2001-2011: What the Top 1-Percent Has Done For Us

[Octafish]

Engaged in war to make profit and concentrate power.


Photograph of a U.S. developed M-388 Davy Crockett nuclear weapon
mounted to a recoilless rifle on a tripod, shown here
at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in March 1961.
It used the smallest nuclear warhead ever developed by the United States.

Over the last decade, the nation's wealthy and their satraps in power have used war for power and profit.
When he occupied the Oval Office, pretzeldent George W Bush once actually let the truth slip out during a press conference: "Money trumps peace."

Consider, the (estimated) Pentagon budget from 2001: $343.2 billion.
Source: Frida Berrigan in The War Profiteers: How Are Weapons Manufacturers Faring in the War?

Compare, the (estimated) Pentagon budget from 2011: $1,200 billion
Source: Tom Engelhardt in Why Do You Pay $1.2 Trillion a Year to Prop Up a Vast, Secretive National Security State?

That's more than a three-fold increase.

(Gee. Come to think of it, my parent's Social Security checks didn't go up three-fold over the past decade.)

Any questions?

Any answers?

[Bozita]

1. K&R ... Bigtime!

[Octafish]

3. In particular, nuclear power and weapons have served to concentrate power and wealth.

Nuclear power and weapons are most un-democratic, yet it seems like no one in Corporate McPravda talks about it.

US nuclear tab at $5.8 trillion

Washington: In an enormous drain on resources the United States has spent $5.8 trillion on nuclear weapons according to a new study

South News July 1

A four-year study of newly declassified Pentagon documents, released yesterday by the Brookings Institute, looked at the expenditures of producing and deploying nuclear explosives over the past 5 1/2 decades with current spending on the arsenal at about $35 billion annually, or roughly 15 percent of the total defense budget.

Since the birth of the atomic weapons program in 1940, a total of $5.5 trillion was spent through 1996, the Washington think tank reports. That is 29 percent of all U.S. military spending and almost 11 percent of all government spending through the 52 years.

In the first comprehensive audit of the US nuclear arsenal,it calculated costs for research, development, deployment, command and control, defenses and dismantlement. The U.S. government has never attempted to track these costs, and whether the weapons helped to bring down the Soviet Union, against whom most of the arms were aimed after World War II, remains an open question, Stephen I. Schwartz, chairman of the four-year study, said in the report.

"Given the significant sums expended on nuclear weapons and their central role in the cold war, it is striking that so few have expressed an interest in either the cumulative or the annual costs,'' Schwartz wrote.

SNIP...

Highlights of the report:

• The United States produced 70,000 nuclear warheads between 1945 and 1990, with an arsenal that peaked in the 1960s at 32,000 warheads
• Making the warheads was relatively inexpensive. Firing, storing and handling them was extremely costly. The 70,000 warheads cost $409.4 billion, only about 7 percent of the total. But thousands of aircraft, submarines, ships, missiles, and a large network of factories, bases and personnel cost $3.241 trillion.
• In 1996 dollars, the World War II Manhattan Project cost more than $26 billion.
• The United States has produced 65 warhead types for 116 different weapons systems.
• Thirteen major U.S. facilities - including Washington state's Bangor submarine base - handle and maintain nuclear weapons, and cover an area larger than Delaware, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined.
• Some 6,135 strategic ballistic missiles were purchased at a cost of $266 billion, as well as 4,680 strategic bombers since World War II at a cost of $227 billion.
• The 2,975 submarine-launched ballistic missiles alone cost $97 billion, said the report. Since their inception, the United States has designed and deployed 14 kinds of strategic bombers. Some 210 nuclear-powered military vessels have been built or are being built.
• The figures include the estimated $7 billion costs of attempting to develop a nuclear-powered airplane, which never got off the ground.
• At the moment, the U.S. nuclear arsenal - long-range strategic and short-range tactical - is estimated at 10,635 warheads.
• The current stockpile has the equivalent explosive force of about 120,000 Hiroshima bombs.
• The United States is spending an estimated $35 billion a year on nuclear weapons and related programs, the Brookings Institution says in a massive study.

CONTINUED...


http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/980701-USnukes.htm

Thank you, Bozita, for caring about the issue.

[Scuba]

2. Excellent summation: "Engaged in war to make profit and concentrate power."

[Octafish]

4. War Profiteering and Corruption

The example of Master Cheney:

From Lexington, S.C. to the White House

War Profiteering and Corruption

By TOM TURNIPSEED
Weekend Edition
August 18 / 19, 2007

A businesswoman in my home county of Lexington, South Carolina, pleaded guilty on August 16, 2007 to defrauding U.S. taxpayers of $20.5 million in shipping costs for Pentagon supplies. According to a front page story in The State newspaper, "Charlene Corley, 46, pleaded guilty to a nine-year fraud that included charging the Pentagon $998,798.38 for shipping two 19 cent bolt washers."

SNIP...

As Defense Secretary, Mr. Cheney commissioned a study for the U.S. Department of Defense by Brown and Root Services (now Kellogg, Brown and Root), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Halliburton. The study recommended that private firms like Halliburton take over logistical support programs for U.S. military operations around the world. Just two years after he was Secretary of Defense, Cheney stepped through the revolving door linking the Department of Defense with defense contractors and became CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton was the principal beneficiary of Cheney's privatization efforts for our military's logistical support and Cheney was paid $44 million for five year's work before he slipped back through the revolving door of war profiteering to become Vice-President of the United States. When asked about the money he received from Halliburton, Cheney said. "I tell you that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it"

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/turnipseed08182007.html

In August 2000, Mother Jones documented Sneering Dick's, er, work in privatizing the Pentagon.

Thank you, Scuba, for grokking.

[hobbit709]

5. for us or to us?

