From the White House and the Office of the President of the
United States we present an address by Dwight D. Eisenhower.
This is the farewell address for president Eisenhower, whose...
eight years as chief executive come to an end that noon Friday.
Good evening, my fellow Americans.
We now stand 10 years passed the midpoint of the century,
that has witnessed four major wars among great nations.
Three of these involved our own country.
We have been compelled to create a...
permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.
Three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.
Of this conjunction, of an immense military establishment...
and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.
We recognize the imperative need for this development.
Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.
What are we fighting for?
Why do we bury our sons and fathers in lonely graves, far away from home?
Our men are dying to preserve a way of life.
This religion, these rights, they are precious enough to fight for, precious enough to die for.
WHY WE FIGHT
The United States is the greatest force for good in the world.
And we have not an obligation to go out and fight and start wars,
but certainly do everything we can to spread democracy and freedom throughout the world.
We shall pay any price, bear any burden...
to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
- What are we fighting for? - Freedom.
Freedom.
I think we're fighting because it's necessary and because it's right.
We are not talking simply about the price of gas,
we are talking about the price of liberty.
We seek neither territory nor bases.
We fight for the principle of self-determination.
America's strength and military power have been a force for peace, not conflicts.
By keeping our military strong, by using force where...
we must, America is making a difference...
... for people here and around the world.
Our course is just. And no matter how long it takes,
we will defeat the enemies of freedom.
I was on my way to work and I was taking the subway,
which is elevated subway.
And as the subway heads to New York it comes a point...
where it makes a very abrupt lefthand turn, almost a 90 degree turn.
And when it does that the wheels of the subway always screech loudly.
If you look out of the window that's when you can see the World Trade Center.
I was sitting on subway, reading as I always do.
Train made a lefthand turn, the wheels screeched,
everybody jumped up and start to gasp...
'Oh.'
And I look up and there's the building with smoke pouring out of it.
I didn't know if that was my son's building, because...
tower 1 and tower 2 were in perfect symmetry.
And I didn't know which tower I'm looking at.
And I'm just thinking to myself you know, 'How did my son get out of there?'
I don't know how, but he got out of there. There's no two ways about that.
He can't be in there. Cause anybody who's in there is gonna die.
Blowback.
It's a CIA turn.
Blowback does not mean simply the unintended consequences of foreign operations.
It means the unintended consequences of foreign operations,
that were deliberately kept secret from the American public.
So that when the retaliation comes, the American public is not...
able to put it in context, to put cause and effect together.
That they come up with questions like 'Why did they hate us?'
The forces of evil declared war on the America...
Since Pearl Harbor has there been so much national...
Bringing the democracy under attack.
'Why do they hate us?' That's the question everybody's asking.
Our government did not want the forensic question asked 'What were their motives?'.
And instead shows to say 'Thy were just evil doers.'
And the towers keep falling. Every five minutes they go to tower again.
I've Come on the phone, I call the NBC.
I'm listening to your newscast. How many times you gonna show those goddamn towers coming down?
Don't you have any respect for the people, who have family and friends in those towers?
Do we have to keep watching them fall down? I watch them...
fall down fifty times already. When are you gonna stop?
Please stop. You are ripping my heart out.
...I guess people, that hate freedom.
God gave me two greatest sons any parent could ever ask for.
Why he took one back?
I'll never know.
I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you.
And the people..
And the people, who knock these buildings down will hear all of us soon.
Yeah!
USA! USA!
Somebody has to pay for this.
Somebody has to pay for 9/11th.
I want enemy dead. I wanna see their bodies...
stacked up, for what they did, for taking my son.
On September 12, 2001, The President's national security team met...
to discuss a military response to the attacks of the previous day.
The discussion included the prospect of a...
preemptive military strike against the nation of Iraq.
There was a moment when the entire world was behind us.
There was a million people, demonstrating in the streets of Teheran
in favor of the United States.
We had the world behind us.
Now kids are dying.
Billions are being spent every month.
Animosity against United States is stronger now than it ever has been in history.
What happened here?
Is it just the experience of September 11th?
Or is there something else going on here?
When something like this happens you got to take stock...
of this, you got to understand what went wrong here.
We live here in the United States of Amnesia. No one remembers anything before Monday morning.
Everything is a blank. We have no history.
Guatemala 1954.
The United States intervened unilaterally, to protect its vital interests.
Lebanon 1959, the United States fills its policy of...
containment and the Middle East is threatened.
They response openly an unilaterally.
The United States intervened in Laos, Boetoeng, Brazil.
There are so many theories about what happened in Iraq.
And why we really went in.
But when you look at the history of the United States, almost every president,
there is something we don't like, somewhere in...
the world and we've got to dispense military force.
Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada in 1983.
Last night I ordered US military forces to Panama.
This is not about one president or one party.
We fight as a nation because we perceive it is our interest to fight.
And we then mention words like freedom...
and nice common values. Who can be against freedom?
When in fact much more has been going on privately.
Just completed the meating where our national security...
team and we've received the latest intelligence updates.
The deliberate and deadly attacks, which occurred yesterday against our country
were more than acts of terror.
They were acts of war.
September 11th, 2001 provided a group of people,
deeply committed to the expansion of the American empire.
The opportunity to implement plans that they had been laying since 1992.
At that time a young Paul Wufowitz was working in a subordinate position
under Dick Chaney, then Secretary of Defense, in the Pentagon.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Chaney orders
Wufowitz to write a plan, to write a grand strategy.
That it was now our destiny that without the Soviet Union...
there is no one who can possibly approach us in military terms.
It says, that's the way it ought to be and our policy must...
be to maintain and expand that. That we are the new Rome.
That's their strategy, on 9/11 they began to implement it.
It's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable,
but removing the sanctuary is removing...
the support systems, ending states response territory...
The people who came in with the president, there are many of them anyway,
were certainly prepared to shift direction in a...
radical direction, I think it's fair to say radical.
When September 11th happened, the President and...
his top advisors said to themselves, correctly I think,
'We need to rethink American foreign policy'
And I think that would have happened even without the September 11th.
But September 11th was really the event, that changed American foreign policy.
When I was in a Pentagon, when we got hit, you know, yes it did change.
It was a very dramatic and terrible thing.
And it does change the perspective. But the war in Iraq had nothing to do with war on terrorism.
There was a huge leap, a manufactured leap. In order to...
implement a very calculated and predeveloped foreign policy.
We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans...
and confront the worst threats before they emerge.
The Bush doctrine is that preemptive strikes or preemptive...
conflicts, which would never contemplated in the past,
now have to be contemplated under certain scenarios.
If you saw the missile about to be launched and you could...
kick it over before it could be launched, you'd do it, of course.
If you saw someone about to shoot at you and you thought...
you can shoot first, you'd do it. It's common sense.
I don't know anybody who doesn't agree with that.
So what's the big fuss about preemption?
March 19th is a night I will never forget.
March 19th is one for the history books. It's one for my personal history books.
On March 19, 2003, the U.S. Air Force Stealth Fighter Wing was ordered...
to conduct a precision airstrike on a location in southern Baghdad.
When we first got the phone call, all what they told us, we have a high priority mission.
A high value target. It was one of those SAS, it was a leadership target.
