AlterNet: Outsourcing Intelligence: How Bush Gets His National Intelligence from Private Companies

AlterNet: Outsourcing Intelligence: How Bush Gets His National Intelligence from Private Companies: "Over the past six years, a quiet revolution has occurred in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing to corporations and away from the long-established practice of keeping operations in US government hands, with only select outsourcing of certain jobs to independently contracted experts. Key functions of intelligence agencies are now run by private corporations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) revealed in May that 70 percent of the intelligence budget goes to contractors."

So, not only are private corporations fighting the war in Iraq and profiting from it, but the world intelligence they provide to the president may well have influenced our decision to go to war, and will surely influence our future war decisions. The article describes how easy it would be to direct government action against a country that is not playing nice with American corporations.

As many people already know, wars are no longer waged to protect our freedom. They are waged to pump up the profits of corporations. A citizen's vote no longer matters, the only votes that matter are those of the big brother corporations that run our world...

The Raw Story | Cheney ordered Secret Service logs destroyed, paper reports

The Raw Story | Cheney ordered Secret Service logs destroyed, paper reports: "A massive piece in Sunday's Washington Post reveals the true extent of secrecy Vice President Dick Cheney requires.

So clandestine is the Vice President's work that he has created a new secret document designation: 'Treated As: Top Secret/SCI.'

That's not all: the piece also reveals that Cheney keeps 'man-size' Mosler safes on hand for 'workaday business' and has destroyed all Secret Service visitor logs, in addition to already refusing to comply with a national security directive issued by President Bush, which RAW STORY first reported earlier this week.

Not only does he refuse to give the names of his staff, Cheney won't even disclose how many people he employs."

Wow, can you say "shadow government?" Cheney is the man behind the curtain, a figure who's influence and power cannot be measured due to his obsessive drive towards secrecy. He is the most powerful Vice President that the United States has ever had, and we don't even know what he is really doing in the shadows.