Smedley Darlington Butler

http://militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=2879





Awarded for actions during the China Relief

The Secretary of the Navy takes pleasure in transmitting to First Lieutenant Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps, the Brevet Medal which is awarded in accordance with Marine Corps Order No. 26 (1921), for distinguished conduct and public service in the presence of the enemy while serving with the Second Battalion of Marines, near Tientsin, China, on 13 July 1900. On 28 March 1901, First Lieutenant Butler is appointed Captain by brevet, to take rank from 13 July 1900.

General Orders: Marine Corps Orders No. 26 (June 27, 1921)

Action Date: 13-Jul-00







Awarded for actions during the Dominican Republic Occupation

The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor (First Award) to Major Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps, for distinguished conduct in battle, in the engagement of Vera Cruz, Mexico, on 22 April 1914. Major Butler was eminent and conspicuous in command of his battalion. He exhibited courage and skill in leading his men through the action of the 22d and in the final occupation of the city.

General Orders: War Department, General Orders No. 177 (December 4, 1915)

Action Date: 22-Apr-14






Awarded for actions during the U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Haiti

The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor (Second Award) to Major Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism in action as Commanding Officer of detachments from the 5th, 13th, 23d Companies and the Marine and Sailor Detachment from the U.S.S. CONNECTICUT, Major Butler led the attack on Fort Riviere, Haiti, on 17 November 1915. Following a concentrated drive, several different detachments of Marines gradually closed in on the old French bastion fort in an effort to cut off all avenues of retreat for the Caco bandits. Reaching the fort on the southern side where there was a small opening in the wall, Major Butler gave the signal to attack and Marines from the 15th Company poured through the breach, engaged the Cacos in hand-to-hand combat, took the bastion and crushed the Caco resistance. Throughout this perilous action, Major Butler was conspicuous for his bravery and forceful leadership.

Action Date: 17-Nov-15






Smedley Darlington Butler



on edit to add: General Butler is buried in Oaklands Cemetery
West Chester
Chester County
Pennsylvania, USA

thank you

:applause:

Allegations of the Business PlotIn November 1934, Butler alleged the existence of a political conspiracy of Wall Street interests to overthrow President Roosevelt, a series of allegations that came to be known in the media as the Business Plot.<53><54> A special committee of the House of Representatives headed by Representatives John W. McCormack of Massachusetts and Samuel Dickstein of New York, who was later alleged to have been a paid agent of the NKVD,<55> heard his testimony in secret.<56> The McCormack-Dickstein committee was a precursor to the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

In November 1934, Butler told the committee that a group of businessmen, saying they were backed by a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and others, intended to establish a fascist dictatorship. Butler had been asked to lead it, he said, by Gerald P. MacGuire, a bond salesman with Grayson M–P Murphy & Co. The New York Times reported that Butler had told friends that General Hugh S. Johnson, a former official with the National Recovery Administration, was to be installed as dictator. Butler said MacGuire had told him the attempted coup was backed by three million dollars, and that the 500,000 men were probably to be assembled in Washington, D.C. the following year. All the parties alleged to be involved, including Johnson, said there was no truth in the story, calling it a joke and a fantasy.<56>

In its report, the committee stated that it was unable to confirm Butler's statements other than the proposal from MacGuire, which it considered more or less confirmed by MacGuire's European reports.<57> No prosecutions or further investigations followed, and historians have questioned whether or not a coup was actually close to execution, although most agree that some sort of "wild scheme" was contemplated and discussed.<58><59><60><61> The news media initially dismissed the plot, with a New York Times editorial characterizing it as a "gigantic hoax".<62> When the committee's final report was released, the Times said the committee "purported to report that a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler's story of a Fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true" and "... also alleged that definite proof had been found that the much publicized Fascist march on Washington, which was to have been led by Major. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, retired, according to testimony at a hearing, was actually contemplated".<63>

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee confirmed some of Butler's accusations in its final report. "In the last few weeks of the committee's official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country...There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient."<64>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler#Allegations_of_the_Business_Plot

Of sorts.

There's a great BBC radio documentary about The Business Plot, which last I checked was at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml .

In one of my favorite incidents mentioned, the doc mentions that Butler testified that, when he questioned whether people would believe the lie about Roosevelt's health on which the coup was to be based, MacGuire replied, "You know the American people will swallow that. We have got the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. . . . And the dumb American people will fall for it in a second."

