Do you think that SmirkyNuts threw all of his budget money

[Dees]

into the war and the DOD and such because it is so much easier for Repugs to steal money from these areas than health and education. There are some awfully fat contractors making some very good money on war and defense and I'm sure the kickback game is in full gear. Starve the beast and all that aside...isn't that why Reuggies are in government to begin with is to fatten their wallets?

[Inland]

1. Sure. It goes directly to big, bloated business w/out competition.

and of courese largely exempt from things like bidding.

It is therefore exempt from the same rules applied to any other spending, that is, it is just throwing money at the problem, it seems like help but it isn't, etc.

[meti57b]

2. the ultimate goal is to bankrupt the federal gov't so that social programs

can not be funded now or in the foreseeable future. The federal government would be small and only military and probably so-called diplomatic functions would be funded.

Throwing away money in Iraq is a fast way to accomplish this goal.

[MissWaverly]

3. Yes, yes and yes

usually a war has this country humming, I am convinced that we will eventually find out
that the money was laundered thru phony defense contractors for covert activities by
at this time unknown individuals who had the blessing of those in key positions. Whether
it was to advance the neocon objectives or not, it is hard to say, but I believe much
money allocated was never spent on what it was budgeted for and many have paid dearly for this.

[punpirate]

4. That's certainly part of it...

... but one has to go back to the McKinley era to see the thinking that the `pugs have about defense. First, having a military around the world to protect corporate interests serves their purposes, too. Makes the world "safe" for US investment. The other reason is psychological--the wealthy are terrified of some cataclysm which will strip them of their wealth, whether that's an internal upheaval or an attack from outside (which is why unions have been assaulted in the country since their inception--and why they have always been associated with communism in the past century, even though unions in this country predated the Bolshevik revolution by several decades).

The robber baron mentality thinks that government is an interference to their operations and their wealth, except for defense--they think a "strong" defense will protect their wealth ("strong" meaning lots of money put into their defense industries, too). The rest of what government does, they'd like to kill--including health and education subsidies. That's been the conservative meme for a hundred or more years.

And, they want the general public to pay for their security, which is why there are so many tax plans afoot that generate enough revenue for defense by taxing the middle class and the poor, but not enough to pay for anything else.

It's all about preserving and increasing wealth. It's not just that the wealthy have big interests in defense firms, although that is part of it.