CORRUPTION

by David Nuttle

Corruption is a global plague causing great harm! I have witnessed this human flaw many times, worldwide. When I served in South Vietnam, I observed that President Ngo Dien Diem allowed all of his government administrators to keep 10 percent of whatever came via their hands. Diem's military commanders were allowed to have 40 percent "ghost troops" on their payroll and pay for non-existent soldiers was sent to the commander's personal Swiss bank accounts. My charity, NPI, helped Kenya obtain a large U. N. grant to demonstrate NPI's innovative counter-desertification system by growing crops on Kenyan deserts. U. N. grant administrators soon discovered that two GOK (Govt. of Kenya) officials were perfecting a scheme to move part of these grant funds to their personal bank accounts. Upon quickly discovering this plan, U. N. officials cancelled the entire grant. NPI's staff encountered such corruption in a number of developing nations over a period of 30-years.

The U. S. is not immune to destructive corruption. Career politicians have used positions for "insider trading" for personal gain. Government grants and contracts have been greatly inflated to benefit certain people. Boondoggle projects are created to benefit agencies and their contractors. As an example, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers planned a nearly $2 billion series of projects to construct a barge canal from the Mississippi River to Denver. I discovered the Corps plan that would have taken thousands of acres of good farmland to construct reservoirs impounding enough rainwater to float barges all the way to Denver. To cancel this plan, I published details in a booklet entitled "Truth Drowning: The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers," and gave a copy to every member of Congress. Once members of Congress became aware of the Corps' total intent, support and funding for such an effort stopped. The corruption games by our politicians and federal agencies would take far more than a few books to disclose.

We have all suffered under corruption of our military-industrial complex that General and POTUS Eisenhauer warned us about. U. S. wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan started and were long sustained for reasons unrelated to actual U. S. national security interests. Our military commanders retire from the military for high paying jobs with military industries and have tended to support our armed conflicts since WW II. Under such apparent influence, the U. S. converted a Viet civil war into "hot conflict" in our Cold War w/ USSR and PRC (China). In Vietnam, our military expended many bombs and artillery rounds that were ineffective due to communist forces being underground most of the time. We used conventional warfare tactics in a failed attempt to win an unconventional conflict resulting in over 58,000 Americans killed and we expended about $2 billion (in current value) to achieve a defeat. Many of our forces were cheated when they were required to fight in the jungles with no prior jungle warfare training. POTUS LBJ misrepresented this war to the public and ordered haphazard policies favoring our military-industrial complex that ended in total failure.

POTUS JFK had resisted demands by our military commanders to send our troops to S. Vietnam to expand the war effort. Upon the advice of his Special COIN (counterinsurgency) Groups, JFK had focused on use of our Special Forces to train an arm the S. Vietnamese population (Viets & Montagnard) to defeat communist forces, and they were doing so. After

JFK's assassination, his VP, LBJ, became POTUS, and conventionalized this war to achieve what our military commander's promoted as a quick victory using "bang-and-boom" tactics with large numbers of American troops.

In Iraq, there was no credible evidence that Saddam Hussen had any weapons of mass destruction and was threatening the U. S. The conflict there was another excuse for U. S. forces to expend more military ordinance for another costly "bang-and-boom" operation that clearly was not needed. What was essential was for Hassam and his military forces to remain as an effective fighting force to curb expansionist goals by Iran. In the first Iraq War, POTUS George H. W. Bush was wise enough to leave Hussan's military forces operational after Hussan's invading forces were evicted from Kuwait. In the second war against Iraq, POTUS George W. Bush lacked such wisdom and directed the elimination of Hussan and destruction of his military forces. Such action facilitated the expansion of Iran and growth of the Islamic state (ISIS).

Initial military action in Afghanistan was justified to remove the threat from Osama bin Laden and his Islamic Wahhabi terrorists. The long-term armed conflict against Taliban forces was doomed from the start. Afghan males had nothing to suffer under Taliban rule so joining the U. S. sponsored Afghan Army was just a job and income source for most. Afghan women had everything to loose under Taliban rule as we have witnessed. An all-female Afghan army would have quickly defeated the Taliban as did the all-female Kurd Ranger units in Iraq. Islamic jihadists believe they will not go to the Islamic Paradise if killed by a woman so they fled from Kurd population areas of Iraq. The U. S. could have made an arrangement for Kurd female military units to recruit, train, and arm all-female Afghan military units to defeat the Taliban. Bad policy decisions come with every rush to engage our military forces under pressure from our military-industrial complex (my opinion).

Horrific corruption by our military was initially asking out troops with no jungle warfare training or experience to fight in the jungle against communist forces highly skilled in jungle warfare. Stupid policies followed like killing the neutral jungle with Agent Orange to damage the environment, kill wildlife, and cause major health problems for local populations and our own troops. Such action was of little or no benefit in fighting the communist forces, but a large profit was made by Monsanto, the manufacturer of Agent Orange. Corruption included making combat assignments for soldiers not qualified for same. One example is when an Army Capt., Terry C., was asked to take a combat command assignment although he was only trained as a Transportation Officer. Within a few weeks he was killed in combat. Terry's military obit stated he had infantry and jungle warfare training before being so assigned.

Another area of major corruption has been in USAID (U. S. Agency for Intl. Development). This agency was created to support agricultural development/ food security and new job creation for poor developing nations. Political corruption caused USAID to give priority to the support of "woke" projects like LGBTQ & Trans promotion. We have experienced corruption at the highest levels; e. g. POTUS Obama's placement of Muslim Brotherhood jihadists in our federal agencies. Other high-level corruption included creation of truly false Russian cooperation by POTUS Trump and weaponization of federal agencies to damage Trump in every way possible. Another good example is when VPOTUS, Kamala Harris, was allowed to create a bail fund for quickly release BLM rioters from jail so they could return to rioting.

A major corruption event was when POTUS Biden opened our borders to an estimated 18 million illegal immigrant, most being poorly educated with few skills, to freely enter the U. S.

They were cover for the criminals, gang members, mentally ill, and terrorists who came with them. POTUS Trump seeks to remove the worst of the worst of this invading group of illegal migrants. However, many are being sheltered and protected by Dem controlled sanctuary cities and states who see them as future Dem voters. The obvious Dem goal is to use such illegals to help with Dem creation of a one-party state for the U. S.

Promotion of, and/or use of subversion, terrorism, illegal drug trafficking, and armed conflicts, by Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela are forms of corruption to control or destroy other nations. Current events indicate their policies & programs will act to destroy their own economies, end their population's freedoms, and use horrific democide (genocide/mass murder by corrupt governments) to end all internal opposition. Each of these nations seeks domination or destruction of other nations. Leaders of subject nations are totally corrupt and mad with power!!

Massive corruption may yet be the end of us all.