The war mongers

The military industrial complex and the homeland security-industrial complex has created a revolving door of opportunity for government bureaucrats, military personnel, and elected officials.

A recent study by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Brave New Foundation found that “70 percent of recently retired three and four star generals left the Pentagon for employment by major defence contractors.”

A Washington Post report that found there are “more than 1,200 government organisations and nearly 2,000 private companies working on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence programs,”

A 2011 Pentagon study that found “during the ten years after 9/11, the Defence Department had been given more than $400 bn to contractors who had previously been sanctioned in cases involving $1 mn or more in fraud.”

New York Times investigative reporter, James Risen in “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War,” reveals  “During the war on terror, greed and ambition have been married to unlimited rivers of cash and the sudden deregulation of American national security to create a climate in which clever men could seemingly create rogue intelligence operations with little or no adult supervision.” He goes on to say “These contractors are hired to help Washington determine the scale and scope of the terrorist threat; they make no money if they determine that the threat is overblown or, God forbid, if the war on terror ever comes to an end,” writes Risen. “Opportunities that would disappear if America was suddenly at peace. To most of America, war has become not only tolerable, but profitable, so there is no longer any great incentive to end it.”

Corporations are not formed to serve national interests. They are formed to pursue and maximise profit. Corporations lie, steal, and cheat in the pursuit of profit, and if national interests must be sacrificed to achieve said profit, then so be it. The outsourcing of the military to private corporations has put the corporate profit motive before national security interests.

It’s impossible to discern the difference in the way the respective Obama and Bush administrations have executed the war on terror. “The war now has a bipartisan veneer and “it shows no signs of slowing down; hustlers and freebooters continue to take full advantage, and the war’s unintended consequences continue to pile up.”

Taken from here