The war industry’s drums are beating

Afghanistan – Salon.com

Almost every time you turn on the television, somebody’s carrying on about the projected trillion-dollar cost of Democratic health-insurance reforms — derived by multiplying the $100 billion yearly cost by 10, and often by ignoring the projected $11 billion yearly savings to the U.S. budget deficit.

Pentagon spending this year alone, however, columnist David Sirota points out, is projected at $673 billion, for a 10-year total of $6.73 trillion. That’s assuming costs don’t rise. (Fat chance.) Giving McChrystal the soldiers he wants, along with training and equipping an Afghan army of dubious loyalty, is projected to cost an additional $40 billion to $50 billion each year. Yet nobody’s supposed to ask how anything that happens in that remote land could possibly justify the costs.

Gee, you’d think someone wanted to build a pipeline or something.  Oh, yeah, and don’t a lot of people make a lot of money when we’re at war?


About Bill

Cat-lover, birder, pilot, poet, former lounge lizard, pauper, pagan, lifeguard, chauffeur and ex-cop martial artist turned pacifist addiction worker; pretty good husband, father, son, and brother, and a helluva friend. Trying to follow the Middle Path, one day at a time.
This entry was posted in Business, Government, International Relations, Military, War. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to The war industry’s drums are beating

  1. Moe says:

    That was a really fine article at Salon. It seems you and I excerpted the same part of the story. Great minds and all I guess.

    Ndoobietubbly, as us anti-war hippy pinko freaks like to say.

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