The F-117 is an extraordinary machine and it is only ordered...
forward on the order of the President or the Secretary of Defense.
First night od the conflict, the 117 pilots were fully trained.
All they had to do is be briefed, have the weapons put on.
The whole mission up to this point was kept at the top secret levels.
I think they really didn't expect both of us to come back, which is why they sent two jets.
It's now 3:30, we have to hit the target at 5:30 or all bets are off.
The President of the United States called it a target of opportunity,
and they wanted to take advantage of it and they did.
It's quite chilly and cold, I'm looking southwards,
expecting any attack to come in from the south.
The choice in the timing is entirely now in the hands of the allies.
The Bush doctrine is certainly not something unprecedented, unknown in American life.
This statement that we are going to dominate the world through military power,
that we reserve to ourselves the right of preemptive war.
It is an extreme statement of what has been there in the works for a long time.
World War ll is without question the formation of the American military empire.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme
Commander in Chief of allied expeditionary force.
I have complete confidence that the soldiers, sailors...
and Army of the United Nations will demonstrate
that an aroused democracy is almost quantifiable fighting machine that can be devised.
Eisenhower was there and saw it happening.
He had seen the build up of the American military to fight World War ll.
I this war, more than any other in history, we are...
on the side of decency and democracy and liberty.
He believed very deeply in the necessity for World War ll.
And felt that Nazism was a terrible tyranny.
And he brought this conviction to defeating Nazi Germany.
People waited for this moment the culminating victory, the end of the war.
We were on top of the world. We were only unwrecked major power on earth.
Europe was bleeding to death, Japan was gone, those paper cities had all been burned up.
So what are we doing?
At 2:45 in the morning August 6th, 1945, colonel Tibbits takes the...
It is an atomic bomb, it is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.
The United States bombed the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th 1945.
And three days later, they detonated another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.
What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history.
I can remember in the Pacific, when the word spread, that the bombs had been dropped.
99.9 percent of us were delighted, because we'd been...
convinced that if Japan was not hit by nuclear weapons,
one million of us would be killed.
Drop those bombs and they will surrender.
Well they were trying to surrender all that summer, Truman...
wouldn't listen, because Truman wanted to drop the bombs...
To show off, to frighten Stalin, to change the balance...
of power in the world, to declare war on communism.
Perhaps we were starting a preemptive World War.
Eisenhower hated the dropping of them and thought it should not have been done.
We just thought war was terrible enough as it was.
I can not trace evolution of my dad's thinking.
He was complex, he was a five star general, but he was never military fanatic, never.
One night in July of 45, that day the Secretary of War had told...
my father about the development of atomic weapon, atomic bomb.
He was sitting up in his bedroom and he said that his all first...
impression, his all emotions had been to be feeling down low.
He wished we hadn't adverted it.
In the background was the growing conflict between...
two great powers to shape the postwar world.
Already an Iron Curtain had dropped around Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia.
You see, we had to fight communism wherever it was in the world.
So a decision was made that the United States will remain militarized...
... permanently.
We lack the weapons to defend ourselves, build, prepare as required.
Quickly the government springs an election and initiate the gigantic rearmament programme,
a programme designed to make America the arsenal of democracy.
From that moment on the American empire was in every corner of the earth.
In Burma and Iceland...
We were going to maintain dominance not just of
Europe, not just of Japan, but of the entire globe.
'Oh gee I wish, that I could be with you tonight.'
'Gee I wish'
'And gee I know, that everything will be alright.'
'The crickets are singing a love song.'
What are we fighting for?
Fighting for continued freedom.
That's the only way we're gonna have it, I think.
Why do we fight? I think that the... I honestly don't have an answer for it.
It's just... the people who start the war, who know what they are fighting about.
I think we fight for ideals and what we believe in. I hope that so what it is.
Today we don't have a broad based American feeling about why we are fighting in Iraq.
People's confidence in the United States is not what it was...
50 years ago, it's not what it was during the World War ll.
Yesterday USA precious celluloids, such as...
'Why we fight' orientation films, depicting our soldiers...
You know it's interesting 'Why we fight' was...
actually the title of series of World War ll films.
They were done by one of the great directors.
Master of the of the art of motion picture entertainment, Frank Cappra.
The Frank Cappra films, even back then were propaganda.
To kind of build up a war fewer.
Americans fighting.
But given that it was during a global Word War...
there were a lot of reasons that Americans embrace.
We are fighting for liberty, the most expensive luxury known to man.
Today, if you went downtown, to my local town and you ask five...
people 'Why we are fighting in Iraq?' you get five different answers.
Why do we fight? I 'm not quite sure,
but I think it's for powering control, for greed.
I'm not sure if we are fighting for the oil or not. We could be, we could not be.
Our government has more knowledge than I know.
I think everybody has the different idea why we are there.
And a lot of people think we shouldn't be.
What we're seeing is a disconnection of our American foreign...
policy from the citizen, from average American citizen.
Why do we fight?
I wish we didn't. Sometimes you have to though.
This is one of my favorite pictures of all time. Smiling with his two teeth.
Man Jason.
What can I do for my son's memory?
I'm not a millionaire.
I can't build schools and libraries. We're just a regular couple on pension.
I want to be able to do something.
So that hopefully one day, I can go over to my son's grave...
and tell him that I've done something in his memory
that hopefully will be a step in preventing another attack like that.
After September 11, the Pentagon unveiled a new weapon for use against terrorists.
The bomb is designed to be delivered inside a target.
My expertise is an explosive technology.
And so are a lot of my colleagues here at Indian Head.
When Pentagon called, my position then was the head of what we call 'the pay load team'.
A bomb, it's the Norman cliche for bomb.
I find it's sometimes amusing when people ask me,
'where do you work?' and I would say explosive. And they would...
But our mission was to quickly weaponize what was called a 'penetrator'.
It basically was a big bomb, engineered to enhance its blast effect...
inside confine structures, such as tunnels, caves, et cetera.
We're gonna attack somebody, we're gonna bomb some place, there's no question about that.
The question is, where are we gonna do it and why?
Do you think that after an advisory gets nuclear weapons...
is a better time to engage that advisory then now without?
Iraq continues to flaw in its hostility toward America and to support terror.
This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003, is to a very considerable extent about...
repositioning the United States as the country that must be obeyed.
It's an easy way to send the signal to the planet, that the
United States is in charge and it's going to what it wants.
And anybody who defies the United States will be punished.
The decision to attack Iraqi leadership at the opening selva,
it was a bold new, it was a new way of making war.
And technology was able to provide our leadership that opportunity.
Now we have received this new weapon, called the 'Enhanced gutter bomb unit 27'.
And it was like the new candy at the candy store.
We needed something that was gonna give us a capability to strike through the weather
and don't worry about having to bring the bombs home.
The whole of the city is still lit very brightly.
But nobody's moving on the streets whatsoever.
It's like everybody here is holding their breath.
We really didn't know who was there and...
who was gonna take the blow of what we're about to do.
We both probably had our suspicions about who it was.
We've got some indications that maybe sons maybe Saddam himself.
Assassination, people sometimes think with precision weapons
that maybe you can now assassinate people from very hard place.
First of all, if it's a fixed target like a building...
you have the time to understand its location.
