Ouch.

[sheshe2]

Link to tweet

Oh ya. Check the PUNDITS and POLITICIANS whining and wringing their unwashed hands. Their cash cow is gone and they are crying. That includes you Andrea Mitchell/Grossberg (sp intentional).

The GOP is beside themselves. I am looking at all of you. Toss in a rock, the ones yelping the loudest are the ones that will be losing billions.

[bucolic_frolic]

1. I suspect it's not just pundits and politicians

Any part of the national security state knows about these investments. Especiallty if they retire and start writing investment newsletters.

[sheshe2]

2. It is a long string.

Keep pulling on the end and it will unravel.

[DENVERPOPS]

20. If you really, really, really want to know

about the Military Industrial Complex you should be taking a closer look at the Massive Secretive Investment Group called the
Carlyle Group. It is a private, somewhat secretive group of 600 of the wealthiest investors in America. They made an UNFATHOMABLE amount of money off the original Iraq invasion DESERT STORM, and all wars since then. By FAR, much more than Haliburton, Cheney, Erick Prince, and all the others in the Federal Government. When HW George Bush left the presidency, he went to work for Carlyle as Director of the Board, as I remember.......

Also, just for fun, look at HW's career starting with the CIA. He is the only COMMON THREAD through the entire top of the Federal Government from the time he was at the CIA, to the end of his son's presidency. Same thing for Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearle, etc etc etc

The last forty years of our U.S. Government, has been directed and controlled by these individuals, either out in front, or from the shadows.......

Perfect Book Title for the last 40+ years?........"While The Nation Slept"............

[bucolic_frolic]

22. You have outlined the paradigm

It's inside investors in an enterprise as rewarding as any exploration enterprise ever. Carving out a niche for their own capital.

[Evolve Dammit]

3. So sick to make money off death and destruction. May they reap what they sow. n/t

[Wounded Bear]

4. You mean follow the money? Why ever would we do that?

(Yeah that was just in case you missed it )

[sheshe2]

7. ;)

[bearssoapbox]

5. So, what's keeping them here?

"The people associated with the contactors who go into war zones making billions are the ones whining to go back in Afghanistan to finish an endless job."

Far as I'm concerned, they can shag their rich, fat, cowardly asses the hell over there and see how they make out.

[SayItLoud]

6. Might also check on the dark prince, Erik . NT

[ShazamIam]

13. I'm sure Erik Prince is in the middle of the sell out to the Taliban and the so called ISIS whatever

He is in an operation with China near where it shares a border with Afghanistan, some kind of training facility.

He resigned as CEO of this company just before or just after the agreement.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-idUSKCN1PP169

Prince denies any knowledge,

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-idUSKCN1PQ4FJ

[jaxexpat]

8. Back in the days of TFG Trump gave up his peace efforts when the money guys pulled his chain.

It was obvious all along who directed his actual efforts in that they'd remind him that he existed solely at their pleasure. When he started to mark outside their lines he'd change his "mind".

[Larissa]

9. Erik Prince says he'll charge $6,500 for Flights out of Kabul

What a guy!

https://www.businessinsider.com/erik-prince-charge-6500-for-flight-seat-out-of-kabul-2021-8

Prince, who founded the private military contractor Blackwater Worldwide, met with then-President Donald Trump's White House advisors in 2017 about his proposal to privatize the US military operation in Afghanistan. Prince's work in the war-for-profit space has been deeply controversial. In 2014, four Blackwater contractors were convicted of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in a 2007 massacre.

Prince violated a UN arms embargo on Libya by delivering weapons and foreign mercenaries to a militia leader planning to overthrow the country's internationally-supported government in 2019, a confidential UN investigation found earlier this year.

Prince's sister, Betsy DeVos, was Trump's education secretary and Prince has long been closely allied with Trump and involved in Republican politics. He worked with the far-right group Project Veritas to recruit former British and American spies to infiltrate progressive groups and labor unions, The New York Times reported last year.

[wnylib]

17. No private military has any place in a democracy.

[mcar]

10. MSM has been horrible for the last 2 weeks

Opining about things they know nothing about, bringing on the architects of this war to bash Biden.

One expected it from the RWNJs. I expected better from at least some on CNN and MSNBC.

[hadEnuf]

11. Yeah, they have really damaged their credibility.

I guess Trump was just a juicy, money making story. Not the standing up for America that some of us thought they were finally doing.

They switched rails to fast and suddenly with Biden and that hurts their credibility badly, IMO.

[mcar]

12. I know their ratings have gone down

(One thing IMPOTUS II was right about), but I don't see why they think this will up their ratings. They are alienating their viewers.

I don't mind criticism - this was a huge, complicated effort and it wasn't perfect. But there has been no perspective at all.

[calimary]

14. War should not be a profit-making enterprise.

Not EVER! That's the one thing that motivates more than anything else on earth. and reaches into the darkest souls. War means profit.

THAT'S what has to be broken.

[Celerity]

16. nor should healthcare and US government debt financing (middlemen huge banks have a monopoly

on US treasury bonds, etc)

US Banksters/Debt (all all sorts)/US petrol-dollar matrix (which impacts the fight on global climate change to a massive degree, and the forever wars as well)

US War/Security/Surveillance State

US For-Profit Healthcare

the 3 biggest global scams going

10's upon 10's of trillions of USD over each decade, and only increasing

[wnylib]

21. It goes back to WWI at least.

Too complex to give details here, but you can trace the history of one political family's war profiteering from the first World War to the present by doing searches on the following names and topics:

Samuel Bush and WWI, Remington Arms, George Herbert Walker, Prescott Bush, Union Banking Corporation, Fritz Thyssen. The story that connects those people and organizations is told in a book called George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography by Webster Griffin Tarpley and Antoin Chaitkin. The writing style of the book is somewhat sensational, but the facts in it are verifiable.

[calimary]

23. Yep. And totally unsurprising.

Money for bloodshed, destruction, and domination.

[billh58]

15. Military-Industrial Complex

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

https://www.militaryindustrialcomplex.com/

[IcyPeas]

18. Jack Keane chairman of AM General, which received a $459 million contract to provide Humvees

Jack Keane -- one of the key architects of the Afghan War who's been highly critical of the withdrawal -- is the chairman of AM General, which received a $459 million contract to provide Humvees in Afghanistan thru 2023.

Link to tweet

?s=19

[StClone]

19. Is it crazy to think that these war hogs want plenty of equipment left behind?

American taxpayer-funded stuff, so the enemy is well-armed? So to make an inevitable reemergence of a better-equipped enemy? And the cycle of war simmers ready to starts again.