.
• General James L. Jones, who has served a host of military industries: Chevron, Boeing, Invacare Corp., Cross Match Technologies, M.I.C. Industries. Works as right hand of Blair.
• Robert F. Hale, friend of Lynn and co-suspect of his corruption practices.

Gates and Bush Sr.: or how the secret services became the Minitrue

Robert Gates (left) is described as far more a hawk than Ronald Rumsfeld. Like other of Bush' men he began his career under Nixon but his most notable action was to be chief analyst of the CIA under Ronald Reagan and William Cassey, a time when he is reported (by colleague Melvin A. Goodman)  to have dismantled the capability of the agency to provide objective unbiased information.

Gates became CIA director under Bush Sr., who also came from The Agency. Most witness accounts of his corruption of intelligence come from his appointment procedure. His false testimony in the Iran-Contra scandal also weights in his curriculum.

He has been always very active in relation Iraq, providing chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein and promoting the "surge" later on. He served in Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), which is a large military contractor. At that time, 2005, he earned $7.5 billion yearly.

It would seem that if the 1990s saw the rising of the power of secret services in Russia, culminating with the presidential takeover by Vladimir Putin (alias Stasi), the same happened in the USA, with the presidential disembark of George Bush Sr. and Robert Gates. We know that Bush Sr. has not been inactive since losing to Bill Clinton but, according to Michael Moore, is the only former president exerting his privilege to receive daily intelligence memorandums. We are surely before two of the most relevant shadow political and financial figures in recent US and World history.


Lynn the trillionaire embezzler and why the Pentagon was targeted in 9/11.

As mentioned above, William Lynn (left) is accused of embezzling or allowing the embezzling of $3.4 trillions from US budget (1999 and 2000, Dept. of Defense). That alone makes for four economic stimulus programs.

He failed to make public the audited financial statements and got away with it.

The 9/11 Pentagon bombing (most unlikely plane, missile or in situ explosives) conveniently destroyed the accountancy of Lynn's period. Now he is again in charge.


An improved understanding of real politics

It is I think an important article because it evidences the dominant role of oligopolistic shadow parties and corruption in US governance (and by extension in all The Empire). In this analysis the most obvious one is the Military-Industrial Complex, the driving force of imperial and militarist policies, whose benefits they reap easily, regardless of what happens to the rest. The ominous dominance of the MIC has been a central thread of US politics since at least Eisenhower and probably before.

Another maybe less visible element that appears in this analysis is the Trilateral Commission, the shadowy private council of imperial governance, made up of prominent people from North America, Europe and the Pacific region. The Trilateral acts as a think tank and a coordination body for the governance of the whole Empire, including the USA.

Yet another thread I mentioned apparent since at least Bush Sr., is the transformation of intelligence services into disinformation agencies. Several key people in the latest administrations come from this school (of vices).

Finally maybe the most impressive of all the issues is that of trans-partisan corruption, with the corrupts dancing from administration to administration and also the big corporations, without their standing being affected the least by their crimes.

Together they provide a better understanding of the mafioso and oligarchic real government we all have. It also provides a good historical example of how the formation of empires, at least in Western societies, is road of corruption and degeneration of civil government into a privatization of the resorts of power. It is very much comparable to the triumvirates of the late Roman Republic, as it fell towards aristocratic monarchy.