Lockheed Martin advertises on CNN

Well, they used to, anyway. I have not watched in a while. But why would they advertise on CNN? How many CNN viewers are buying nuclear weapons or stealth attack fighters? The answer is: NO ONE! The advertising dollars are just a form of “kickback” to CNN. The advertisements are made to portray Lockheed Martin as *True Patriots Who Protect America*. (like heck they do!)

Lockheed Martin had $20.7 billion in contracts in 2004 with the Pentagon. Lockheed Martin made $2.16 million in campaign contributions in 2004 (guess who to?), which is another form of “kickback”. All of this is legal, of course. Lockheed Martin made the F-117 stealth attack fighters that did SHOCK AND AWE in March of 2003 in Baghdad. CNN did not show the results of those bombing runs, and of course, neither did the other “news” stations. One of those bombing runs, meant to get Saddam, instead killed an entire family with the exception on the baby. The baby girl was thrown clear of the bombed home and into a neighbor’s puddle, where she was found the next morning. She was injured, but she survived. I heard this story from Mary Trotochaud and Rick McDowell. They are Quakers who were living in Baghdad at the time. They visited the extended family and heard the story. The family that was bombed out of existence using Lockheed Martin’s jets had never spoken to Saddam. This story never made it into the corporate news media.

Lockheed Martin also makes Patriot missiles. They have contracts with the Department of Homeland Security. One of these is a $591 million Air Force contract to provide classified and unclassified information technology services to Defense Department users. (Hey, maybe for a couple of million more, they could monitor the Weather Channel for those Homeland Insecurity guys?)

A former lobbyist for Lockheed Martin is Philip Perry as General Counsul for the Department of Homeland Insecurity. Perry is married to one of Cheney’s daughters (that would be the one that is straight). The CEO of Lockheed Martin is Robert Stevens and the corporate headquarters is at 6801 Rockledge Drive, Bethesda MD, 20817.

Nice little system: The politicians make war, Lockheed Martin makes a bundle, they give kickbacks to the politicians in the form of campaign contributions (plus the politicians can buy stock and make a bundle themselves), and then Lockheed Martin buys advertising on CNN (and probably FAUX and MSNBC too). Now, we couldn’t have a good news story on the aftereffects of a bombing run and then follow up with a Patriotic Commercial with the same Lockheed Martin stealth attack fighters that dropped the bombs, could we? How would that look? So, CNN knows the rules and they don’t show those pictures of dead Iraqis from US bombs. And the politicians and their aides are adamant that we only use “smart bombs” and that we “really care” about civilian casualties and we try to minimize that. Of course, if that were true, then the military would collect and publish data to prove it.

But they don’t.

So, everyone gets rich at Lockheed Martin, the US Senate, the White House, and CNN. And how they can look in the mirror without throwing up is beyond me.

The information for this piece came from watching CNN and an article by Frida Berrigan in The Nonviolent Activist, a magazine of the War Resisters League.