The GOP Iraq War: Follow the Money

So far, the Republican Grand Old Party Iraq War has apparently cost the American people $475 billion -- in addition to 3800 or so dead, maybe 10,000 seriously wounded, many of them with missing limbs or brain injuries.

Bush the Younger originally went to war to topple Saddam Hussein as revenge for Hussein's attempt to assassinate Bush the Elder. The American people were told the reason for the war was a cache of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and chemical weapons. Both the CIA and Colin Powell were pushed stage front to support this lie, with Vice President Darth Vader growling in the background that anyone who opposed the war ought to be tried and fried as a gutless liberal.

When the weapons of mass destruction fairytale became obvious as a lie, the CIA was blamed, the head of the CIA was given a medal and retired, and the new reason for the war that came out of the White House baloney megaphone was that we needed to defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq to prevent them from blowing up Las Vegas or maybe even Dubuque. We had 150,000 troops in Iraq on the hunt for about 2000 Al Qaeda mad-dog terrorist Islamo-fascist jihadists, with nothing much happening except American boys and girls coming home in caskets or getting their arms and legs blown off. When Darth Vader's sidekick Military Maestro Rumsfeld was asked why we couldn't finish the job in Iraq, he gave us a duck-wave with his hands and said, "Stuff happens!" When he was asked why our main effort against Al Qaeda was in Iraq rather than in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden was hiding out, we were told, "There's rough terrain in that country!"

Meanwhile, Iraq fell apart into a collection of tribes out to kill each other, and before long the lie of fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq became too obvious. With American body parts sent flying on the roads into and out of Baghdad and other towns, the White House shifted the story, and the Oval Office megaphone now announced we were fighting in Iraq to give the Iraqis political "space." We needed to make Iraq "secure" to give the Iraqis time to come together and shake hands and make a good old-fashioned American-style democracy -- with Big Macs and corn fritters and pancakes soaked in maple syrup -- I mean, hell, isn't that what every sane human being wants? Political "space" became the mantra, and with Maestro Rumsfeld replaced, we started a "surge", a new push -- 30,000 new American bodies into the Iraq meat-grinder.

We've now had almost a year of political "space" in Iraq, nothing much happening, the tribes still trying to kill each other, but the war drones on.

Wars are fought for many reasons, some good and some bad, and too often for reasons both terrible and insidious. The Iraq War has now lasted longer than World War II, and has cost the American people $475 billion. That's a lot of money, folks, and an interesting question is, "Who's getting the money?"

Is it possible the reason the Iraq War has lasted so long is that some people are making enough money from it to push hard to keep it going?

I don't know. I wish I did but I don't. Meanwhile, here's a list of where some of the money goes, money paid by the U.S. Department of Defense to contractors in only one year -- the top ten contractors (there are hundreds). These are revenues, not profits, but I guess we can be certain none of these contractors are losing money by an extended war in bloody Iraq.

REVENUES FROM U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT IN ONE YEAR (2006):

1. Lockheed Martin $34 billion
2. Boeing 29
3. Northrop Grumman 23
4. BAE Systems (UK) 21
5. Raytheon 18
6. General Dynamics 17
7. EADS (Netherlands) 9
8. L-3 Communications 9
9. Thales (France) 9
10. Halliburton 8

The total annual budget of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American federal public agency that supports nearly all the biomedical research in this country, heart disease, cancer, stroke, the whole shebang, is $38 billion -- about one- fifth of what the top ten contractors get in one year from our Department of Defense.

If Bush the Younger wanted to avenge the attempted assassination of Bush the Elder, the Iraq War is now something else. With Saddam Hussein gone, the Iraq War has become a machine for both producing large numbers of body parts and for shoveling huge amounts of American public money into private hands. That $475 billion did not get burned up in a bonfire, it just moved into the private bank accounts of defense contractor and subcontractor executives and shareholders.

Is it a surprise that hedge-fund managers are so busy?