our military and our children's toys - oh yes

[ensho]

http://counterpunch.com/


The Toys of War
The Militarization of America

-snip-

So it was no great surprise, seven years after the U.S. defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan and five years after Saddam Hussein's army dissolved in Iraq, to find in the Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 110-181) some congressional action to procure small arms to help rebuild the armies of these countries. The relevant Section is 892 of P.L. 110-181 titled "Competition for Procurement of Small Arms Supplied to Iraq and Afghanistan." This section specifies that the procurement of small arms of less than .50 caliber cannot be sole source. Specifically, it enjoins the Secretary of Defense to ensure that the competition is "full and open," that no U.S. manufacturer is excluded, and that no "product" manufactured in the United States is excluded even if the parent company is incorporated or has its base of operations in another country.

What was surprising was Section 882 of the same public law. This section is titled "Authority to License Certain Military Designations and Likenesses of Weapons Systems to Toy and Hobby Manufacturers."

That's right: the Secretary of the Army, Navy, or Air Force, under a new subsection, is empowered to "license trademarks, service marks, certification marks, and collective marks owned or controlled by the Secretary relating to military designations and likenesses of military weapons systems to any qualifying company upon receipt of a request from the company."

-snip-

Subsection (3) provides that "the fee for a license under this subsection shall not exceed by more than a nominal amount the amount needed to recover all costs of the Department of Defense in processing the request for the license and supplying the license." (Of course, if your annual appropriation is more than half a trillion dollars and with "nominal" a relative term, the possibilities are legion--one or more of which would involve Senator Everett Dirksen's definition of "real money.)

Also strange is the last subsection of Section 882. It gives the Secretary of Defense a deadline of 180 days from the date the legislation becomes law to implement Section 882. It suggests that someone is going to leave government service and go into a new line of figures and toy weapons, perhaps based on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars,
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the money the neo cons make off of military violence is breath taking.

they are the first criminal gang that has successfully screwed the whole world.

an american product.