The next hardest target is one that moves around...
and a single hardest target of all is a human being.
Sometimes, before you can bring about democratic change,
you have to remove the obstacle to democratic change.
You have to remove Saddam Hussein, because...
there is no hope for democracy with Saddam there.
The point in many ways for these guys wasn't just
to target Saddam, it was to transform the Middle East.
They wanna take the US military and go in and...
show up American interest in the key area of the world.
And that's their vision.
They wanna spread democracy around the world on the point around Baghdad’s.
- Do you want Iraq to be like America?
What can I say? Some people do and some people don't.
I want American streets, her gardens, her buildings.
That's what I want.
In the beginning we stood against America, but there are people...
...who were welcoming America.
They said, 'America is a democracy and really they will liberate us.'
Before the war, frankly, many of us were clapping.
'Live, Live Bush!'
'Die, Die Saddam!'
'Live, Live Bush!'
'Die, Die Saddam!'
I think most Americans don't want to police the world,...
...but I think most Americans understand that if we don't...
at least help to police the world then no one's going to.
Where the debate and controversy begins...
... is how far does the United States go, when does...
it go from a force for good to a force of imperialism?
People complain a lot about American arrogance and American power.
But the great threat for the future is not American power or American strength.
It would be American weakness and American withdrawal.
They do believe that this is not only for the long term benefit for the United States...
... but it's for the long term benefit for everybody else as well.
We'll bring them American values, prosperity, peace, all the rest of it.
But the way we're gonna do that is to take over,
even more than we did it at the height of the cold war.
Three, two, one.
Fire.
After the second World War the United States literally divided the world up into commands.
And some American officer was responsible for every region of the world.
There was the subdominant theory that if any of these places fall to communism,...
... then the next place, and the next place, and the next place...
will fall as well. And the next thing you know they're in Missouri.
Once upon a time your hometown was safe.
But not now. It is possible for a rocket...
to strike your home, right now, today, right now.
And what defense remains? Strength, strength ready if we need it.
When my dad first became president, he came in at the beginning of the third nuclear age.
I think we have to put the 1950's into perspective.
We look back today and we think that 1950's was a period of Elvis Presley and poodle skirts.
But in fact it was very dangerous period of time.
Defense budgets throughout the western world, doubled or tripled in four years in 1948-52.
The Soviets are outproducing Americas aircraft factories.
There is a threat, but we can't measure how much...
is enough defense spending to stop the Soviet Union.
So by the time Eisenhower is president, there is a huge new flow of cash into defense industries.
He was the first to acknowledge that a permanent...
military establishment would be required during this period.
But then unless we could find some kind of breakthrough,
that in fact it would end up creating a terrible cost.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this.
In modern brick school more than 36.
It is two electric power plants serving at 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
We pay for a single fireplane with a half million a week.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 9,000 people.
This is not a way of life at all.
And then the truth is...
Under the cloud of threatening war it is humanity hanging from across the violence.
My father is president, yet withdraws guiding principles.
He used to say weapons take food from the hungry and shelter from the homeless.
So he was fighting with the Pentagon all the time.
For asking how much is Congress giving to.
I don't think we should pay one cent for defense more than we have to.
Eisenhower saw a starting to build programme after programme, that was just out of control.
And his own ability to shape national security policy...
was being hemmed in by these forces, he couldn't control.
And he was the President.
On at least one occasion Eisenhower was heard to say by those in the room,
'God help this country when somebody sits at this desk,
who doesn't know as much about the military as I do.'
January 17, 1961 Presided Eisenhower's farewell address to the American people.
My fellow Americans, this evening I come to you with message of leave taking and farewell.
And to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.
3,5 million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.
The total influence, economic, political, even spiritual...
is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government.
We recognize the imperative need for this development.
Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.
In the councils of government we must guard against, the acquisition of unwanted influence,
whether sort or unsort by the military industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
You have to realise, this is one of the greatest presidents,
great military leaders on his way out the door.
At the end of his second term he says...
'By the way, watch out for the military-industrial complex'.
People know that he invented the phrase 'military-industrial complex'
But very rarely you see the whole thing and...
realise how utterly straightened his warning was.
I think it's one of the most profound statements ever made by an American President.
Just like George Washington gave his warnings about foreign tackles and things like that.
My dad was giving his warning against...
this military-industrial complex, get out of hand.
We must never let the wait of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
BLUE ANGELS AlR SHOW Pensacola, FL
CELEBRATE FREEDOM AlR SHOW Camden, SC
Today, the United States spends more on defense than on...
all other discretionary parts of the federal budget combined.
President has asked Congress for 401,7 billion dollars for fiscal year 2005.
Our country spends more on defense than all of the...
other 18 members of NATO plus China and Russia.
From my point I think numbers almost are distracting.
2003 AUSA Defense Show Washington, DC
This is the medium machine gun, 7.62 mm over a 450 rounds per minute.
I'm here to see hit-to-kill technology, I'm not familiar with it.
It's a missile that goes up and shoots a tactical ballistic missiles out of the sky.
These are my two daughters.
President Eisenhower's concern about the military...
industrial complex, his words have unfortunately come true.
He was worried that priorities are set by the what benefits corporations...
is opposed to what benefits the country.
Name any plane part that would come into your mind. 1,2,3 name a part...
Perfect, now we've never met before, no collusion.
Which is really odd, because collusion is our business.
Yes, collusion with the military.
You know, people sometimes think of the defense...
budget as you got to arm the troops, defend the nation.
But for most people who are involved in that, you realize this is business.
Competition for contracts between very large corporations.
Industry has to have a bottom line that's black, otherwise their shareholders don't like that.
So they have to find ways to interest the government in continuing to buy the product.
Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas and Boeing throughout America.
There are factories, there are corporations, that are involved on a daily basis...
...to produce the weaponry, the ammunition, to carry out the American way of war.
Raytheon Missile Systems Tucson, AZ
The overall rate here on mission in general, is to be the...
premier supply of solutions that meet our customers' needs.
Our job is to provide tactical missiles for our practical purposes.
Laser-guided bombs, Tomahawk missiles, Stinger...
missiles, veilings, which is actually a great big gun.
The American way of war has been described as...
overwhelming firepower, supported by overwhelming logistics.
For every shooter out there, every man with a gun there are hundreds behind supporting,...
... providing the ammunition, the boots, the gas for the tanks, the oil.
I don't guess I'm real proud of the fact that I make...
bombs, you know, for what they're used for.
I think about when I see something explode out there,
that my hands actually help make that, you know.
I'd rather really be helping Santa make toys is what I'd really rather be doing.
We're trying connect our people with the actual guy in the field,
in the plane, some of them are their sons or their daughters.
Is your son is reservist?
Yes, he is reservist with the 6/52, engineer.
Sometimes I'm okay, another times I can cry a river.
You wrap the flag around every weapon system,
every weapon system is supposed to be for the troops.
Give the soldier the tools they need. But it ends up becoming a product competition.
If you had the same car year after year, if industry...
didn't change the car at all, would you buy a different car?
No. But when they come up with something that's got extra bells and whistles...
... and it suits what you need it to do, then you'll buy more.
If you look at the weapons that were buying,
new aircraft carriers, new submarines, F22 fighters.