[Octafish]

6. Either way, it's Tradition.

What Erasmus said 500 years ago:

What Erasmus Knew (And We Didn't)

by Jacob Boas
Published on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

EXCERPT...

A further danger of making war on the Turks, Erasmus warned, was that it could serve as a pretext for a “tiny clique” to seize power and use that power to undermine our freedoms, abrogating the rule of law, “removing the authority of parliaments,” and plundering the people, so that by “overthrowing the tyranny of the Turks, … we bring a new and worse tyranny upon ourselves.”

A third danger, according to Erasmus, is that the money it takes to make war winds up in the pockets of the few. There are many “holy sermons” about “crusading expeditions” and “valiant deeds and boundless hopes,” but in the end, remarked the humanist, noting how the collection monies and taxes have disappeared into the pockets of the war profiteers, “the only thing that has triumphed has been money.”

Stripped of their Christian shell, many of the outcomes Erasmus predicted would flow from war on the Turks five hundred years ago have come to fruition since 9/11. Whatever our intentions in going to war with Iraq, pure and honorable they were not. We were lied to. The WMD’s were non-existent, while the talk about bringing democracy to Iraq, from which it would spread like wild fire to the entire Middle East, was a smokescreen behind which to pursue hegemonic policies in a strategic and an oil-rich part of the world. Occupation of Arab lands, construction of bases throughout the Middle East, and blind support of Israel — all have provoked hatred and inspired calls for revenge. These are errors that are crying out for correction.

As for Erasmus’ warning regarding the seizure and consolidation of power under the cover of war, we have seen that happen as well. Habeas corpus is in tatters more; the invasion and occupation of Iraq has sapped our national treasure, in blood and in money; until last November’s election and with Congress a rubber stamp, the Bushies have run the country as though it were a private fiefdom. We are a state in which the rule of law and the right to privacy are fast becoming dead letters.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/30/1517/

Thank you, hobbit709: There is a difference in "to" us and "for" us. What stays the same is the "gets," as in who gets the gold and gets to count the votes.

[AntiFascist]

7. K&R....

and the "neos" are trying to get us involved in more wars, even while cutting social programs. Where is the outrage?!

[Octafish]

8. Nuclear Connections: Weapons and Power in the Age of Corporate Globalization

This world truly seems insane, run by greedhead warmongers. Lots of outrage within, for all who give a damn and are willing to do something about it.

Here's a PDF that sums up the situation and links to a few people and orgs who give a damn:

Nuclear Connections: Weapons and Power in the Age of Corporate Globalization

PS: Thank you, AntiFascist, for bringing truth, reason and sanity.

The neoconnneolibs fear that Truth. And one thing they really fear is losing their special place at the trough.

[snot]

9. K&R'd!

[Octafish]

10. How the Pentagon Stole the Future

This sums things up, quite well:

Raptors, Robots, and Rods from God

The Nightmare Weaponry of Our Future

By Frida Berrigan

EXCERPT...

What's Next Next Next Next?

SNIP...

Not surprisingly, Lockheed Martin tried to knock two birds out of the sky with one stone, responding to criticism that the F-22 was irrelevant and too expensive, while rushing to meet the Air Force's perceived need for a new long-range bomber by suggesting yet another plane: the F/B (for fighter-bomber)-22. As they described it, in a vision of a kind of high artistry of death, this wonder of modern air war would even be capable of changing color to match the sky.

A January 2005 article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution gave Lockheed Martin visionaries a chance to share their chameleon of a "high-speed, high-altitude bomber" which could also change shape, becoming "slimmer and more aerodynamic as its fuel tanks drain on long-distance flights. It would be invisible to radar, carry precision bombs and missiles, and fly fast enough to outrun most fighters." Sounds cool, right? This might be one instance where the weapons designers and imagineers took a few steps too far into fantasy land. There has not been any progress on the idea since 2005, but don't be surprised if the chameleon fighter-bomber changes color and shape and soars again in the race for future weapons funding.

Even without the magical fighter-bomber, over the next eight years or so the Air Force imagines fielding systems like the Common Aero Vehicle-- "a rapidly responsive, highly maneuverable, hypersonic glide vehicle that would be rocket-launched into space" according to the Air Force documents. The CAV would be equipped with sensors and bristle with weapons it could launch from space against fixed and moving targets on land, and that could be delivered anywhere on earth within two hours.

As John Pike, a weapons expert and director of GlobalSecurity.org, told the Washington Post in March 2005, CAV programs will allow the U.S. "to crush someone anywhere in world on 30 minutes' notice with no need for a nearby air base."

Looking beyond 2015, the Air Force sees systems like the B-X Bomber; space-based Hypervelocity Rod Bundles (nicknamed "rods from God"), a mystical sounding system that promises "to strike ground targets anywhere in the world"; the Guardian Urban Combat Weapon, an "air-launched lurk and loiter reconnaissance, rotary winged, unmanned, combat air vehicle designed for urban warfare"; and the High Powered Microwave Airborne Electronic Attack, an "anti-electronics high powered microwave weapon against 'soft' electronic-containing targets" that would be operated "from an airborne platform at military significant ranges."

CONTINUED...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/155521/

PS: Thanks, snot! I didn't remember this article until I searched under the phrase in the headline in response to your Kick. Thanks, also, for giving a damn.

[snot]

12. It's a privilege.

[Wilms]

11. ^

[ChoppinBroccoli]

13. All Right, All Right, But............

...........apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?

[woo me with science]

14. Cannot recommend this highly enough.

People need to look at the big picture. Not the individual drawdowns here and there. The big picture.

[Quantess]

15. Historically, an overextended military comes before the fall of an empire.

[bobthedrummer]

16. Kick.

RECALL SCOTT WALKER!

[sarcasmo]

17. The Empire loves war the populace is secondary.