:sarcasm:

It never stood a chance of success, but there really were actual millionaires plotting to stop FDR from saving capitalism.

http://smedlydarlingtonbutler.blogspot.com/2006/05/war-is-racket.html

Chapter One

WAR IS A RACKET

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

...in the 30's.


We could use another Butler today.

involved in the Business Plot.

Scott Horton in Harper's.

Prescott Bush was Hitler's American Banker, and the designated American liaison to the Third Reich, according to Harpers. See,"1934: The Plot Against America" by Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)Jul 28, 2007 ... It appears that Bush was to have formed a key liaison for the group with the new German government. Prescott Bush, of course, ...
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000651

corroboration for his claim.

Nor, was Prescott Bush ever "Hitler's banker" as anyone remotely familiar with the history of Fritz Thyssen knows.

What do you stake your claim on - Herbert Parvey's fawning biography of G.H.W.?

Loftus' findings about Prescott's knowing role in Thyssen's financing of the the Brown House and other Nazi funding are referenced here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

lack of any corroboration of Horton's claim, as I stated earlier. And, I have read Loftus, who also offers no corroboration for his claims.


And, it's "Parmet", not "Parvey".

I will have to go downstairs and pull a bunch of books off the shelves that link Bush and Walker at Harriman Brown Bros., and the Dulles Bros. at Sullivan & Cromwell, Morgan Bank, and other major Wall Street figures to the financing of Hitler's Germany after 1933.

Do I have to provide you with a bibliography? Can you make reference to any authoritative source that have refuted these charges?

Do you want to deny the vesting order for Thysssen's bank, UBC, was issued in 1942 and that Prescott wasn't on its Board?

Do I have to explain to why that is questionable, at best?

These stupid allegations have been circulating from Loftus, Buchanan, Tarpley and Chaikin. You can believe them if you want. I'd prefer to see hard evidence.

Or is this, from the Federal Register, just another "stupid allegation"?



Here's more of what Loftus has to say about Prescott:

How does any of this prove that Prescott Bush was, in any way, involved in the Business Plot?

Did you forget what we were "debating"?

Naomi Wolf repeats Horton's claim that Prescott was involved in the banker's plot:



Bottom line: I'll take BBC, the Guardian, Loftus, Horton, Klein and Wolf's interpretation of the documentary record over your unnamed apologists for the Bush clan.

can you point to any "unnamed apologists for the Bush clan" I have cited. I have correctly pointed out that not a single one of the "sources" you rely upon has produced a shred of evidence proving any involvement by Prescott Bush in the Business Plot. I'm not interested in "interpretations". I'm interested in hard evidence, which, if you had it, you would have provided it rather than a barrage of red herrings.

I'll thank you to quit trying to tie me in any way to the Bush family. If you can provide any hard evidence that Prescott Bush was involved in the Business Plot in any way, I'll gladly change my position. In the meantime, I notice that you keep leaving out the fact that Hitler imprisoned Thyssen in a Nazi concentration camp until the camp was liberated by American soldiers. Isn't that mighty strange behavior to subject "Hitler's banker" to? Unless, of course, your omission is simply to stack the deck against Prescott Bush.

I asked you if you had any sources for your assertion that the BBC report, the Guardian article, Loftus, Klein and Horton are wrong - you've cited none. Zero. Zip.

You're playing rhetorical games to defend the Bush clan, and have nothing to back it up. This conversation is at a dead end, Dude.

the point is none of those "sources" provide any hard evidence for their allegations re: the Business Plot. I'll ask you politely one last time to quit accusing me of "defending the Bushes". Got it?

The BBC's own web page -- http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml -- summarizing the 2007 report clearly states that Prescott Bush was involved in the Banker's Plot:



Bush is discussed in the broadcast at the 20 minute mark. There is a .ram recording of the show at the BBC site linked above, but I could not open that file format and had to find it elsewhere on the web.

The burden to produce evidence shifts to you, Dude. You've produced nothing but circular arguments and repeated insistence that there is no evidence for the connection between Bush and the plot, which you deny.

