“War is a racket.”
– Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler

“Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions…
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, and 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 unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted; only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
– President Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address

“I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism… The general public shoulders the bill. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones, Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.”
– Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler, 1935

“Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn.”
– John Stockwell – former CIA official

“There is a Pentagon 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, 2001

“We’re going to bomb them back into the stone Ages.”
– General Curtis E. LeMay – about the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War

“The Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans [Operation Northwoods] for … launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman [General Lyman Lemnitzer] and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.”
– James Bamford in his book “Body of Secrets”

“I ask you, what is the difference between 30 million people dead and 130 million people dead? With 30 million dead, the United States can survive.”
– Edward Teller, nuclear physicist and ‘father’ of the H-Bomb, describing how the United States could fight and “survive” a nuclear war

“Pentagon high-tech weapons can read a license plate on a car from a surveillance satellite; their night vision goggles can penetrate the dark; and their drones can incinerate an isolated village. But they are unable to provide potable water, schools or stability to the nations attacked.”
– Sara Flounders, 2009

“I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world.”
– General Colin Powell, 1991

“The military-industrial complex lives very much like a vampire, draining the life’s blood from the productive sector and reducing the availability of capital investment where it’s really needed. Our foreign policy massively misallocates the distribution of wealth in our society and pumps funds into areas that are not productive, while starving those sectors that would benefit the civilian economy.”
– Justin Raimondo

“The most aggressive nation on the planet after World War II has been the United States ­ not the Soviet Union ­ with more than 100 military or covert interventions in other countries.”
– Ivan Eland

“Sociopaths can kill without experiencing anguish; thus, people who have no conscience make excellent, unambivalent warriors. And nearly all societies make war… Sociopaths are fearless and superior warriors, snipers, undercover assassins, special operatives, vigilantes, and hand-to-hand specialists, because they experience no horror while killing (or while ordering killing) and no guilt after the deed is done… A person who can look another person in the eye and calmly shoot him dead is unusual, and in war, valuable.”
– Martha Stout

“A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers.”
– General Norman Schwarzkopf, senior Commander of Persian Gulf War, 1991

“Had the United States and the United Kingdom gone on alone to capture Baghdad, under the provisions of the Geneva and Hague conventions we would have been considered occupying powers and therefore would have been responsible for all the costs of maintaining or restoring government, education and other services for the people of Iraq.”
– General Norman Schwarzkopf, senior Commander of Persian Gulf War, 1991

“Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic killers. The 5% or so of human males who feel no remorse about killing their fellow human beings make the best soldiers. And the 95% who are extremely reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers – unless they are brainwashed with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them into functional psychopaths… Wars are ritualized mass murders by psychopaths of non-psychopaths.”
– Stuart Hertzog

“The covert operators that I ran with would blow up a 747 with 300 people to kill one person. They are total sociopaths with no conscience whatsoever.”
– former Pentagon Investigator Gene Wheaton

“Population reduction and genetically engineered crops were clearly part of a broad strategy: the drastic reduction of the world’s population. It was in fact a sophisticated form of what the Pentagon termed biological warfare, promulgated under the name of “solving the world hunger problem.”
– F. William Engdahl in his book Seeds of Destuction

“While the military is a natural home for the psychopathic killer variety, politicians and bureaucrats, the deceitful and conniving version of psychopathy, have created ample room for themselves in the halls of government. Psychopaths love power-power that can be captured or drained from others.”
– Hari Heath

“Psychology can provide the military with techniques to make killers out of nonkillers, and the military is using these procedures… Because its essence is killing, war is the ultimate contest between conscience and authority. Our seventh sense demands that we not take life, and when authority overrules conscience and a soldier is induced to kill in combat, he is very likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder immediately and for the remainder of his life.”
– Martha Stout