You know for an attack, that if FBI estimates probably...
cost of Al-Qaeda or Osama, 500 cade are pulled off.
We are now spending more than we did at the peak of Vietnam.
A lot of what's going on is simply because people don't...
understand the larger architecture of how the Pentagon operates.
Mister Chairman and distinguished members of the committee,...
I am the US Air force programme manager for the Boeing company.
Let's use the example of buying a weapon like a new fighter plane for the Air Force.
The action usually starts in the Pentagon, maybe at the contractors initiatives.
But essentially, everybody's working together.
The KC-7678 can carry up to 190 troops.
Basically what you do is you come in and you lowball the initial estimate.
The actual venue cost is about half that estimate.
You over promise what it's gonna do and you...
underestimate the kind of burns it's gonna impose.
We separately met with the companies and both proposals are very good
Once the Air Force buys off on it, then you start flooding...
money to as many congressional districts as possible...
... as quickly as possible.
The B2 bomber has a piece that is made in every single state.
To make sure that if you ever try to face that project out...
... you will get howls from among the most liberal Members of Congress.
I believe in this military, I am urging the Senator support this bill,
66 billion dollars for men and women in uniform.
Well I just want to thank the Chairman for working with me...
... and aiding a hundred million dollars to upgrade 10 aditional B1 bombers.
And that B1 has been a great asset for the projection of power.
The F35 joined strike fighter, the FH22 raptor.
Because the military industral complex has not two legs...
it's three. It's a military and the industry and Congress.
For a Congressman defence spending means jobs.
These are manufactured in my district, in Indiana by...
Losing hundred defence jobs in his district could mean five hundred votes.
It's not just a hundred workers, it's the their spouses, their children.
It's the representative's duty to bring home the bacon.
I am also greatful for the work that the health arms services commitee
has done to fully fund the FH22 programme this year.
God bless our contractors.
It is our conclusion that a Lockheed Martin team...
is the winner of the joined strike fighter programme.
We have a snapshot in time after September 11th, where at least 71 companies...
... that we're able to identify were starting to get contracts to go in Afghanistan and Iraq.
All of the top 10 companies had former US officials, who...
had worked in the Pentagon or other parts of US government...
.. on the board as directors or as their top executives.
It's known as a revolving door and people cashing all the time.
Public officials go to work for companies and they make triple, quadruple, ten times...
... sometimes as much money as they used to make in public service.
There's too close relationship and there's outright.
I hate to use the word 'corruption'...
... but it borders on it. The behaviour of some...
of these individuals both in industry and in the Pentagon.
The number one recipient of contracts was vice president Chaney's former company Halliburton...
... and subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root.
KBR
We're the army's contractor on the battlefield.
Currently 65 thousand KBR people around the world, assisting the troops.
You know the military industrial complex isn't just the...
people in the Pentagon and people, producing the weapons.
It's now increasingly got a very large service sector.
Ham and eggs.
Things that troops used to do by peel potatoes and do laundry we now have contractors doing.
Somebody has to do this work.
And the Halliburton thing is just an outrageous effort to associate the vice president with...
... the activities of a company with which he has no connection, no connection at all.
Congressional critics are questioning whether Dick Chaney held Halliburton to get billions...
The FBI has revealed, it is expanding its investigation into how Halliburton company
built tax payers for its contract in Iraq.
And it now appears some of those contracts were rewarded...
with a knowledge and approval of vice president's office.
Which would seem to contradict his previous statements.
As vice president I have absolutely no influence of involvement...
of knowledge in any way sharing perform of contracts.
We did a report that took 2,5 years, 600,000 dollars, 33 people,
including ten investigate reporters on 6 continents,...
...looking at private military companies and outsourcing war all over the world.
And we noticed that in 1992 there was a contract of 9 million dollars, giving out to a company...
... Kellogg Brown and Root, to study the idea should the
Pentagon start using the private sector to do some of the...
... support type functions like food service, latrine...
duty, but even maybe some military things as well.
And the Secretary of Defense at that time was one
Dick Chaney. So Chaney goes the contract out.
Kellogg Brown and Root comes back and says 'This is a terrific idea'.
For the next ten years they get 7 or 8 hundred contracts to do just that.
I ran Halliburton and I'm proud of Halliburton's...
This company brought in a Rollerdeck's guy, a former
US Congressman Defense Secretary Chief of Staff to President
to make sure that he could get doors opened...
not only in Washington but in capitals all over the world.
And yes, he becomes personally wealthy from that.
No question about it.
Isn't that worth when from million dollars or less...
to 60 or 70 million dollars that he spend in five years.
Are you ready to take the oath?
I am.
Please raise your right hand and repeat after me.
So we've elected a government contractor as vice president.
This could be Indonesia, it sounds like Russia, Nigeria, no it's the United States of America.
And everything I just said is entirely legal. And it is our system of legal corruption.
If I am sure of anything I'm sure of this.
Vice president Chaney had nothing to do with the award of any contract of Halliburton.
He wouldn't pick up the phone, he wouldn't whisper...
in someone's ear, I know it, he just wouldn't do it.
It looks bad, it looks bad and apparently Halliburton...
more than once has overcharged the federal government.
That's wrong.
How would you tackle from that?
I would have a public investigation of what they've done.
So...
What's that? Vice president's on the phone. Okay.
You probably have to take the call from him.
Whenever you get into a situation where anybody's got unwanted influence,
it has the potential to be deeply distorting. It corrupts our system.
You don't have to show that he directly came in and hit the cash register button.
The door flew open and he took some money out and put in his pocket.
It's to say anybody allocating things at the Department...
of Defense knows who the vice president is,...
... knows what his connections are in Halliburton.
We have a process that has a seamlessness where the corporate interest that stand to benefit...
... are so intertwined and interwoven with the political forces.
The financial leads and the politically leads, have become the same people.
You do have to follow the money.
If you follow the money here it's not so much that Halliburton wanted a war...
... so they told Dick Chaney to go get one for them.
It wasn't that. But you do get a willingness to go to war.
On October 10, 20002, the U.S. Congress passed Joint Resolution 114, granting the President the
right to use force against Iraq at his discretion.
YEAs are 296 the NAYs are 133. The Joint Resolution has passed without objection.
You get a willingness to look at the cost benefit scenario.
American people, who have a son or a daughter, that's going to be...
deployed and maybe shot and maybe killed or maimed in Iraq.
They look at the cost benefit and they go 'Hm, I don't think that's good.'
When politicians, who understand contracts, future contracts,
when they look at war, they have a different cost benefit analysis.
The defense budget is 3/4 of a trillion dollars.
Profits, went up last year, well over 25 percent.
I guarantee you, when war becomes that profitable, you're going to see more of it.
I don't know how you would want to assess the reasons United States went to war in Iraq.
But ultimately you have to ask yourself at the end of...
the day, 'Does any of this contribute to whether or not...
... we are making valid and appropriate decisions about our conductive foreign policy?'
Why do we fight?
I don't know why do we fight.
Being a military officer, I really don't set back...
and look at who's with me and who's against me.
My job is to make sure that my squad and my unit is ready to go to war.
There's always gonna be people that disagree with what...
we do. And we can't stop that. That's a part of democracy.
