“Our 20-year war was a strategic failure [General Mark Milley, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff]. Strategic failure yes, but for military contractors, Congress members, media personalities, high ranking military officers, foreign policy “experts” in and out of the administration, think tanks, research departments of major U.S universities it was a big payday. According to folks at the Watson Institute at Brown University, the U.S. has wasted $14 trillion dollars on wars since 9/11. Defense industry contractors made off with $7 trillion of that. Much of that money has been spent on a U.S. murder spree with “at least 5.8 to 6 million people likely to have died overall due to the War on Terror – a staggering number which is still probably very conservative.” [Byline Times report]. The rot that all this unregulated money produces goes all the way up the political food chain to the White House. When Dick Chaney, former CEO of Halliburton, a defense industry contractor, was George Bush’s vice president, he racked in big bucks when his old firm collected $30 billion most in no-bid contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dick Chaney’s net worth today? $105 million. When will the U.S. embrace peace? Never as long as war is so profitable for the elites. “We have a massive presence overseas…the perverse incentive to facilitate a war economy we’re giving more money to the Pentagon than ever to keep this going…It is a small elite who are making massive amounts of money off conflict or the potential for conflict and being driven by fear…” [Thomas Drake, former senior executive of the NSA and a whistleblower] Sick to your stomach yet? There’s lots more. You’ll find some of it in “Promising to Keep the U.S. Safe and Healthy, Military Contractors and Big Pharma Executives Cash In — Part One.”
