Profiteers -- My Favorite Kind of People

A great deal could be read into your "preparations," which troubled others such as officers and lifer NCOs, and you felt were serious enough to bring to the attention of others. Could you tell me more about your "assignments," if you are free to do so? Why did they trouble you and others so?

I attended classes and training in 1963 which were supposed to prepare the units I was in for fighting guerrillas in a tropical or subtropical environment. It was well-known that Vietnam was the locale and in fact was explicitly mentioned in some of the classes. What wasn't well known was the scope of the projected inter- vention or what its purpose would be, but the career types didn't like the idea of a "dirty war" (just like they don't want to go into Bosnia today, from what I read in the newspapers). (Others, of course, welcomed an opportunity to get combat experience which is necessary to promotion in the higher officer ranks.)

After awhile I concluded -- just from analyzing gossip and press reports -- that the scope was major and that it was politically driven -- that is, people outside the military had determined on some kind of large-scale effort. In other words, I concluded that there was going to be a major war and that it would be a mess (to put it mildly) because it would not have any clear goal or point at which it would be possible to stop. This was what I tried to tell people in 1964. After a year or so it became unnecessary to tell anyone about the first part. I'd say that it was in '68 -- after Tet -- that the public realized that the war had no rational goal.

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You discussed profiteers and the roll of the press in controlling what is news. I understand war profiteering very well. They are the huge corporations who make substantial profits from the sale of war materiel, and their influence in foreign affairs often has more to do with their own profits than the national interest. Is this the way you see it?

Get a sociology textbook and look up the subculture known as the "power elite." They, by definition, are the people who run the world. They use corporations and government to effect their wishes. The power elite use war profiteering but their program is much more extensive than that. They also do agriculture profiteering and health care profiteering, for example.

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