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Seven Days in January

Feb 2, 2010

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who repeatedly told the Pakistanis that he regretted their country's "trust deficit" with the United States and that Americans had made a grave mistake in abandoning Pakistan after the Russians left Afghanistan, promised the military officers that the United States would do better.

His final message delivered, he relaxed on the 14-hour trip home by watching Seven Days in May, the Cold War-era film about an attempted military coup in the United States.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LB02Ak01.html

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The Business Plot

In early 1934, General Smedley Butler alleged the existence of a political conspiracy of Wall Street interests to overthrow President Roosevelt, a series of allegations that came to be known as the Business Plot.[35] In March 1934, the House of Representatives authorized investigations into "un-American" activities by a special committee headed by John W. McCormack of Massachusetts and Samuel Dickstein of New York. The McCormack-Dickstein committee, known as the Committee on Un-American Activities,[1] investigated Smedley Butler's allegations and a number of other high-profile topics of the era.

In November 1934, Butler told the committee that a group of businessmen, backed by a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and others, intended to establish a fascist dictatorship. Butler had been asked to lead it, he said, by Gerald P. MacGuire, a bond salesman with Grayson M-P Murphy & Co. The New York Times reported that Butler had told friends that General Hugh S. Johnson, a former official with the National Recovery Administration, was to be installed as dictator. Butler said MacGuire had told him the attempted coup was backed by three million dollars, and that the 500,000 men were probably to be assembled in Washington, D.C. the following year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

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War Is A Racket

By General Smedley Butler, USMC

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_is_a_Racket

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