Some commentators have said, “Well, Abrams is not a Trump guy. He represents traditional, established U.S. foreign policy.” And that’s true. The prob… - Allan Nairn

It sounds like they’re putting a priority on helping the American oil companies. Even more significant was the statement by Bolton. Essentially, when the U.S. takes over Venezuela, they want to have the U.S. companies do the actual oil production in place of the state oil company. Now, that’s especially remarkable because it means rolling back an arrangement that predates Hugo Chavez, that predates the Bolivarian movement....The oil production in Venezuela was nationalized before Chavez came to power so that old U.S.-backed state capitalism is now ruled inadmissible by John Bolton and the U.S. and they’re going to, proposing to go in and just as Trump put it, take the oil and give it to U.S. companies. But in today’s world, it’s no longer necessary for economic purposes, for overall economic purposes to actually control natural resources that are sold in an open market like oil. The only real gain is a political one where you have control over that oil and you can if you want withhold it from certain countries and you can manipulate it in various ways for political purposes....

The Guatemalan military...during the early ’80s when the Reagan administration was backing them enthusiastically... would go into villages in the Mayan highlands in the northwest. ... I was there, I spoke to the soldiers as they were doing it, I spoke to survivors … they would decapitate people. They would crucify people. They would use the tactics that ISIS today puts on video that are now shocking the world.... The powers have always been willing to use these tactics...And for centuries they were proud of it. All you have to do is look at the holy texts of the major religions—the Bible, the Quran, the Torah. They're full of one massacre after another. People forget....For years and years the powers were proud of these tactics. They advertised it.... As recently as the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, U.S. presidents were still boasting about it... Go back and read [Roosevelt’s] writings. He's repeatedly … talking about the necessity to shed blood, the necessity to kill...

For Washington, the Iraqi deaths did not count. George Bush viewed them only as a public-relations problem, which he deemed surmountable. Washington could have achieved its official aim of getting Iraq out of Kuwait through negotiations, and it could have stopped the war after the Iraqis retreated. But Washington insisted on full military assault and triumph to achieve its unofficial goals, primarily the reassertion of U.S. military dominance... For this, the United States was willing to kill an unlimited number of Iraqis... For Washington, the Iraqi deaths did not count. George Bush viewed them only as a public-relations problem, which he deemed surmountable... Bush’s assault on Iraq furthered... showed that it was possible to stage gigantic conventional attacks without shedding much American blood by substituting airborne munitions for U.S. combat troops.