OpEdNews - Article: Exclusive: Leah Bolger's Statement to the Judge of her Hearing for Disruption of Super Committee Charge

14.4.12

OpEdNews - Article: Exclusive: Leah Bolger's Statement to the Judge of her Hearing for Disruption of Super Committee Charge: Statement before Judge Nash, 12 April 2012

Hearing for disruption of Super Committee charge

I joined the U.S. Navy in 1980 and served on active duty for the next 20 years relatively ignorant of the vastness of the U.S. military machine and its deep-seated entrenchment with our government and economy. I had little understanding of the "military-industrial complex' that President Eisenhower warned us about 50 years ago, and I certainly didn't know what Major General Smedley Butler meant when he said that "War is a racket."

Now I am beginning to understand the enormity of the power that the U.S. military machine holds. Capitalism is supposed to be an economic system"not a foreign policy--but war making has become very profitable. Profit means money and it is money that controls the power in our government. It doesn't matter to the government that wars are immoral, illegal or ineffective. Government policies are shaped by the will of the corporate interests who have direct, immediate and in some cases, almost exclusive access to them.