How Washington Built a War Machine and Got Rich Off It (Bodyguard of Lies)

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Bodyguard of Lies. I was up way past my bedtime last night watching this latest documentary. It’s on Paramount. And I strongly suggest you watching it. I would strongly suggest they show this to every kid in America in high school. I remember back in the day, you’d watch those films in class. Maybe the teacher didn’t have a…

a lesson prepared, whatever it may be. Well, this is one that they should most certainly show in social studies class, which used to be known as civics class. I knew it was bad. knew Afghanistan was really bad with the type of waste and fraud and abuse. Heard stories spoken with people over the years in regards to this.

But now we have receipts. Various different organizations, publications have filed Freedom of Freedom Information Act requests and are getting the data. The entire thing. And again, they show in this documentary clip after clip after clip of whether it be Rumsfeld, whether it be Bush, whether it be all.

Obama, whether it be Biden, right on down, all the way on down, Mike Pence, you name it, Donald Trump, we’re making progress.

20 years.

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$2 trillion. 20 years, $2 trillion. Let’s put that aside. What about the thousands, thousands of American lives that were wasted?

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that wasted.

trying to, I don’t know what, turn Afghanistan into freaking Jeffersonian democracy. Do you understand? Do you get your arms around this, the utter arrogance?

of that statement of that idea. We overthrew the Taliban and replaced it with the Taliban. I’m going to get their arms around that was interesting. I’m going to give you a bit towards the end speaking with a gentleman was involved six, seven times.

back to Afghanistan, I spoke to a mom, Gold Star mom, whose son died and wanted to make sure that his son didn’t die in vain. And found out that his son did unbelievable work there and helping people with medical care and doing all these things so he could come back and say, no, he didn’t die in vain. But basically, the entire effort was.

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I’m a big believer in correcting one’s mistakes, correcting one’s mistakes in life, admitting when one is wrong. Again, it’s liberating when you’re able to do that. We all make mistakes. I’m currently working on another book and it’s kind of a history of Markowski Investments, a history of this radio program. Again,

Many of you know not only the radio show for 25 years, but also my newsletter as well and the countless columns that I’ve written that I go back to from time to time here on the show. And I’m going back and rereading these things. It’s going to be a, you know, to some degree, you know, there’s going to be almost the kind of greatest hits and misses what we called here on the program. And I had to say we’ve done well when it comes.

to money. We’ve done really well when it comes to money and the economy and even politics. But the chapter that’s going to be devoted to Mrs. is going to be devoted to my belief that George W. Bush was right.

I bought in bought into that bullshit hook line and sinker like many Americans did. It was an education. Will I ever, ever trust a politician moving their mouth when it comes to foreign policy? Probably not.

I’m more than more than likely I won’t. Again, I don’t know whether I would live in New York City on 9 11. I don’t know if that initial shock hit me, but I can go back and I can remember very vividly the the protest marches in Manhattan against the Iraq War. I was at the 2004 Republican National Convention broadcast from there.

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the massive, massive protests parade that took place past Madison Square Garden, all of them were peaceful. They were, they were all peaceful. But those people out protesting, they were right.

They were right and I was wrong.

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lies that we were told again, again, again, and you’re talking in this great documentary, talking to military brass, talking to generals, matter of fact, just just how things are. You’re not allowed to tell the truth. Oh, you mentioned all the stories. Oh, yeah, little boy was flying a kite and how they highlight all of this stuff, the amount of money that was stolen.

stolen, taken out of the country, military brass packing cash into VCRs and DVD players and shipping them back to the United States. Again, it goes through in this documentary, private recordings, documents, right on down the line, President George W. Bush, April 17, 2002.

Previous empires have failed in Afghanistan, but we’re not going to repeat that mistake. The same day, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dictated a memo asking how to get out of Afghanistan and ending with the exclamation, help. Same day.

A months later, Rumsfeld told the press that I don’t do quagmires. Movie is filled with example after example of duplicity over the next two decades.

when the bits did not turn out this way at the beginning of the war, the Taliban were almost completely routed and the US military could have left from a position of strength. The new Afghan Republican outset had an offer from the Taliban to surrender in exchange for amnesty and a chance to participate in politics. W turned them down.

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He wanted total, unconditional victory.

Um, yeah, I remember the old way can’t cut and run. Hey, can’t cut and run. Um,

This has been American foreign policy. Nobody knows McNamara’s deathbed confession when it comes to Vietnam and what he said. I watched, you stomach, he watched Marco Rubio shaking hands with a member of Al Qaeda.

at the UN, Al Qaeda, a guy that was on our most wanted list, $10 million bounty on his head, a guy who cut people’s heads off, a la, remember Daniel Pearl? I mean, he didn’t do Daniel Pearl, but he did plenty of them. Guy that, yeah, no problem throwing people off the roofs of buildings, you know, raping, you’d see the women, we can go on and on and on. Yeah, we’re hanging out with him at the…

UN now. Does this make any sense to you whatsoever? Well, I’ll make sense out of it for you right now.

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Again, we’re not part of the big club. listen to this program and if you are part of the big club, you’re watching this show, you’re probably going to try to find some way to, you know, silence someone like myself because that’s just who you are. I have this great disdain for Washington, D.C. I don’t like going there. I really don’t. I had to go there when the kids were younger. We were in the area lacrosse tournaments. I’ll get into that.

in a bit, I had to go on a more regular basis. When my son was playing college across, could we have to go play Georgetown? Anyway, disdain for Washington, D.C. and I hate Northern Virginia and I hate the surrounding area there in Maryland. am I going to offend some people? Why wouldn’t I hate it? It’s gross.