Out of fairness, the McCormack-Dickstein Report -- http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCormack-Dickstein_Committee -- did not name Bush as part of the plot, but as Gen. Butler himself complained, the report excised the names of many of the top ringleaders, leading Wall Street financiers. The Committee Report dealt more widely with Nazi political influence and espionage activities inside the US. A later section dealing with Nazi Propaganda activities does single-out Hamburg-Amerika Steamship Lines, a company that Bush managed for Brown Bros. Harriman, the US company that had taken over that German company as part of World War One reparations. The Committee concluded that Hamburg-Amerika was being used by German intelligence to support Nazi propaganada, influence and espionage activities in the U.S.

When one puts this together with other evidence that Bush and Walker were principal actors throughout the 1930s and early 1940s in arranging ongoing financing for Fitz Thyssen's banking and steel trust that rebuilt Germany's military machine, and other German companies, at a time that many US banks would not handle these accounts, and that Harriman Brown Bros. was itself a co-owner of these same companies, one can say that yes, there is an apparent connection between Prescott Bush and Bert Walker with both the Banker's Plot - a role that may have been more at arm's-length than that played by figures within Morgan Bank, DuPont and some other major US companies -- but, we can say with certainty that the Bush-Walkers were deeply involved in business with the Nazi regime.

At Harriman Brown Bros., Bush and Walker had money dealings with a number of notable Nazi financiers, and those dealings were extensive, complex, and long-lasting: http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_07.htm



Through Fritz Thyssen, Baron Schroder, and others, Prescott Bush indeed "paid Hitler." Only difference, it was at arms-length and there's been a concerted effort to cover up that relationship, even though parts of it are clearly on the public record. That is the larger message here.

a program making a claim is not corroboration. Why is that so hard for you to understand? The BBC "source" you provide is merely a summary of Mike Thomson's show in which he makes the same unsubstantiated claim. Where is Thomson's hard evidence for the claim? Hint: if you had it, you'd provide it.

What's more, your contention about the McCormack-Dickstein Committee is even more absurd. Yes, Butler did complain that the Committee did excise the names of some of the participants. Your "logic" appears to be:

A. Smedley Butler complained that the McCormack-Dickstein Committee excised the names of some of the partisans in the Business Plot.

B. Prescott Bush was not named in the McCormack-Dickstein Committee Report.

C. That proves that Prescott Bush was part of the Business Plot.

It's a nice little racket. Guess what? This many years later, all the direct participants are dead and have been for decades, so guys like Thomson, Loftus, Buchanan, Tarpley, Chaikin and others can make any claim they want without fear that anyone will contradict them. Listen to the language..."over the years, Prescott Bush's name has.leaked out" (paraphrase). "Leaked out" by whom? When was it "leaked out"? Where was it "leaked out"? How was it "leaked out"? Why was it "leaked out"?

You can talk about all the "apparent connections" (more weasel words), but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You might be okay with disregarding fundamental fairness, but I'm not, even if it does involve the Bush family. When you come up with a smoking gun, let me know.

Apparently, you believe that a person can't be shown to be a confederate to a crime unless there is physical evidence of his having been in a hotel room with the other defendants loading up the guns or direct testimony delivered on the stand by an eyewitness. I have news for you, lots of people have been convicted of many charges on less evidence than there is against Bush.

If that's unfair, so are the American criminal justice and civil law systems, along with the federal rules of evidence.

I've always said that the evidence indicates that Prescott Bush was a primary liaison between American and German financiers with close ties to the Nazi Party during the 1930s; that he continued to facilitate the flow of money and commerce to Hitler's Germany after 1933, and that he had no apparent compunctions about that role. He had a major role in financing the German Steel Trust and facilitating Fritz Thyssen's covert global banking affairs, and in moving money from the United States to Germany, even after World War Two started.

Whatever his role was in the 1933 Banker's Plot against FDR, it has been either covered-up or was at arm's length. I am not sure that I would have personally been the first to make the allegation, but am comfortable exploring it and amplifying it. I do not believe it is unfounded.

One thing is clear, had the fascist coup against FDR succeeded, Prescott Bush and Bert Walker would not only have emerged, they would have remained, at the center of the flow of money and influence between the United States and Nazi Germany. That is a fact.

Try to confine this to the subject at hand. You have zero evidence that Prescott Bush played any role in the Business Plot. Zilch. NASA. Zip.

