Archive
Blood Money and Broken Oaths
By Marivel Guzman | Akashma News
About the Series
This nine-part investigative series traces how U.S. wars—from Iraq to Afghanistan, from Congress to Silicon Valley—have become less about defense and more about dividends. It exposes the revolving door between military command and corporate control, the use of terror to justify mass surveillance, and the hidden ledger of war profiteers.
Table of Contents
- Part I: The War Machine’s Finest Minds – And Why They Failed Us
- Part II: Blood Money and Broken Oaths – How America’s Wars Were Lost to Greed
- Part III: The Empire’s Ledger – Mapping the Timeline of Treason
- Part IV: Collateral Empire – The Civilian Toll and the Future of Resistance
- Part V: Naming the War Lords – Profiles of Power, Profit, and Permanent War
- Part VI: Collateral Profits – How War Built Empires, Crushed Nations, and Reshaped the Global Order
- Part VII: Resistance Rising – The Return of the Unbought Voice
- Part VIII: The Patriot Act’s Children – Surveillance, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Dissent
- Part IX: The Archive of Resistance – Building the People’s Historical Memory
Coming Soon: The eBook Edition
Complete manuscript with footnotes, timelines, visual archives, and appendices. Arabic and Spanish translations will follow the English release.
Part II: Blood Money and Broken Oaths – How America’s Wars Were Lost to Greed
by Marivel Guzman | Akashma News
They said it was about freedom. They said it was about justice. They said it was about protecting American lives.
But the body count rose, the lies piled up, and the contracts multiplied.
Behind every failed operation, every smokescreen of national interest, and every “freedom mission” abroad—there was a ledger. And the names in those ledgers weren’t soldiers or widows. They were stockholders, politicians, former generals, and billionaires.
This is not anti-war rhetoric. This is forensic journalism. We follow the money. We follow the lies. And we follow the names.
I. The Bush Dynasty: Family Business Meets Foreign Invasion
George H.W. Bush – former CIA Director, oilman, war president. His company, Zapata Offshore, had connections to offshore drilling, Latin America operations, and covert interests.
George W. Bush – sat atop the nation in 2001, as oil executives and military contractors circled the wreckage of 9/11 like vultures. He handed the no-bid reconstruction contracts to Halliburton, formerly run by his vice president, Dick Cheney.
And then came the war built on a lie—Weapons of Mass Destruction—a falsehood pushed by political operatives and amplified by a willing press. The Bush-Cheney doctrine turned Iraq into a playground for profiteers.
II. Dick Cheney: Halliburton’s Shadow Commander
Vice President Cheney made millions from Halliburton stock options even after supposedly “severing ties.” In 2003 alone, Halliburton secured $7 billion in contracts from the U.S. government.
His fingerprints are everywhere:
KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary) billed billions for “reconstruction.”
Allegations of fraud, overcharging, and unsafe conditions for troops.
Private subcontractors like Blackwater (now Academi) acted as mercenary extensions of U.S. foreign policy—with legal immunity.
III. Congress for Sale: The Blood-Soaked Wallets on Capitol Hill
Congress didn’t just approve the wars—they invested in them.
Senator Dianne Feinstein: Her husband, Richard Blum, had stakes in military contractors that gained from Iraq contracts.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH): Longtime advocate of defense expansion, recipient of funds from Raytheon and Lockheed.
Dan Crenshaw (R-TX): Public military hero, private supporter of increased private security contracting. Multiple donations from defense PACs.
And let’s not forget Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE)—our cyber subcommittee chair. With decades of military service and political clout, he embodies the revolving door. No direct link to NSO Group or Palantir yet, but his pro-surveillance stances and cyber warfare lobbying track suggest he’s under corporate gravity.
Use OpenSecrets.org and Project on Government Oversight to track the steady stream of blood money funneled through campaign donations and insider contracts.
IV. When Generals Turn Into Guns-for-Hire
Gen. James Mattis: Board member of General Dynamics after his military career.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal: Became advisor to Palantir Technologies, a CIA-seeded surveillance company.
Gen. Michael Hayden: Ex-NSA director turned private consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton—the same firm Edward Snowden worked for when he exposed global surveillance.
They fought wars. Then they sold the playbook.
V. The Tech Profiteers: From Silicon Valley to Baghdad
Bill Gates: Not just the vaccine mogul—Microsoft technology undergirded U.S. digital surveillance and logistics systems in war zones. While Microsoft didn’t profit from boots-on-the-ground war, its infrastructure contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan were extensive.
Peter Thiel: Founder of Palantir, funded by In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm. Palantir’s predictive policing software was deployed in Iraq and on U.S. streets.
Jeff Bezos: Amazon’s AWS cloud bid for the JEDI war cloud contract—worth $10 billion—showed that today’s wars aren’t about tanks. They’re about data.
VI. The Looting of Iraq: $6.6 Billion Gone in Cash
Between 2003–2007, the U.S. “lost” $6.6 billion in cash meant for Iraq’s reconstruction. That money was flown in on pallets—literally—in C-130s, and vanished.
Where did it go? Corrupt Iraqi officials? American contractors? Halliburton vaults?
No accountability. No charges. No return.
VII. From Patriot Act to Panopticon
With the ink still wet from the Twin Towers’ collapse, Congress passed the Patriot Act, giving birth to:
NSA mass surveillance.
