The day after my blog post


about the military-industrial complex, which guides US foreign policy, this article appeared.


DHB, which specialized in making body armor used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, paid for more than $6 million in personal expenses on behalf of Mr. Brooks, covering items as expensive as luxury cars and as prosaic as party invitations, pornographic videos for his son, plastic surgery for his wife, a burial plot for his mother, prostitutes for his employees, and, for him, a $100,000 American-flag belt buckle encrusted with rubies, sapphires and diamonds.
The expense-account abuse, the prosecution has said, represented a pittance compared with the $190 million that Mr. Brooks and another top employee are accused of making through a stock fraud scheme in which he falsified information about his company’s performance — including significantly overstating the inventory of bulletproof vests — to inflate the price of the stock before selling his shares in 2004.


Body armor, just one of thousands of 'necessary' products when you send soldiers half way around the planet to fight a war with only one purpose. To enrich the suppliers and give the military a reason to keep growing. It also makes it easier to recruit soldiers when you wreck the economy and there's no other jobs...

Comments

Anonymous said…
So you think all war is bad? If everyone were like you we'd be speaking German now.
Fam Guy said…
You just don't get it. War a HUGE, serious undertaking that you don't enter lightly. Just like real life, you pick yor battles carefully on your own terms and locations, not on 'oops, bad info', or alf way around the world, in an area where the locals hate you, and there's no chance of winning. UNLESS, of course, your objective is to keep the military busy and the defense contractors fat, which is too often the case.
ladyj said…
Oh for God's sake Anon., get a life and an education! You're really starting to piss me off. The two wars we are fighting are absolutely without a doubt, no way in hell, winable by America or any other country for that matter. Impossible, unthinkable to even suggest the United States could Democractize a country full of Christian and Jew haters! Also they hate each other!
Remember, "Wise men change their minds, fools never do."
Fam Guy said…
Hey lady, these jerks have their own reality, that has nothing to do with facts. If the Repubs say it's true, DON'T QUESTION IT, Sad, but true, in this age when they could check facts, if they wanted to. Some day it may change, but probably not in our lifetime. These people were raised as Repubs, and their brain is in 'lockdown'. Sad, but SO true.
ladyj said…
What I find insane is our own President is now marching in lockstep with the warmongers and increasing the "surge" in Afghanistan, as if there was change of any solution; resolution in that area of insanity. And only because of the 92 pages of information leaked by military
sourse(s). What a joke. In the meantime more are killed on both sides. Why not pull out and "remove" the country from the face of the earth. That'll solve the problem permanently. Throw in Pakistan for a buck.
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