Empire Of Chaos - USA's Empire for Profit [of a few]

[Peter Lemkin]

EMPIRE OF CHAOS

The United States' empire was at its peak following World War II. America ruled the globe economically and militarily. It's influence was ubiquitous and its soft power seemingly unlimited. But, arrogance and greed transformed the United States into a pariah. We are feared for our power, but no longer respected for our institutions. Inequality, injustice, corruption, hypocrisy, betrayal and violence, have turned much of the world against us.Sanctions, structural-adjustment, economic warfare. Coups, regime change, color revolutions. 'Responsibility-2-protect', 'coalitions-of-the-willing'. Counter-insurgencies, assassinations. Weapons trade, drug trafficking. Napalm, cluster bombs, landmines, depleted uranium, chemical and biological weapons.This destructive legacy has resulted in the suffering and death of millions, so that American corporations and banks can expand their markets and reap enormous profits, while the United States military achieves strategic global hegemony.As the United States continues to demonstrate how easily it can manipulate elections, exploit popular unrest and undermine economies around the world, many developing nations are concluding that less freedom and more authoritarianism may be their best option to withstand the 21st century 'realpolitik' of U.S. 'democracy promotion'.And, while U.S. financial and military aggression escalates in reaction to America's economic, societal and democratic decline, the global chaos that results may leave millons in misery and a world in ruins. THE 'INDISPENSIBLE NATION'

"If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensible nation."

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (1998)

"Since World War Two the United States has attempted to overthrow more than fifty foreign governments, it has dropped bombs on the people of around thirty countries, has attempted to assassinate some sixty foreign leaders, helped to suppress dozens of populist or nationalist movements, has tortured many thousands, and seriously and illegally intervened in one way or another in virtually every country on the planet, in the process of which the U.S. has caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair."

William Blum, in a speech at the University of Vermont, 2007

"Coming to grips with U.S./CIA activities in broad numbers and figuring out how many people have been killed in the jungles of Laos or the hills of Nicaragua is very difficult. But, adding them up as best we can, we come up with a figure of six million people killed-and this is a minimum figure. Included are: one million killed in the Korean War, two million killed in the Vietnam War, 800,000 killed in Indonesia, one million in Cambodia, 20,000 killed in Angola ... and 22,000 killed in Nicaragua. These people would not have died if U.S. tax dollars had not been spent by the CIA to inflame tensions, finance covert political and military activities and destabilize societies."

John Stockwell, CIA official in the 1960s and 1970s

"The US spends almost half of all the military spending in the entire world, equal to virtually all the other countries combined. More than half of the weapons sold in the world are sold by the United States. The US has more than 700 military bases scattered across dozens of countries. The US is the world's leading trainer of paramilitaries. The US has a series of courses, from interrogators to generals, that have graduated military people guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in dozens upon dozens of countries. The US has a series of covert paramilitary forces of its own that get almost no attention. This is the U.S. military machine. In addition, there's the support for repressive non-democratic governments and for governments that commit aggression. There are about forty of them that the US backs."

journalist Allan Nairn, 2010

"We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations."

Robert Bowman, Vietnam Veteran

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a cynical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

British playwright Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Lecture

"New military bases have been built since 9/11 in Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar and Bahrain. The US military has 737 bases in 63 countries according to the 2005 Base Structure Report, but the actual number probably exceeds 1,000."

Eric Walberg, 2011

"About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon, and went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said 'I just got this from upstairs [meaning the Secretary of Defense's office] today. This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran'."

General Wesley Clark, 2007

"The real motivation behind US military interventions during the cold war was not Soviet deterrence, but the crushing of popular, indigenous nationalist movements for independence, and the establishment of US control over strategic regions."

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed in his book "Behind the War on Terror"

"It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms."

John Stockwell, CIA official in the 1960s and 1970s

"This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it."

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright
on "60 Minutes" (1996), when she was asked whether she considered the deaths of half a million Iraqi children as the result of U.S. sanctions - acceptable

"Do American leaders really believe the utterances that emanate from their mouths? When the words "god" and "prayer" are regularly invoked in their talks, while American Hellfire missiles are sent screaming into a city center or a village marketplace teeming with life ...when they carry on endlessly about democracy and freedom, while American soldiers are smashing down doors, dragging off the men, humiliating the women, traumatizing the children. When they proclaim the liberation of a people and the bringing forth of a better life, while vast quantities of American depleted uranium are exploding into a fine vapor which will poison the air, the soil, the blood, and the genes forever."

William Blum

"Stop talking so much about democracy and instead support dictatorships of the right if their policies are pro-American."

U.S. Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, 1954

"Almost from the beginning, the CIA engaged not only in the collection of intelligence information, but also in covert operations which involved rigging elections and manipulating labor unions abroad, carrying on paramilitary operations, overturning governments, assassinating foreign officials, protecting former Nazis and lying to Congress."

former Senator George McGovern, 1987

"In every country, embassies are used for spying. So, it would be dumb for a country to put its real intelligence-gathering officers inside an embassy or consulate or attaché', because that is the first place a hosting nation is going to look for spies. So, the number one place the United States and other countries place their intelligence-gathering officers and informants is NGOs. In Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and elsewhere in the world, United States' NGOs - over 90% of them - are operations bases for the CIA."

Sibel Edmonds

"With the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, NATO's real role in the US empire has become clearer as, instead of disbanding, it expanded to encompass, in conjunction with US military commands, most of the world. It has become the centerpiece of the empire's military presence around the world, moving quickly to respond to US needs to intervene where the UN won't."

Eric Walberg, 2011