Where Has All the Money Gone? How Contractors Raked in $385 Billion to Build and Support Bases .....

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:




Where Has All the Money Gone?
How Contractors Raked in $385 Billion to Build and Support Bases Abroad since 2001

By David Vine


Outside the United States, the Pentagon controls a collection of military bases unprecedented in history. With U.S. troops gone from Iraq and the withdrawal from Afghanistan underway, it’s easy to forget that we probably still have about 1,000 military bases in other peoples' lands. This giant collection of bases receives remarkably little media attention, costs a fortune, and even when cost cutting is the subject du jour, it still seems to get a free ride.

With so much money pouring into the Pentagon’s base world, the question is: Who’s benefiting?

Some of the money clearly pays for things like salaries, health care, and other benefits for around one million military and Defense Department personnel and their families overseas. But after an extensive examination of government spending data and contracts, I estimate that the Pentagon has dispersed around $385 billion to private companies for work done outside the U.S. since late 2001, mainly in that baseworld. That’s nearly double the entire State Department budget over the same period, and because Pentagon and government accounting practices are so poor, the true total may be significantly higher.

Not surprisingly, when it comes to such contracts and given our recent wars, the top two countries into which taxpayer dollars flowed were Afghanistan and Iraq (around $160 billion). Next comes Kuwait ($37.2 billion), where the military has had a significant presence since the first Gulf War of 1990-1991, followed by Germany ($27.8 billion), South Korea ($18.2 billion), Japan ($15.2 billion), and Britain ($14.7 billion). While some of these costs are for weapons procurement, rather than for bases and troop support, the hundreds of thousands of contracts believed to be omitted from these tallies thanks to government accounting errors make the numbers a reasonable reflection of the everyday moneys flowing to private contractors for the world of bases the United States has maintained since World War II. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175699/tomgram%3A_david_vine%2C_baseworld_profiteering/#more

[KansDem]

1. Caymans?

Just a guess...

[xchrom]

2. du rec. nt

[antiquie]

3. Wow

[xtraxritical]

4. Golf courses and vacation destinations around the world, talk about socialism.

[JEB]

5. Why isn't this a scandal?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

6. How many stockholders in these war-profiting companies are politicians and related persons?

These wars and occupations will never end because, with the war-on-terror, no one can ever surrender.

Someone is getting rich. Very rich.

It is known in Chicago and other cities that politicians, relatives, and their supporters can get wealthy from local governmental contracts.

Could it otherwise be that, with all the billions of dollars streaming towards the billion-dollar, profit-making corporations, none of the national politicians have dipped into the stream and picked up a little for themselves?

If Chicago politicians are smart enough to do this, can't others?