From a soldier's perspective and stuff, it gets all listening to the debates on policy.
But it's not ours to decide. We do what we are told.
The first light of dawn is breaking above me.
No exclusion to get, that the distance sound of low rumble all across the city.
They know that something is about to happen.
- Did you know what to expect before the war?
- I swear to God, no. We don't know. We're illiterate people.
We go out with the sheep and we come back with them.
We knew that this time the consequences of the war would be extraordinary.
Because the threats were intense.
This will be a campaign, unlike any other in history.
A campaign, characterized by shock, by surprise, by the...
employment of precise ammunitions on a scale never before seen.
You also have to understand that in trying to take out Saddam during OIF
we wanted the Iraqi people to have their infrastructure...
there and not be mad at the coalition forces.
That's one of the great-great results of the military industrial complex.
The defense industry, with the advance in the weaponry now,
we can destroy the target of our commander's choosing.
And minimize collateral damage, which is...
such in all composing term, the risk to innocent life.
Nobody's out there to destroy things.
Just because I wear a uniform makes me no different...
than anybody else, that's sitting here in this room with me.
I have the same family, I get up, I shave just like everybody else.
The only difference is there's times, when I have to...
leave my family and go to another country and go to war.
We have the greatest fighting forces on the face of the earth.
Our nation is blessed to have so many brave men and women...
who voluntarily risk their lives to protect our country.
'Every generation has its heroes. This one is no different.'
'Woke up this morning, I suddenly realized we're all in this together.'
Hi, my name is William Solomon. I'm 23. I have...
decided to enlist in United States regular Army...
...and I'm gonna shipping out on January 26.
The latest stuff that I've been going through recently, was my mother's death.
My financial hardships and my inability to...
complete my education, those three main problems.
Plan is simple, it just gonna be solved by my enlistment in the military.
When Will first came in he was actually talking to the Air Force.
But he asked me a question about the army aviation...
and once he asked me a question I told him about it.
And then he showed me the brochure with some of the...
helicopters and then like the RH-66, it's a stealth helicopter.
I was like 'Wait, they got this?'
At that point of time I explained to him our One-Author flight program.
You can take somebody right off the street as long...
as the person has the high school diploma.
He can come in, get a good job guaranteed to you.
I think once Will found out about that he was pretty much locked in.
He was completely unlike what I expected of recruiter when I first spoke with him.
Cause he told me that army recruiters got the bad reputation of car salesmen.
The toughest part about recruiting is gaining the person's trust.
What do we say we back-up with black and white regulations?
There's no smokes and mirrors around here.
You fixed up my life real good man.
Because of you I'm gonna retire real nice.
Cause I'm thinking of it as a career thing.
Every little bit of strife I've gone to in my life...
Every little inconvenience, I've always...
Since I've signed the papers anyway...
I just look at it as something that'll make basic training that much easier.
AN ARMY OF ONE
One team. One mission. One goal.
BETWEEN 2002 AND 2003, THE PENTAGON SPENT $1.2 BILLION
ON ADVERTISING INTENDED TO INCREASE RECRUITMENT.
You know the whole idea, you can be all you can be if you join the army.
Look how it appealed to them.
You're gonna learn a skill, you're gonna get a trade, you'll be able to go to college.
It gives you all these benefits, if you go and serve your country.
We appeal to people self-interest.
And then put them into a situation which is based on self-sacrifice.
I don't really have a much of a blood family. My mom was the only blood...
Hold on.
Hello. Hello?
Yeah, Jimmy.
I've got real good friends and they've been just as good as a blood family,
but not that supportive of me going in this.
They try to give me boogie man stories about what's gonna happen in basic.
As rough as basic can be, this can't be as bad as they say.
I've no word.
Right now you have more of the separation between the military
and particularly the middle class and the upper middle class
in this country than existed even in the draft era.
If you go back to Vietnam, basically the inequity...
of the draft helped prolong the war.
As long as the poor and unrepresented were dying people went along with it.
We got out of Vietnam effectively when the lottery started
and middle class kids were getting killed.
First thing that happened was they went to this all-volunteer army.
And that solved the draft inequity problem, cause everybody's the volunteer.
This is supposedly a Stealth helicopter which hopefully
will go into service by the time I'll become a pilot.
And that makes the military much easier to use.
Because: You guys are fucking volunteers, screw you, you signed up for this.
The objections don't carry as much water.
In a period of increased tension, the advantage gain by flying men into position quickly
might represent the difference between success or failure in a military operation.
I arrived in Vietnam in July of 1965.
I was part of the build-up of the 50,000 troops.
I remember saying to one of mine bodies:
You know, this keeps up, they're gonna have a 100,000 troops over here.
And he laughed, he said: What are you nuts? They'd have to declare war for 100,000 troops.
My fellow Americans, renew to cost elections
against the United States ships on the highest ease in the gulf of Tomkin
have today required me to order the military forces...
of the United States to take action in reply.
I was assigned to a helicopter company, 13th aviation battalion.
I was a door gunner on one of the helicopters.
It was quite an experience for a 21 year old kid.
We're involved in taking people's lives.
From the perspective of a helicopter, you're X number hundred to feet.
And you're shooting at little dots that are running around.
You're not shooting at somebody face to face.
There's a blue shirt in the trees around here. Turn right!
It's almost like they're not real human beings.
They're objects.
As the refugee of war, I think I understand first hand
the suffering, the pain, that war could cost.
I came here when I was 15.
We left Saigon on the 28th of April 1975, right before the downfall of Saigon.
I was very lucky to make it here intact.
I always was very much aware of why I'm here.
It's because our strong thirst for freedom that brought me here.
And the sacrifice of other people that brought me here.
A full scale evacuation have been ordered.
But I do remember the desperation. A lot of people
indeed fell down, the Americans have left them there for themselves.
America deliberately withdrew all the support.
But I step down from the American people.
I grew up knowing that should the situation rise,
you are expected to answer the call when you country made the call.
There was no such thing as:
Well I wonder if my country is right, is anybody lying to me about this?
You don't grow up thinking that.
You grow up saying if the bugle calls, you go.
With time we find out this whole goal for Tomkin thing was farce
and nobody was really attacked.
So you say to yourself:
You know what, that's really crappy, why did somebody lie to us?
There was no need to lie.
We have been lied to in every military escapade
frankly over the last 50-60 years without exception.
There's no battery example probably then Vietnam.
You had the President of the United States
and the top generals in Pentagon lying about the
Gulf of Tomkin incident that got us into the war.
About the casualties, about how the war was going.
Anyone who has ever looked closely at the Vietnam war
can see that the public and the media were manipulated substantially.
We don't like to think of ourselves as the militant nation,
but we're in fact incredibly militant and militaristic nation.
It is not a view of ourselves that we wanna carry around, but the fact is we are.
If the President and the military industrial complex and defense establishment,
if they all have decided that suddenly there's a problem somewhere,
we need to drop some bombs or even put blend forces somewhere in some country,
this is our ritual that we have been seeing for decades.
We have toppled governments, we've done Coup Ousts.
We've used intelligence services for covert purposes...
and done horrible things around the world.
And we have put up with the most human rights abusing countries.
We have prop them up, we even trained them how to commit human rights abuses.
Today's demon was yesterday's friend.
