When War Business Rules The World

[Dover]

www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0701/S00035.htm



When War Business Rules The World
Tuesday, 9 January 2007, 10:15 am
Opinion: Douglas Mattern

When War Business Rules The World
by Douglas Mattern

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
--President Eisenhower - From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

It's been over thirty-three years since Eisenhower's powerful message and yet the obscenity of the war business continues stronger than ever. Take a recent decision by the Bush Administration to sell F-16 Fighter Jets to Pakistan while at the same time offering to sell the same jet fighters to India, always a potential adversary. Moreover, selling weapons to both sides of a conflict has become standard policy. Data compiled by the Federation of American Scientists shows that since1992, the U.S. exported well over $150 billion worth of weapons to states around the world.

The data also reveals the macabre world arms market is dominated by the U.S., followed by Russia, China, United Kingdom, and scores of other nations wanting their share of this death for profit business.

The truly astronomical money comes from the annual military budgets with the U.S. far in the lead, actually spending nearly as much as all other countries combined. For 2006 the U.S. military (defense) budget came to $426 billion, including $17.5 billion for nuclear weapons, and this does not count the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of modern weapons is staggering and immensely profitable. The largest weapons company, Lockheed-Martin, had sales in 2005 amounting to $37.2 billion (this 50 percent higher than the annual United Nations budget for all of its programs). And just think of all the missiles, bombs, etc., that will be replaced for
profit by the armament industry after the U.S. military assault on Iraq. This conflict is longer than U.S. involvement in World War II, and has transformed Iraq into a nightmare of violence...cont'd

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/print.html?path=HL0701/S00035.htm

[Joanne98]

1. K&R!

[formercia]

2. Then we pay to rebuild it

after we blow it up.

at taxpayer expense.


Urban Renewal.

[jazzjunkysue]

3. This explains it all. Period. The whole world. It's like the Matrix

only we're awake and putting up with it.

Totally K&R.

[katty]

4. K&R Great!

[Dover]

..dupe

[Dover]

5. The costs...>

CASUALTIES OF THE VIET NAM WAR



THERE ARE MORE THAN 58,000 NAMES OF AMERICAN DEAD ON THE WALL IN WASHINGTON, D.C., BUT THE TOTAL COSTS ARE STILL BEING TALLIED.


THE PEOPLE
American Veterans Vietnamese People
In Country 2.5 million est. 1970 pop. 41 million
In Combat 1.5 million unknown
Killed in Action 58,000+ 2.5 million
Wounded 300,000+* 4 million
Missing in Action 2,000+ 250,000
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 1.5 million+ unknown
Suicides 100,000+ unknown

Homeless 150,000 nightly unknown
Boat People 0 1 million (Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia)
Lost at Sea 0 500,000
Disabled Street People unknown 3 million
New Agent Orange Deformities unknown 35,000/year
Peacetime Deaths Due to Unexploded Bombs & Mines 0 50,000+ (Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia)
Maimed by Bombs and Mines (1975-98) 0 67,000
Reeducation Camps 0 400,000 in 100 camps
* includes U.S: 74,000 quadriplegics and multiple amputees

THE VIETNAMESE LAND
Total Herbicides Used 19.4 million gallons
Agent Orange Sprayed 11.7 million gallons
Mangrove Forest Destroyed 60%
Forest & Jungle Destroyed 18%
Cultivated Land Destroyed 8%

U.S. BOMBING
8 billion+ pounds (4 times more than WWII total; equal to 600 Hiroshima-size bombs)
23 million bomb craters
2,257 U.S. aircraft lost
Over 4,000 of toal 5,778 villages bombed, 150 completely destroyed

DESTROYED
10 million cubic meters of dikes
815 hydroelectric works
1,100 lake embankments
8 forestries
48 agricultural research centers with 6,000 agricultural machines and 46,000 water buffalo
400 factories
18 power stations
13,000 boats
15,100 bridges
2,923 high schools and universities
350 hospitals
1,500 maternity hospitals
484 churches
465 pagodas
240,540 thatched huts

TOTAL COST TO THE UNITED STATES:
$925 Billion



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______

Or: read War And The Soul, for those losses in wars, present and past, which can't be quantified.