When you do, I'll be glad to listen to it.

and your response is always that "zero evidence" even when the focus is on crimes and misdeeds that Prescott Bush more clearly had a well-documented role in.

You have no interest in discussing the subject. You're just interested in jabbing away at the shadows and looking tough.

Thank you for helping to develop the evidence on this thread that Prescott Bush played a major part in funding Nazi Germany. You've played a useful role in that effort. Thank you, and have a nice day, Dude. :)

You keep forgetting that the initial claim was about the Business Plot.

Your red herrings are amusing.

link after link to back up your claims, while I see nothing countering them from your challenger. I would say you've proven your point over and over.

FOIA revelations have demonstrated that the Bush family were most definitely involved with the Nazis. I don't think there is any doubt that anymore. Interesting that it should be questioned here of all places, considering how often the topic has been discussed here over the past several years.

Thank you for your informative and well-researched posts.

please show me what hard evidence that leveymeg provided that Prescott Bush tried to overthrow FDR. I know your standard of "evidence" is low, but this takes the cake.

ploy is so old. Leveymeg provided backup to everything he claimed, all you did, otoh, was claim it was not credible with not a single fact to back up your claims. 'Oooh, that's not true'! is not a credible argument, just fyi.

I see you're back to "shifting the burden of proof" and demandng I prove a negative again. Pay attention. When someone makes an affirmative claim and someone challenges them for proof, the challenger does not bear the burden of proof.

To insist otherwise is monumentally silly. Just like your refusal to provide evidence of your claim that security checkpoints have been found to be unconstitutional.

You are trying to shift the burden of proof here. Read your own source (the Guardian article) and show me where the smoking gun is.

By the way, I could provide you with a bibliography of books that "prove" Barack Obama was born in Kenya, which is laughable on its face.

You might want to look up the logical fallacy known as "false certainty".

Pretty puny - give us one authoritative article or reference that refutes the allegations that have been made by multiple sources in reputable publications that the Bushes and Walkers were involved with financing Nazi institutions. Betya can't produce even one.

You might want to examine the initial claim.

I stand by that. Every word.

What you have is an unsubstantiated claim.

Don't you find it odd that Prescott Bush's name doesn't even appear in the list with the others? Where's the smoking gun? All you have is an allegation with no proof whatsoever.

The fact is that Prescott Bush and Bert Walker weren't acting alone to aid Nazi Germany, there was a network of Wall Street lawyers and financiers that labored diligently to continue the flow of money to German companies and entities, even after the U.S. entered the Second World War. Undoubtedly, Prescott Bush was one of the key figures with close ties to the German elites who had backed Hitler, and had the Banker's Plot succeeded, he would have played a central role as a liaison between the two camps of wealthy fascists.

do you have hard evidence of Prescott Bush's "involvement" in the Business Plot or not?

Because now I and other DU readers have learned tons more details about Prescott Bush's dealings with the Nazis than we would have otherwise. Probably not the outcome you had in mind, was it Dude? :rofl:

no one is denying Union Bank's role with the Nazi's, although many leave out that Union Bank's role started many, many years before there was even a Nazi Party, as well as leaving out the part where Thyssen broke with Hitler and was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp until it was liberated by the Allies at the end of the war.

None of that is evidence that Prescott Bush was, in any way, involved in the Business Plot. There are plenty of things the Bush family has done over the years, chronicled by reputable authors like Kevin Phillips. We don't have to invent shit they didn't do to heap more scorn on them. If you or anyone else has hard evidence that Prescott Bush was involved in any way with the Business Plot, please present it.

You'd be better off smashing your face with a brick than keeping this debate going with the duder. :)

expecially when he cannot substantiate his allegation. Kinda like you, dude.

convincing.

It did. :rofl:

I mistook it for your idea of an argument.

You may have the last ellipse.

I could have posted a pony with butterflies all around it and you would have taken it for an argument lol.

most of yours.

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Bush Dynasty continues to this day.. and by the way, has anyone else noticed a pick up in mentioning Jeb Bush as a possible GOP contender.. the general media response is that it's not likely in 2012. 2016 maybe.

please post it.

Do I need to present his signed confession? No, that wouldn't be hard evidence. Maybe watch it on reality tv? :shrug:

documentation, dude. What is so hard about that? If you are trying to convince yourself of something, the evidence standard can be lower. However, if you want others to believe it, you've got to step up, otherwise, we might as well yell "Did not!", "Did so!" at each other.