All in the name of either the cold war or for commercial reasons.
It's basically economic colonialism. No one uses the colonialism word.
But instead of just taking over the countries, we have a better way.
We just go and have free markets whether we're trying...
to sell our products to their citizens
or we're trying to mind their resources.
We need to be in that country for some reason,
therefore we're gonna talk about free markets, free trade.
But what's really going on is we want our companies to get rich in your country.
HALLIBURTON COMPANY PROMOTIONAL FILM 1951
There she is. That's what all the fuss is about.
Oil. That's kind of pretty, isn't it?
Oil. Coming up out of the ground and making life a bit more easy for all of us.
The United States is the world's largest consumer of fossil fuels.
Oil is what drives the military machine of every country.
Whether it provides the fuel, or the aircraft for the ships, for the tanks, for the crocks.
Control of oil is indispensable. When you run out of it, your army stops.
There is a direct connection between events that happened
more than 50 years ago and the war in Iraq today.
In 1953 the Prime Minister of Iran, Muhammad Mossadegh became extremely irritated.
The British were ripping off his country's national resources.
He wanted a greater share in it.
The British came to the new President Eisenhower and asked for help on this.
Eisenhower very conveniently declared Mossadegh to be a communist
and we then set the CIA to overthrow him.
Three days of bloody rioting come to a military...
The result was we brought the Shah to power and he created an extremely repressive regime
that within 20 years had led to a revolution against him.
Ajtulogh Almeny creates a government that is violently anti-American.
Then he said: I pray the God to cut the hands off all those foreign advisors.
In the after action report by the CIA, on what they had done in the Iran in 1953
they said: We're going to get some blowback from this.
We then made a puppet out of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Who was a friend of ours. He was an asset in the CIA's computers.
We did so because he was anti-Iranian.
He was very fearful that the revolution in Iran
which spread into his country easier for went to war with Iran.
The war was extremely bloody. It went on throughout the 1980s.
Unfortunately for Saddam Hussein he began to lose the war.
At that point in comes the United States and the former Donald Rumsfeld
sent to Saddam Hussein by President Reagan...
to tell him we will supply you with intelligence.
We will supply you with the weapons you may need through covert means.
It is why Washington say:
We know Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We have the receits.
This is what we mean by blowback.
He remained a friend of ours right up to his envasion in the summer of 1990 of Quveit.
We became alarmed when he invaded Quveit,
that he could also go on and invade Soudi Arabia itself.
The largest preserves of oil on earth.
We station troops inside Arabia. It was a mistake in every sense of the term.
Remember, Osama bin Laden had said:
I resent the government of Saudi Arabia for using
Americans to defend Saudi Arabia against Iraq.
At that point we began to fear that we're going to lose our position in Saudi Arabia.
With the second largest source of proven reserves on earth are in Iraq.
This leads us now to demonize our previous ally and
to prepare the American public for the thought that we must take him out.
I'm retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. Retired from military after 20 years.
I initially started in the Air Force. Then they trained me
as a communicational electronics officer and I did that for about 15 years.
And once I joined the Pentagon, I became political...
military affairs officer for Middle East.
Things went strange from the very beginning of my assignment.
Within a week or so it became clear to me that war was gonna happen.
This toppling was going to happen.
And it was just the matter of bringing American people...
up to speed and gain them behind this effort.
A number of people from outside of the Pentagon,
political appointees were flowing into our office.
And they were working Iraq issues.
These political appointees that we had came from very small set of think tanks.
As Eisenhower said: The military industrial complex is really three components.
There's a military professionals, there is defense industry, and there is Congress.
There is now fourth component, and that is the think tanks.
One of the little known secrets in Washington is that
palsy isn't really generated very much within the palsy apparatus.
A great number of the ideas come from outside the government.
From various think tanks like the project for The New American Century.
Saddam Hussein. Here's the man, here he is in this box.
I wouldn't exaggerate the influence of the project The New American Century.
That's a very small think tank.
But in some respects we argue for elements of the Bush doctrine,
before the Bush doctrine existed or before George W. Bush became President.
The group included principals like Rumsfeld, but it also included
a large number of people more or less unknown to the American public.
And these people all know each other.
They'd all work together before the Bush admininstration.
I used to write speeches for Don Rumsfeld in the Pentagon.
And we came up with this phrase that weakness is provokative, strength detours.
I reported on the Rebuilding America's Defenses even before September 11th.
The Defense budget was too low, it looked ahead to the kinds of wars
that we've now ended up fighting in Afganistan and in Iraq.
What think tanks do is come up with new rationalisations and new threats.
That's what they're paid to do.
Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a terrorist state. I think Iran is a terrorist state.
North Korea is a very special problem.
They can build nuclear weapons and they're perfectly capable of exporting them.
And we cannot allow that.
These are states that are like host, but in a way fund international terrorism.
Encourage international terrorism. They have to be eliminated.
This was almost completely adopted by the administration in part,
because the people who wrote this had open board into the admininstration.
We must prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek
chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States.
It is not at all accidental that when President names our enemies
in the 2002 State of the Union message as 'the access of evil'.
He includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
So in a real way we have this new phenomenon
where think tanks are now a part of
what we used to think as the military industrial complex.
Eisenhower may well have been predicting these people when he talked about:
If we didn't keep an eye on the military industrial complex,
we would see what he called a disastrous rise of misplaced power.
People making policy, who have zero accountability to the voter.
So throughout the summer something was operating in the Pentagon that was unique.
In August of 2002 it was announced to us that all those folks,
who had come in, made up this expanded Iraq...
desk would be called the Office of Special Plans.
The Office of Special Plans was created in the Rumsfeld Department of Defense
in order to produce the intelligence that the President
and the vice president wanted making an enemy out of Iraq.
The Office of Special Plans had one primary job and that was to produce
the set off talking points on the topic of Iraq, WMD and terrorism.
And we were to use them in any document that we prepared,
exactly as they were written in their entirety.
We were, myself included, very familiar with what the intelligence was saying about Iraq.
But the problem was when you look at what was in these talking points,
you could tell it was designed to convince the reader
that Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically constituted a major serious terrible evil threat
to not just his neighbours, but to the United States.
This regime has the design for nuclear weapon,
was working on several different methods of enriching uranium
and recently was discovered seeking significant qualities of uranium from Africa.
And that would be the statement.
He's actively seeking it and this means that he's a danger.
But the intelligence actually said that Saddam Hussein in the late 80s
actively sought materials in Africa, but he hasn't...
done anything like that in the past 12 years.
The statement would act like he did it yesterday.
Taking bits of intelligence out of context, without...
the qualifiers, without the rest of the story.
And placing it as a bullet and presenting it as if it's a factoid.
There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
And this was given to us, action officers to use in papers that
we would prepare for our hire ups, two include guys like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld.
The United States knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
The U.K. knows that they have weapons of mass destruction.
Any country on the face of the earth with an active intelligence program
knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
These guys were manipulating public opinion creating falsehoods and fantasies
to inspire fear in the American people, so that they could have their war.
The President of the United States!
If war is forced upon us,
we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military and we will prevail.
Evidence from the intelligence sources, secret communications,
and statements by people now in custody reveal that
Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda.
