It is time to end the charade. If our country attacks foreign nations preemptively, then our Defense Department becomes an Offense Department, and defense spending becomes offense spending. The concept of offense spending has many disturbing connotations.
Ever since Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation on his departure from the White House to beware the military-industrial complex, the United States has increasingly engaged in aggressive wars more for economic reasons than geopolitical ones. During the Korean War President Eisenhower learned firsthand about the insatiable nature of war profiteering.
The Bush and Cheney administration have, however, elevated the size and scope of the military-industrial complex to something that even President Eisenhower would not have thought possible. Combining huge no-bid, cost-plus contracts with massive military supplemental bills and a complete lack of congressional oversight by Republicans, the Bush administration has managed to chew through over half $1 trillion on the Iraq war in just four years. Impressive, even by military-industrial complex standards.
That money, virtually all of which was borrowed from foreign banks, has not simply evaporated into thin air, but rather has gone into the bank accounts of many large corporations including Halliburton/KBR, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, GE, Boeing, Raytheon and many, many others.
But this is not ordinary war profiteering, this is coordinated industry-government collusion and manipulation that benefits corporations with huge no-bid contracts and unprecedented profits, and the government with “economic growth” that can be used in campaigns to gain and retain power in Washington.
Cheney’s secret “energy taskforce” meetings brought together oil company executives to get them onboard with the invasion of Iraq long before the war began, and even before 9/11 ever offered up the excuse of a “war on terror”. These meetings led to exclusive, no-bid contracts being awarded to American and Brit oil companies for “extraction rights’ in Iraq.
Part of the deal was greatly reduced taxes on oil companies, with concomitant drastic increases in profits. But there is much more in it for the complicit corporations. Enactment of Iraqi hydrocarbon law, written by oil company lobbyists, ensures that US and British oil companies will get extraction rights amounting to at least 80% of the oil reserves in Iraq. This is a bold and brazen grab for the natural resources of Iraq, which will not benefit the Iraqi people in any way.
In the modern world, corporate collusion with government is considered by oil executives as essential for monetizing oil reserves around the world for their profit.
Dr. John Moffett is an active research neuroscientist in the Washington, DC area, who has published over 45 scientific articles on the nervous and immune systems. Dr. Moffett is also the author and webmaster of the political opinion website www.Factinista.org, and is a Managing Editor at OpEdNews.com.
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