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03/17/2006:

"Feds Schedule $385 Million Concentration Camp To Be Built By Halliburton Subsidiary"

...Then your eye falls on a barely-noticed article in a local Southern California newspaper. You call the reporter, and he guides you to his reputable source. And the stomach-tickling fears start all over again, especially when--coincidentally--a Germanophile friend researching in the archives digs up the following from a Munich newspaper dated 1933.

First, the American news item:

The federal government has awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of 'temporary detention facilities' inside the United States as part of the Immigration Service's Detention and Removal Program. The contract was given to Kellogg, Root & Brown, a subsidiary of Halliburton. The camps would be used in the event of an "emergency", said Jamie Zuieback, an Immigration service official.

The following article appeared in a Munich newspaper in 1933 to mark the "grand opening" of Dachau, Germany's first concentration camp. This month marks the 73d anniversary:

Münchner Neueste Nachrichten,

Tuesday, March 21, 1933

A Concentration Camp for Political Prisoners in the Dachau Area

In a statement to the press, Himmler, Munich's Chief of Police announced:

On Wednesday the first concentration camp will be opened near Dachau. It has a capacity of 5000 people. Here, all communist and-so far as is necessary- Reichsbanner and Marxist officials, who endanger the security of the state, will be assembled. In the long run, if government administration is not to be very burdened, it is not possible to allow individual communist officials to remain in court custody. On the other hand, it is also not possible to allow these officials their freedom again. Each time we have attempted this, the result was that they again tried to agitate and organize. We have taken these measures without concern for each pedantic objection encountered, in the conviction that we act to calm the concerns of the nation's people, and in accordance with their aims.

Himmler gave assurance that in each individual case, preventive custody will not be maintained longer than necessary. It is obvious, however, that the astonishingly large quantity of material evidence seized will take a long time to be examined. This police will only be delayed, if they are continually asked when this or that person in preventive custody will be released. The incorrectness of rumors frequently spread regarding the treatment of prisoners is shown by the fact that for those prisoners who requested it, for example, Dr. Gerlich and Frhr. v. Aretin, counseling by priests is supported and approved without hesitation.
counterpunch.org


A Cell for Kissinger and Haig
...Of course, if one listens to Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger--two architects of the last major US foreign disaster in Vietnam--they might think that the only way to get out of Iraq is by blowing the country and its inhabitants to hell. Indeed, Mr. Haig, who was a general, Secretary of State under Reagan, and an advisor to Richard Nixon (even serving as his Chief of Staff during the final months of Nixon's presidency), told an audience of a conference on the Vietnam War at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, ``Every asset of the nation must be applied to the conflict to bring about a quick and successful outcome, or don't do it." This is from a man, who helped engineer (among other things) the Christmas bombings of 1972, the mining of Haiphong harbor and the bombing of Hanoi and the dikes of northern Vietnam, and the invasion of Cambodia. What does he suggest the US do in Iraq? Break out some tactical nuclear weapons? The mindset that Haig represents seriously believes that the US military was restrained in Vietnam and that a similar situation exists in Iraq. This is despite the fact that more ordnance has been dropped on those two countries than on any other country in history.

His fellow panel member, Henry Kissinger, would probably like that idea. After all, it was Mr. Kissinger who considered the use of nuclear weapons against northern Vietnam in 1969, but was convinced such an idea might be a bad move after hundreds of thousands of US residents filled the streets of DC and several other cities on November 15, 1969 in a national mobilization to end the war in Vietnam.

Both of these men should be in adjoining cells in the Hague. Instead, they are guests of honor at the JFK Library. It's not that they were besmirching Kennedy's legacy by being there. Indeed, Mr. Kissinger said he admired the Kennedys--a statement that should not surprise any serious student of US history given Kissinger's tenure as a consultant on security matters to various U.S. agencies from 1955 to 1968. Indeed, Kissinger's treatise on nuclear weapons and foreign policy was a major influence on the strategic policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Given that treatise's emphasis on the use of tactical nuclear weapons together with conventional forces and the current discussion of just such a policy, one could say that Kissinger's influence continues to steer US war policy.