I remembered when I was in Vietnam, we use to get requests:
Can you put my father or my son's name on the side of the helicopter?
Can you put it on a rocket?
I said: You know what? That's a good idea.
I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna try to do that.
So I sent out e-mails to the secretary of all the arm forces:
I'm a retired NY City Police Department Sergeant,
and a proud Vietnam Veteran.
I lost my son on 9/11th. I can't tell you in words...
what his loss means to me.
I would respectfully request if you could put his...
name on some piece of armament in the Iraq War.
You know, we haven't caught Bin Laden, but let's do something.
Who's responsible, Come on, let's hit him!
Iraq was responsible. Good, let's go!
You say Iraq? Let's go!
Let's get in there, let's kick the hell out of them.
It turns out it's not that hard to get a country to go to war.
That even in the country like the United States where
there is freedom of information and multiple media channels
that an admininstration can just dominate the debate. Dominate the argument.
We have this idea that we have lots of information available.
There are so much that's not available and so much of the 'truth'
is obscured by political actors who don't want the world to see what they're doing.
Needless to say that President is correct.
What's going on, I'm sorry to say, is a belief that the public doesn't need to know.
What your policy is?
I'm working my way over to figuring out how I won't answer that.
Limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides
of those who are in charge of the war is extremely dangerous.
And cannot and should not be accepted.
And I'm sory to say, but up to including the moment of this interview,
that overwhelmingly it has been accepted.
And Pentagon for many years now since the Vietnam
has worked extremely hard at shaping news and how the media reports at news.
We train people to say certain things in a certain way.
Our defeat and humiliation in South Vietnam...
What they learned from Vietnam above all, was that they lost the war,
because they couldn't keep it private from the American public.
After the Vietnam war the Pentagon began studying.
How can we make sure there are no more body bags in American living rooms?
And we must find the way to no longer allow reporters in a field actually see death.
You get to the Iraq war where they discovered this...
new typical Pentagon called it embedding.
Big gun fire coming from the tops of the building...
We've got to know these marines very well,
we do live with them, we eat with them, we travel with them.
But I have I think remained objective...
The embedding coverage had flies and banners,
but no one was actually finding out the truth about the reasons the rationals for going in.
I have great respect for the media.
Our society is a good solid democracy, because of a good solid media.
But I also understand that a lot of times are just opinions mixed in with news.
We won't disagree with that, sir.
Must this be really be honest.
Reporters and news organisations need access to power.
They need the President, they need the Defense Secretary,
they need these people to speak, to be on camera, to do interviews.
What you have is a miniature version what you have in totalitarian state.
They produce films about how great the great leader is,
how it's getting greater in every way every day.
There will be a day of reckoning for the Iraqi regime and that day is drawing near.
Ladies and gentlemen, the United States army orchestra.
Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours.
Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict.
I've only got what's left and I'd rather spend as much time with my friends as possible.
I got my stuff in storage.
Except for this TV, a couple of weights there and this right here, this hangers
and this Snoopy soap thing I've had since before I can remember.
That's just stuff I won't put in storage cause of its sentimental value.
Never really had that many feelings of place.
My mom lived here for a while. But my mom is not here anymore,
so all the feelings I had associate with that place went away along with my mom.
There was a point when I almost blamed myself for my mom's passing.
I'm handing over the keys...
Because she so didn't want me to go into service.
I had spoken with her about it.
I said: If anything goes wrong, I'm gonna have to go into the service.
I told her that. If anything goes wrong,
if you pass away. I'm gonna have to go into service.
Because as it is, I can't take care of myself normally.
What I'm gonna miss the most, just a normal day sitting down with my friends,
cause that's not what I gonna get from months on the stretch. That I'm gonna miss.
And this view right here. This view looking outside of the window.
I've been seeing this since 1990.
I used to hate this view, I think somehow I still do.
But that's strange to think I'm gonna actually miss it.
Probably not. That's just buildings.
That's my friends who I'm gonna miss.
I have two sons and I won't allow none of my children to serve in the United States military.
If you join the military now, you are not defending the United States of America.
You are helping certain policy makers pursue an imperial agenda.
On February of 2003 ten million people around the world
marched to demonstrate against the war in Iraq.
The largest demonstrations in British history.
2 million in London. 400 thousand in New York city.
A million each in Berlin, Madrid, Rome.
On this February day as this nation stands at the brink of battle,
every American on some level must be contemplating the possibility of war.
And yet this chamber is for the most part harmoniously, harmoniously dreadful and silent.
You can hear a pin drop. Listen.
There's no debate.
There's no attempt to lay out from the nation prose and cons of this particular war.
We have a Congress that failed in every way
to ask the right questions, to hold the President to account.
Our Congress failed us miserably.
And that's because many in Congress are beholden to the military industrial complex.
I would think Eisenhower... He must be rolling over in his grave.
In some ways the military industrial complex may become so pervasive that it's now invisible.
This is about ideas and influence, what's safe for your career.
Being seen in opposition to strong defense policies is the liability.
Not just for politician who wants to run for President,
but for an expert who wants to make a name in town,
for a journalist who wants to get his or her story...
on a front page of the paper.
In this way we're strickting the level of discussion to this rush for war.
Mr. Vice President, do you think the American people
are prepared for a long costly and bloody battle?
I don't think it's likely to unfold that way,
because I really do believe we will be greeters liberators.
Now we're just starting to see the creepings of the sun coming up.
As we approach the city low deck of clouds showed up.
In the past that would have been the bad thing,
cause in the airfront 17 we dropped lazer guided bombs.
So if you can't see your target, you can't drop a bomb on it.
This day I had the enhanced TV, now I was kind of happy.
They couldn't see me, I couldn't see them. But my bomb could find a spot on the ground.
Still people are heading towards west.
The target area was called Dora farms.
It was a Presidential type palace along of the side of the river.
I see the river. I know I'm in right part of the town...
where I was told I need to deliver a bomb.
And let's just have a look at the scenes live, sirens are being sounded in the Iraqi capital.
Pressed in across the target I think our time over target was about 0530.
And so I let the bombs go. Let them ring.
Those sirens...
I think it's been heating up.
We dropped 4 enhanced TBU 2000 pump bunker satellite guided.
There's the large blast.
They both came off. Seemed to come off.
I didn't notice anything at first, I dropped bombs before.
When the weapons flew out of the airplane, I realized
that this is the opening strike of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
And I said: Well, if we did our job tonight, this whole thing might be over tomorrow.
Honestly what we saw the first day of the war astonished us.
And most of the doctors were in a state of anger.
There were shrapnel injuries to women and children, civilians...
...all of them were civilians.
In the first days of war, we didn't receive any soldiers.
The first group was from Dora.
The wounded were civilians who were in their houses at dawn...
...when an explosion happened.
There's no question the strike on that leadership headquarters was successful.
We have photographs of what took place.
The mystery of what happened begins here, at a palace compound called Dora farms.
One weapon clearly missed. Others landed just outside the wall destroying other buildings.
What happened was my son and my brother's two sons were in a house.
In Dora. They were in a house with their friend...
...and a missile fell on them.
I think I was reading something about the bombing in Iraq.
And I get this e-mail: To major Thomas. V. Johnson...
from lieutenant commandor Stephen Franzoni.
