A few months before he was assassinated in 1963 it is claimed by some that President John F. Kennedy, or someone in his administration, commissioned a group of 15 scholars, economists and other specialists to do a unique study. The group was to look into and report on the barriers that could be expected to be encountered in the event that the United States should shift away from the confrontation policy of the Cold War and start pursuing a policy of attaining a permanent peace. The group was also to recommend possible solutions to those barriers. Though Kennedy was killed in November of ’63 the group continued to meet over the next two years. Their initial meeting took place at “Iron Mountain” in the state of New York where a number of major corporations maintained underground records and administration facilities to be used in the event of nuclear war. It is from this initial meeting ground that the group’s final report, completed in the mid ‘60s, took its title: “Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace”.

The report concluded that, even if it was possible to attain a condition of permanent peace it would probably not be desirable to do so. The reason?  War served to fulfill certain important social functions.  Among these functions were population control and the fact that war served as an economic whip for a society, spurring the need for production. The main reason, however, that the special group concluded that war should not be turned away from was that it appeared to them that the special power of a government to control its population resided in its war powers. They concluded that the power to make war and mobilize its citizenry for war was practically synonymous with the concept of nationhood. Based on this the study group concluded that until a reliable surrogate was found that fulfilled all the conditions that war fulfilled in accomplishing these social functions we should not be looking to eliminate war as a condition on planet Earth.

“Report from Iron Mountain…” was released to the public in book form in the mid ‘60s. The man who released it claims he obtained the report from one of the study group members who broke security because he had second thoughts about his involvement in the group and felt the public should be aware of the recommendations being made to their government officials by the group. Upon its release the report was immediately attacked as a hoax and the controversy over its veracity swirls to this day. There are those, however, who claim otherwise. L. Fletcher Prouty, who for many years coordinated the military support for CIA covert operations around the world in the 50s and early 60s, in his book “JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy” refers to “Report from Iron Mountain…” and states that the concepts of the report are representative of the thought processes of many of the cold warrior types in government at the time he was there.

This starts to give you some insight into why to date on this planet it has been impossible to do away with the blight of war as a constant condition. But there are other reasons as well. Let’s take a short look at the recent history of war just as regards the United States. Consider the following, and while doing so keep in mind that the founding fathers through the first 20 years of our existence as a nation worked very, very hard to keep the United States out of war. Their stated policy was to stay out of foreign and particularly European entanglements and wars. A huge reason for this was economic…they knew the country could not afford it and would inevitably wind up in the back pocket of the bankers if they went the war route.  So they worked hard to stay out.

This effort to stay out of war succeeded until the War of 1812 in which we fought the British for a 2^nd time. This was followed by the Mexican War in the mid 1840s, the Civil War in 1861 and the Spanish American war at the close of the 19^th century. Moving into the 20^th century we have WWI followed by WWII. In both of these wars our enemy on the continent of Europe was Germany. It may interest you to know that in World War I the chairman of the German Reichsbank, the central bank of Germany, was a man named Max Warburg. At the time Max’s brother, Paul Warburg was the chairman of the fledgling Federal Reserve Bank in the US, and thus you had the unique condition of the two brothers being Chairman of the Central banks of the two warring nations.

Do you suppose these guys at the minimum had a conflict of interest?

Well, WW I ends and Germany is defeated. But within 14 years Adolph Hitler rises to power and Germany rearms itself and within 20 years after the end of WWI the world is engulfed in WW II. How is that possible.?

In his insightful book, “Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler”, researcher Antony Sutton chronicles the support given to the 3^rd Reich by Wall Street bankers and firms who funneled money into Germany and formed corporate connections with companies in Germany, including the German chemical giant IG Farben, the company infamous for its production of the poison gas used in Nazi mass murder schemes.

Farben in the early 30s was a giant company that had an American corporation as well as a German one. Directors on the board of American Farben sound like a who’s who of the top industrialists and bankers of the day, including Edsel Ford of Ford Motor Co., C.E. Mitchel of the Fed Reserve Bank Of NY, Walter Teagle, director of the Fed Reserve Bank of NY and of Standard Oil of New Jersey as well as the omni-present Paul Warburg, first Chairman of the US Fed Reserve Bank. Of course the aforementioned Max Warburg, Paul’s brother was a Farben director in Germany.  Three American Farben board members were found guilty at the Nuremberg War Crime trails after WWII  but this did not include the ubiquitous Paul Warburg, Edsel Ford, or the Federal Reserve bankers. Often representing Farben and its American subsidiaries was the Wall Street law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, two prominent  members of which at this time were John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen Dulles. John Foster would go on to become Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower in the 50s during the height of the Cold War. Allen would be director of the CIA from the early ‘50s until he was fired by John Kennedy in 1961 following the ill fated invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs by a brigade of Cubans that the CIA had trained and equipped to retake that island from Castro. Many believe that it was Kennedy’s firing of Dulles and other top CIA officials as well as his decision to move away from the policy of confrontation and war (as evidenced by his famous speech at American University in June 1963, where he said we as a nation must re-examine our basics notions about the Soviet Union and ourselves “for we all breathe the same air and we all cherish our children’s future”) that led to his assassination in 1963. It is a matter of record that JFK was going to pull the plug on the Vietnam War, having already ordered the first thousand troops home at the time he was killed. It is also a matter of record that within 4 days after Kennedy’s death, with the issuance of  NSAM 273 ( National Security Action Memorandum 273) President Johnson started the process of  reversing JFK’s policy.  Sadly, the Vietnam War was about to start for real. Before it was through some 58,000 Americans would die and by some estimates 2 million Vietnamese.

In addition to the above Allen Dulles, prior to the establishment of the CIA and even after (CIA was established in 1947) was one of the principles in getting the NAZI intelligence apparatus turned over to the US as well as helped to relocate ex Nazi’s to the West who were considered to have value in the Cold War effort against the Soviet Union. You can see then, that the connections of Wall Street to the NAZIs were instrumental in creating the conditions that led to WWII and continued unabated into the Cold War against the Soviets.

The pattern has been repeated through the administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush One, Clinton and Bush Two. Also consider that each of these administrations was dealt nearly impossible situations to deal with that had those at effect from practically the word go. JFK had the Bay of Pigs debacle within the first 3 months of his administration. Reagan and Ford both had assassination attempts near the start of their terms, Nixon had Watergate and Bush two had 9/11 within the first 8 months of his administration.

Across the same time, within the context of the Cold War which lasted from 1945 until the Iron Curtain came down in ’89-90 we have had the Korean War, the Vietnam War, as well as the US Military interventions in Libya, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, The first Iraq war and now the second Iraq war and the Afghan War.

The question that must be seriously asked here is a simple one:

Who benefits from all of these wars and military actions?

Certainly not the millions who died during WWI and II and the wars since.

The fact is that, as noted in “Report from Iron Mountain…” war is big business. Defense is currently the second largest item in the federal budget annually with $100s of billions being spent. While I disagree with much of what President Obama stands for and many of the actions he is taking, to expect him or any President to be able to balance our budget and reduce our deficit in the face of the types of pressures I have out lined above is ludicrous until the factors of the equation change in this country. And while there may be some mental factor shared by the peoples of this planet that helps to pre-dispose us to war, the simple truth is that the Central Banks of Europe and our own Federal Reserve have operated as hidden influences to bring about the conditions of war that have devastated this planet, indebted the nations of the world and killed and brought despair to millions while inventing elaborate justifications like those in “Report from Iron Mountain…” so they can sleep better at night.

It is high time we changed the equation…don’t you think?