Fusion centers spying on Americans.
Corporate surveillance networks with no oversight.
Big Tech, security firms, and retired brass cashed in. And the American people were told: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”
Meanwhile, the architects of fear had everything to gain.
VIII. Conclusion: The Road to Treason Is Paved with Contracts
America didn’t lose its wars because of incompetence. It lost them because winning was never the goal.
The Pentagon became a piggy bank. Congress a stock exchange. And the generals? Many became consultants, CEOs, and lobbyists.
They served money, not country. And money, as we know, doesn’t need a passport to move through the doors of corruption.
So we name them. We trace the dollars. And we demand that history stop calling them patriots when they were, in truth, profiteers.
In Part III, we’ll break down timelines, show document trails, and map the full revolving door from war zones to corporate boardrooms.
Welcome to Part III: Blood Money and Btoken Oaths: The Empire’s Ledger – Mapping the Timeline of Treason
Part VI: Blood Money and Broken Oaths — Collateral Profits – How War Built Empires, Crushed Nations, and Reshaped the Global Order
By Marivel Guzman | Akashma News
“The bombs fell. The stocks rose. The borders collapsed. And the billionaires were born.”
— Akashma News, 2025
Wars are not just about weapons and soldiers. They’re about markets, monopolies, and restructuring. In the 21st century, war has become a reset mechanism—used not to resolve conflict, but to liquidate sovereign assets, privatize economies, and rewire global power dynamics.
I. Empires Built on Rubble
The U.S. and its allies didn’t just defeat regimes. They harvested nations.
Iraq’s oil infrastructure, once state-controlled, was handed over to international oil corporations. Contracts were funneled to ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and Shell.
Afghanistan’s mineral rights, including lithium, rare earth elements, and copper, were quietly targeted by Chinese and Western firms even before the last U.S. troops left.
The Syrian conflict allowed Turkey, Russia, and U.S. oil contractors to carve out control zones—under the banner of fighting terrorism.
These “liberations” led to permanent military installations, surveillance zones, and debt-based rebuilding programs overseen by U.S. allies and transnational lenders like the IMF and World Bank.
II. Economic Colonization via Aid and Arms
Once the bombs stopped falling, another weapon took over: economic dependency.
USAID, World Bank, and Western NGOs offered “rebuilding packages” tied to:
Privatization of water, electricity, and public health systems.
Favorable trade terms for Western investors.
Long-term IMF loans with austerity requirements.
Countries once resistant to Western banking hegemony—Iraq, Libya, Ukraine—were dragged into global finance’s orbit by war. Their local industries were crushed. Their sovereignty rewritten in the fine print of investment treaties and oil concessions.
III. Ghost Nations: Sovereignty Replaced by Security Zones
Today, entire countries function as forward-operating platforms:
Iraq still hosts thousands of foreign contractors and intel personnel.
Afghanistan—though abandoned—remains surveilled by satellites and drones, its airspace monitored by regional proxies.
Ukraine, while fighting for national identity, has become a testbed for weapons systems and NATO coordination.
These are no longer nations. These are geo-strategic laboratories, run by private contractors, IMF enforcers, and embassy advisors.
, while fighting for national identity, has become a testbed for weapons systems and NATO coordination.
These are no longer nations. These are geo-strategic laboratories, run by private contr
IV. Global Order Reshaped by Chaos
The post-9/11 wars were not random.
They neutralized regional challengers, fractured continental blocs, and opened up trade lanes:
The EU became weakened by the refugee crisis.
The Arab world was shattered into client states, war zones, and economic vassals.
Africa’s Sahel region, flooded with weapons from Libya, became a permanent proxy battlefield.
Asia was reoriented toward “security alliances” built to contain China—with Japan, India, Philippines, and South Korea under expanded U.S. influence.
Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar, Western surveillance tech, and American defense contractors entrenched themselves as permanent tools of soft (and hard) control.
Part VII: Blood Money and Broken Oaths — Resistance Rising – The Return of the Unbought Voice
V. Who Benefited? Follow the Bank Accounts
BlackRock and Vanguard own major shares in defense, surveillance, and fossil fuel companies.
JP Morgan Chase helped finance contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction.
McKinsey & Co. advised both governments and war profiteers—sometimes on opposite sides of the conflict.
And let’s not forget the Carlyle Group, whose war investments were so profitable they sparked Congressional inquiries in the early 2000s—then disappeared from the headlines.
War isn’t random. It’s structured liquidation.
VI. The “Failed State” Playbook
To control a region:
1. Destabilize the state (via war, sanctions, or color revolution).
2. Flood with aid and arms—contracted to Western firms.
3. Offer rebuilding contracts tied to private control.
4. Redesign the legal system to benefit global finance and tech monopolies.
5. Maintain a permanent intelligence presence via embassies, drone bases, and “training missions.”
The result? A failed state on paper, but a high-yield portfolio for the war elite.
VII. Conclusion: War Is the New Infrastructure Deal
It builds fortunes. It demolishes resistance. It rewires markets.
The average American sees rising gas prices and a VA backlog.
The average Afghan sees rubble and surveillance towers.
But the war lords see stock options, new markets, and privatized borders.
The world was not remade by diplomacy.
It was shattered by design—then leased back to the highest bidder.
Part VII: Blood Money and Broken Oaths — Resistance Rising – The Return of the Unbought Voice
Akashma Online News 