The private to the capral to the captain to this...
It must have been like 42 e-mails.
And some of them was saying: Well I don't know if we can do this.
Normally we do not take personal requests.
Son died on 9/11. He wants to know if we could put his name on bomb.
Piercing it up Harry, this is Jerry. Do you think we can do something like that?
Joe, fairly easy, don't you think?
Well, let me go ask Harry.
And you read this whole list of e-mails.
Sorry for the delay, but business is booming.
The weapons don't stay still long enough to write on them.
And finally it goes to this Marine Air Division.
Can do. Semper Fi.
I get back to pictures.
I'm looking at the picture that's saying: Holy smokes!
This is a picture of bomb and then a close-up of the same bomb.
And on the side of it: In loving memory of Jason Sekzer.
And the story that this is a 2000 pound guided bomb
and that it was dropped on April, 1 and it met with 100% success.
The weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision
that no one ever imagined.
A family inside their house sleeping and they bomb them.
Is that smart? Is that a smart missile?
For a long time the Americans military's been emphasising
this idea of precision guided ammunitions.
That we can now wage war and prevent casualties to civilians.
It's simply isn't true. The bombs aren't that reliable.
The precision guidance isn't that good.
I would say is there a personal computer owner
who's not had his machine bomb on him or loses work that day
there's not a one who hasn't had that experience.
During the first 6 months of the Iraq war, 50 precision...
airstrikes were conducted against Iraqi leadership.
Of these strikes, none hit its intended target.
Now the military industrial complex is handling it.
He provided guys with all sorts of weapons and basically a level of technical arrogance
that we can go do anything we want cause we got smart weapons,
that'll do the job with minimum of collateral damage.
But it's be as far as I'm concerned.
NAJI SHEESHAN Director, Baghdad Morgue
The yard of the hospital was filled with corpses.
The corpses that we saw, ninety percent of them were civilians...
I have records to confirm it. I can show you the books.
Ninety percent were civilians.
Children.
I can show you in my books.
This is the special record book for the people killed in the war.
Housewife...
Soldier...
Student... Student...
Soldier... Student...
Civilian... Housewife...
Civilian... Civilian...
Worker... Housewife...
Worker... Worker...
Child... Child...
Housewife... Housewife...
Housewife... Female student...
There's no security, no freedom. There's nothing.
Still seems like a dream to me.
I mean we tell stories about it, we sit down and talk with our kids.
You get some tough questions.
You get asked by your daughter: Did you go out and tried to kill Saddam Hussein?
And that's a tough one to answer to a little kid.
When we saw him on TV, one said:
I guess we didn't get him. But in the end we got him.
How many times in a lifetime does an individual get the opportunity
to get the opening shots in a conflict that will liberate people.
You got a weapon?
So let there be no doubt that the liberation of Iraq...
27,000 MORE U.S. TROOPS
U.S. TOLL REACHES 500
U.S. TOLL IN IRAQ CROSSES 2,000 MILESTONE
With U.S. casualties mounting in Iraq...
Bomb exploded and two men were shed there today on a horrific scale.
Under fire from critics who charge he's been blurring the lines between Iraq and 9/11th
President Bush was forced to clarify yesterday.
Now we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Septermber, the 11th.
What did you just say?
I mean I almost jumped out of chair.
I don't know how people got the idea that I connected Iraq to 9/11.
Was he nuts? What the hell we go in there for?
We're getting back for 9/11th.
If he didn't have anything to do with 9/11, why we're going in there?
I was mad.
My first thought is: You're a liar.
I'm from the old school.
Certain people walk on water.
And President of the United States is one of them.
If I can't trust the President of the United States, I don't know...
It's a terrible thing when Americans can't trust their President.
You begin to wonder what a hell is with the whole system?
There's something wrong with the entire system.
The government exploited my feelings of patriotism.
Of deep desire for revenge for what happened to my son.
But I was so insane with wanting to get even, I was willing to believe anything.
Undoubtedly there are people who may listen to my statements
and think that I'm no good,
I'm a war monger, I'm this, I'm that, whatever.
I should never put my son's name on it,
I should be ashamed that I put my son's name on it.
Am I sorry I asked for my son's name to be put on the bomb?
No, because I acted under the conditions at that time.
Was it wrong? It was wrong, but I didn't know that.
So is it regrettable?
The reason we're in Iraq first has not honestly been told to the American people.
It's certainly had nothing to do with the liberation of the Iraqi people.
It was never part of the agenda, and it's not part of the agenda now.
We know we did not have an exit strategy in the invasion of Iraq,
because we didn't intend to leave.
We are in the process right now of building 14 permanent bases in Iraq.
There is this incredible point right now, that we are invincible
and we are the preeminent power on planet Earth.
American power and Amercan empire is actually flaunted in people's faces around the world
where we rub our shoe in their face and tell them that we're tough.
And you will work with us because you sure as hell don't wanna be against us.
The world is changed and we're not going back to where we were.
I find one of the sillier ideas is the notion that you hear all the time
that American policy has been hijacked by people
and as soon as they're out of there we're gonna go back to the way it was.
They're wrong about that.
Because we're not the same people we were before.
We're walking on thin ice.
We are creating the same path taken by the first democratic regime
ever created in the western world namely the Roman Republic.
The Roman Republic inadvertently acquired the empire around the world
and then they discovered that to maintain, expand,
protect this empire they require standing armies.
Standing armies is what George Washington warned us against.
It's his farewell address that they will destroy the structure of goverment
that we try to create in our constitution to prevent the rise of imperial presidency.
The single most important article in our constitution is the one that gives the right
to go to war exclusively to the elected representatives...
of people, to the Congress.
Our Congress in October of 2002 voted in both houses
to give this power to a single man, including the use of nuclear weapons if he so chose.
And of course less than 6 months later he did choose to excercise it in Iraq.
For too long our culture has said: If it feels good, do it.
Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed.
Let's rule.
I think of the history of the United States as a work in progress
and our attempted democracy here is a constant struggle
between capitalism and democracy.
And there have been absent flows where democracy looks like it's winning.
You reign in those powerful forces, but the fundamental reality is that most
of the government's decisions today are substantially...
dictated by powerful corporate interest.
Clearly capitalism is winning.
Due to this behavior, America will fail.
She will fail completely among the countries.
And another country will rise and take America's place.
I am not a political man, but that is my analysis as an ordinary person.
America will lose because her behavior is not the behavior of a great nation.
In my lifetime I have seen the collapse of the Nazi, of the imperial Japanese,
of the British, French, Dutch and Russian empires.
They go down pretty easily.
What I want Americans to understand today,
the price of liberty is eternal vigilance and we've not been vigilant.
Since Dwight Eisenhower issued his warning to us back in 1961
about the dangers of unauthorised power in the form of the military industrial complex.
We should take nothing for granted.
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizen can compel the proper meshing
of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense...
with our peaceful methods and goals.
So that security and liberty may prosper together.
You gotta realize 20 years in the military you're trained
always to respect authority, to be a team player.
When the war started in Iraq, I hit a targeting point...
where my values as an officer diverged.
I had to basically remove myself.
So, why we fight?
I think we fight cause too many people are not standing up saying:
I'm not doing this anymore.