Gross. You drive through, drive, look at Bethesda, Maryland and the wealth that’s there. This is Washington, D.C. These are government workers. These are government contractors. You understand that $2 trillion, that’s just Afghanistan. That’s all filtered through all of these contractors there in Washington, D.C. These are people that are in the business of war. Business of war, the business of reconstructing nations.

funny story in this documentary. We’re having this conversation now talking about defunding USAID. They were shown a bridge in Afghanistan, bridge in Afghanistan and they had a little plaque next to it. it’s paid for USAID. know, we Americans got to pat ourselves on the back, give ourselves credit for putting a bridge up. The funny thing was every single time they built the bridge and rebuilt the bridge with government contractors, again, people getting rich off of you and I.

The bridge would get blown up. The Taliban would blow it up and you know later found out that the Afghan in charge of building the bridge his brother was in the Taliban and as soon as the bridge was built he calls brother up he said blow up the bridge blow up the bridge I’ve got to build another one more money.

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That was basically everything that’s taken place. And that’s why that surrounding area in Northern Virginia and in around Maryland, it surrounds Washington, D.C. That’s where they get their money from. I started growing weary of Bush and recognizing the lies that we were told. Yeah, I think it was probably around 2005 and 2006.

I really started again and then it started moving again. Watching these things take place have to go to my son. We’d be down at a you ever take a look at the high schools that surround the DC area there all the private schools there because they’re the kids. know these people are kids don’t go to public schools. You ever seen McDonough High School said well friends these schools that are there they’re nice. They’re nicer than Hogwarts for crying out loud.

Anyway, anyway, not neither here nor there. Put it away. That’s where it went. Why you take a look at the growth of those areas from 9-11 until today. Take a look at the type of wealth. It wasn’t created. was wealth that was stolen. Wealth that was stolen from you and I, the U.S. You want to talk about dirty money. You want to talk about blood money. You want to talk about gross. Okay, keeping wars going.

keeping wars going in foreign places, not like their kids are off fighting in these places, keeping wars going in these various different places so people can enrich themselves. Big business here in America, huge business here in America. Very few, very few in Washington buck this. and far between.

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And again, that’s just why yesterday, yesterday you got all the Hawks very excited, the Lindsey Grahams of the world, all the Hawks very excited. Trump’s tweet in regards to Ukraine and yeah, Ukraine should just keep going now. I guess change our position. Now Ukraine’s gonna, you we’re gonna continue to give them more weapons and keep that meat grinder going. I guess it’s a lot of money.

to be made defense contract, just licking their chops at this point time. And we also had the tweet yesterday, hey, you know, maybe we’ll go back into Afghanistan. Maybe we’ll take Bagram Air Base again.

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Our country needs time out.

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Our country needs to time out. I’m watching this documentary last night. was up late. My daughter came home. She goes to college near where I live and she’s smart. Tweets her mom or texts her mom, hey, mom, what are we having for dinner tonight? She likes something after flies in. boy, we’re having snapper. She’s to grab some of that as soon as she can. And she sees what I’m watching. I’m talking with her. And she asked me about my opinion of.

America? And it’s an interesting question.

Interesting question. you know, I told her, you know, and I’ve explained this to her before, I most certainly believe in the founders, founders version of what this country is supposed to be. I look at America right now, and I’m sorry, even with Trump in charge, okay, if even is in charge, quite frankly, I don’t know. Just as if we’re occupied.

Yeah, it is. like as if we are occupied and they put on this show, this donkey versus elephant thing all the time. And we’re constantly scared into this, that or the next thing. We’re scared into, you know, putting masks on or ordered to take shots or, you know, forced to shut your business down.

You know, forced to have an enemy here, forced to have an enemy there, boogeyman over there, take your shoes off to get on a plane.

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land of the free home of the brave. we once were.

once were.

We departed from that some time ago.

some time ago and quite honestly, I don’t know if we’ll ever get it back. I I’ve been talking about this for some time. I really don’t. I hope we do. Hope we do. Am I optimistic? No.

No, I’m not.

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I’m not, you know, know, the President of United States, you know, we’re supposed to be getting out of these things, getting out of wars. We should be dismantling this entire infrastructure and how it’s set up and how it’s in and around DC and how it works, maybe can’t.

I don’t know, but

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It’s not what we were supposed to be. It’s not what the founders wanted. You think that this is America? America were just about guns and blowing things up and going and starting wars and then sending contractors there to make a ton of money to build buildings that they don’t even need? Funny, they always talked about that. that? Sorry, I’m going back to the documentary and remember how Bush and

Everybody, at all the schools we’re building. We’re building schools. We’re building schools here. We’re building this judicial system and that. What? They didn’t even have school teachers. They didn’t have school supplies. But hey, hey, someone, some contractor in the Bethesda, Fairfax, Virginia area made a shit ton of money putting a school building up that is now littered with

bullets that was never used. And who paid for it?

We did.

We did, we got infrastructure that’s falling apart in this country. We’ve got roads that need to be fixed, all these things, but never fear, never fear. The Beltway folk have gotten fat and happy. Again, documentary is bodyguard of lies. It’ll make you a little sick to your stomach. Fair warning. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.