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<blockquote data-quote="rickyb" data-source="post: 5273970" data-attributes="member: 56035">i recall hearing this too about&nbsp; clinton:ndrew Cockburn: Well, I&#039;m saying it is first and foremost about money. And actually, when you talk to the military, war is nice particularly for defense contractors to show off their weapons. They&#039;re quite happy with the permanent state of tension, I believe, so there&#039;s a need, they can justify the need to get ever more money to buy ever more weapons. It&#039;s when you get idiots like Albright who, in administrations and like particularly this crew we&#039;ve got now, my god, they almost make Madeleine Albright look smart. They&#039;re handed this machine and they think out of just share a responsibility, they do want to use it. I don&#039;t think the professionals are so interested in using it. But certainly, when you got this unholy marriage of the professional, deeply self-interested, and greedy military machine, military-industrial complex, and the political agenda of people like Bill Clinton. For example, in my book I talk a lot about the expansion of NATO, how it happened. And there were two main impulses for that in the &#039;90s. One was the deep desire of the military-industrial complex, led by the Lockheed Martin Corporation to jack up spending again after the Soviet Union had inconveniently disappeared. So, they wanted to expand into Eastern Europe, create new markets and actually provoke Russia, which they did very well. But the other thing that really drove it was domestic politics, which I believe is what foreign policy is always about. And in this case, it was Bill Clinton who was assured by Zbigniew Brzezinski that he would lose the Polish vote in Milwaukee - and this literally happened - unless he said he was going to have Poland into NATO. So he went ahead, fine, who cares about breaking a promise to the Russians? Who cares about lighting the fuse for starting up a Cold War? Bill Clinton wanted to get reelected. It wasn&#039;t even that vital. What Brzezinski was telling him was BS. He didn&#039;t need to win the Polish vote in Milwaukee, which he probably would have won anyway. It was just like a little extra — let&#039;s make this extra little gesture just to sew up those few thousand votes. And that really set the trail for what this disaster we&#039;re in now with Ukraine.[URL unfurl=&quot;true&quot;]https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233.111/c03.434.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Ralph-Nader-Radio-Hour-Ep-427-Transcript.pdf[/URL]</blockquote>

[QUOTE="rickyb, post: 5273970, member: 56035"] i recall hearing this too about clinton: ndrew Cockburn: Well, I'm saying it is first and foremost about money. And actually, when you talk to the military, war is nice particularly for defense contractors to show off their weapons. They're quite happy with the permanent state of tension, I believe, so there's a need, they can justify the need to get ever more money to buy ever more weapons. It's when you get idiots like Albright who, in administrations and like particularly this crew we've got now, my god, they almost make Madeleine Albright look smart. They're handed this machine and they think out of just share a responsibility, they do want to use it. I don't think the professionals are so interested in using it. But certainly, when you got this unholy marriage of the professional, deeply self-interested, and greedy military machine, military-industrial complex, and the political agenda of people like Bill Clinton. For example, in my book I talk a lot about the expansion of NATO, how it happened.[B] And there were two main impulses for that in the '90s. One was the deep desire of the military-industrial complex, led by the Lockheed Martin Corporation to jack up spending again after the Soviet Union had inconveniently disappeared. So, they wanted to expand into Eastern Europe, create new markets and actually provoke Russia, which they did very well. But the other thing that really drove it was domestic politics, which I believe is what foreign policy is always about.[/B] And in this case, it was Bill Clinton who was assured by Zbigniew Brzezinski that he would lose the Polish vote in Milwaukee - and this literally happened - unless he said he was going to have Poland into NATO. So he went ahead, fine, who cares about breaking a promise to the Russians? Who cares about lighting the fuse for starting up a Cold War? Bill Clinton wanted to get reelected. It wasn't even that vital. What Brzezinski was telling him was BS. He didn't need to win the Polish vote in Milwaukee, which he probably would have won anyway. It was just like a little extra — let's make this extra little gesture just to sew up those few thousand votes. And that really set the trail for what this disaster we're in now with Ukraine. [URL unfurl="true"]https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233.111/c03.434.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Ralph-Nader-Radio-Hour-Ep-427-Transcript.pdf[/URL] [/QUOTE]

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