From: juan
Date: May 29, 2008 12:25 PM
151 Congressmen Derive Financial Profit From War
Ralph Forbes OpEdNews
May 28, 2008
Who profits from the Iraq war? More than a quarter of senators and congressmen have invested at least $196 million of their own money in companies doing business with the Department of Defense (DoD) that profit from the death and destruction in Iraq.
According to the latest reports, 151 members of Congress invested close to a quarter-billion in companies that received defense contracts of at least $5 million in 2006. These companies got more than $275.
6 billion from the government in 2006, or $755 million per day, according to FedSpending. org, a website of the watchdog group OMBWatch.
Congressmen gave themselves a loophole so they only have to report their assets in broad ranges. Thus, they can be off as much as 160 percent. (Try giving the IRS an estimate like that.) In 2004, the first full year after the present Iraq war began, Republican and Democratic lawmakers-both hawks and doves-invested between $74.9 million and $161.3 million in companies under contract with the DoD. In 2006 Democrats had at least $3.7 million invested in the defense sector alone, compared to the Republicans’ "only" $577,500. As the war raged on, so did the billions of profits-and personal investments by Congress members in war contractors, which increased 5 percent from 2004 to 2006.
Investments in these contractors yielded Congress members between $15.8 million and $62 million in personal income from 2004 through 2006, through dividends, capital gains, royalties and interest. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who are two of Congress’s wealthiest members, were among the lawmakers who garnered the most income from war contractors between 2004 and 2006: Sensenbrenner got at least $3.2 million and Kerry reaped at least $2.6 million.
Members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees which oversee the Iraq war had between $32 million and $44 million invested in companies with DoD contracts.
War hawk Sen. Joe Lieberman (IConn.), chairman of the defense-related
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had at least $51,000 invested in these companies in 2006.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who voted for Bush’s war, had stock in defense companies, such as Honeywell, Boeing and Raytheon, but sold the stock in May 2007.
Of the 151 members whose investments are tied to the "defense" (war)
industry, as far as we know, not one of them offered to donate their bloodstained profits to the national treasury to offset the terrible debt they have imposed.
Has one of them even offered to donate one cent of their war profits to lessen the debt that increases more than $1 million a minute?
When our boys and girls are wounded the government bills them to return their reenlistment bonus. They have to return any pay they received while they were hospitalized. They have to pay for their helmets and uniforms that are destroyed in the hell of war. But they keep on fighting for these politicians’ right to keep their war profits.
• Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) $3,001,006 to $5,015,001
• Sen.Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) $250,001 to $500,000
• Rep. Kenny Ewell Marchant (R-Tex.) $162,074 to $162,074
• Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) $115,002 to $300,000
• Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) $115,002 to $300,000
• Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) $100,870 to $100,870
• Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) $65,646 to $65,646
• Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) $50,008 to $227,000
• Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) $50,001 to $100,000
• Rep. Stephen Ira Cohen (D-Tenn.) $45,003 to $150,000
There never was an exit stategy only lies & war profits. While they profit we pay in higher taxes, cut services & higher gas prices.
We now have an exit strategy & it is called: General Strike 9/11/08.
"Sooner or later all freedom loving Americans will realize that the only way to stop those who would bleed our nation dry, dismantle our constitution, and dissolve our national sovereignty is to say I will not work for you, buy from you, fight for you, or die for you, until the criminals are gone from the halls of our government."
In order to get involved, here are the five best steps to take now:
1) Sign up with your email address HERE in order to get updates,
2) Mark the day on your calendar and plan to be at a protest in your community,
3) Send this URL to all your friends, post it to forums, put it on your personal pages, http://www. votestrike. com
4) Be a volunteer activist, ask us how.
5) Take the lead and help organize a protest on 9/11.
http://www. infowars. com/?p=2417
Subscribe to this thread- Flag as offensive
- Login or register to post comments
- 167 reads
A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation – it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.
Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers –
yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!
Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.
Why shouldn't they?
They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are!
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
Just check out the list above and realize that money means more to them (our reps) than any one of our souls. It is disgusting. Take note that Hillary sold her stock just before she ran for office...hard to believe huh? What a c (and I don't use that word lightly)!!!
You could say that 100 million American are profiting off of "American Blood". But that would be wrong. People invest to make money. Rarely does anyone invest in a company because of what it does other then make money. Take tobacco. Tobacco kills over 1 million people per year. Tobacco stock is owned by over 10 million people.
Better to own stock in a company whose product may be responsible for the death of 100,000 then I million.
How about stock in farms making money by planting, harvesting, and selling food?
Guess how many people died doing just that?
So are those whose stock made money have profited off the deaths of those people?
By your logic, they did.
And you see the D and the R behind all the names. It does not matter. They are all crooks and care more about graft than the Constitution. VOTE THESE PIGS OUT OF OFFICE.
Well said friend from another planet.
This story should be front page news on every single newspaper and online newswire in America. Which means, in the ridiculous USA of 2008, it will be on page one of none. I realize a lot of these Congresscritters just give money to investment banksters to invest as they see fit in so called "blind trusts" - but cmonnnnnnnnnnn. John Kerry at the top of the blood-profits?? What a f-in traitorous douche. Someday all the throngs of dems that are teeming with hope for 'change' will realize that they have been hoodwinked by a corrupt D.C. establishment that cares not for America, but only for themselves, their cronies, their yachts and summerhomes and gay or underage female escorts. Perhaps once exposed we could welcome the Dem(s) and R(s)into the light of truth. Given our sad education system and complicit propaganda media, I ain't counting on it happening anytime soon.
"Inexplicable humans...how can you combine so much baseness and so much greatness, so many virtues and so many crimes?" Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire, 'The World As it Is" circa 1748.