Just because someone writes something and you read it, doesn't mean it's true.

most of which was written decades before the internet and electronic media. Go to the goddamn library for pete sakes.

here we go again.

"reams amd reams and reams of historical documents" isn't very specific. You're begging the question...again.

Apparently this is all BIG NEWS to you. This material has been out and available for a really, really, really long time.


Decades.

as these charges have swirled around for a while. However, liberal stalwarts Joe Conason, Herbery Parmet and no leass than the Anti-Defamation League come down on the other side.

I'll take the word of the ADL.

http://www.observer.com/node/48231

http://hnn.us/articles/1811.html

http://www.adl.org/Internet_Rumors/prescott.htm

It would be pretty silly to believe that the Anti-Defamation League would, in any way, coverup for a Nazi sypathizer.

now that was funny. The ADL! LOL!

ADL even does?

:kick:

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

:patriot:

He was truly fearless and scrupulously honest which makes him a hero of the nth degree. :patriot:

as well:

1934: The Plot Against America
DEPARTMENTNo CommentBYScott HortonPUBLISHEDJuly 28, 2007
I’m back from the land of heather and thistles, not to mention wee drams and lukewarm ale, but on my way out a friend at the BBC alerted me to this, a not-to-miss program on the BBC this morning, accessible over the next several days by internet. It’s the story of the Plot Against America. I don’t mean the Philip Roth novel, nor even the Sinclair Lewis book, It Can’t Happen Here, but rather the historical events upon which these two works of fiction were based.

In November 1934, federal investigators uncovered an amazing plot involving some two dozen senior businessmen, a good many of them Wall Street financiers, to topple the government of the United States and install a fascist dictatorship. Roth’s novel is developed from several strands of this factual account; he assumed the plot is actually carried out, whereas in fact an alert FDR shut it down but stopped short of retaliatory measures against the plotters. A key element of the plot involved a retired prominent general who was to have raised a private army of 500,000 men from unemployed veterans and who blew the whistle when he learned more of what the plot entailed. The plot was heavily funded and well developed and had strong links with fascist forces abroad. A story in the New York Times and several other newspapers reported on it, and a special Congressional committee was created to conduct an investigation. The records of this committee were scrubbed and sealed away in the National Archives, where they have only recently been made available.

The Congressional committee kept the names of many of the participants under wraps and no criminal action was ever brought against them. But a few names have leaked out. And one is Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the incumbent president. Prescott Bush was of course deep into the business of the Hamburg-America Lines, and had tight relations throughout this period with the new Government that had come to power in Germany a year earlier under Chancellor Aldoph Hitler. It appears that Bush was to have formed a key liaison for the group with the new German government.

Prescott Bush, of course, went on to service as a U.S. Senator from Connecticut, and his son, George H.W. Bush emerged from World War II as a hero.

-snip

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000651



The Whitehouse Coup
Monday 23 July 2007



The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.




http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

Its odd that the Marine Corps does not seem to honor one of it best and highly decorated Marines in history. I spend six years with the mob and I can not recall hearing about the deeds of ‘The Fighting Quaker’ ... ever! I found out about General Butler through my own research reading and I judge him a true historical humanitarian and leader of Marines!

The fascist corporate plotters are still around but they are NEOCONS and have been reincarnated in such companies as Koch Industries.

as part of our class in Marine Corps history.

But, only in connection with Nicaragua in 1915 (if memory serves me correctly).

Camp S.D. Butler MC Base - Okinawa, Japan

Perhaps the most unique characteristic about Okinawa is that unlike most duty stations, MCB Camp Butler is physically separated throughout the island into a number of different camps. For example, the distance between the northernmost camp, Camp Gonsalves, and the southernmost camp, Camp Kinser, is over 50 miles. On the winding roads of Okinawa, the distance is considerably longer. As with Camp Gonsalves and Camp Kinser, all the Marine Corps camps on the island and Camp Fuji on mainland Japan, fall under the one title, MCB Camp Butler.


So I feel the Marines still honor this true Patriot!

Oliver North (and he should be in the Quantico Brig) received more attention last week than General Butler has received all my lifetime.

It’s time the Corps does the right thing and recognizes that Chesty has competition!