Twenty years since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the human and financial cost of the United States’ failed “War on Terror” is plain to see: as one headline put it, “20 years, $6 trillion, 900,000 lives.” The estimates of lives lost and trillions spent vary throughout media sources, but even the most conservative estimates speak for themselves. Yet, while the Pentagon billed America’s latest imperial endeavors as an imperative series of operations aimed at protecting U.S. national security, there is a simpler, far more cynical and obscene motivation behind these forever wars, according to the Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine, Andrew Cockburn: money.
On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Cockburn joins host Robert Scheer to discuss his most recent book, Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine, released by Verso Books on September 21. Consolidating years of thorough reporting on the Pentagon, including bombshell interviews with military insiders, Cockburn comes to a scathing conclusion about the U.S. military. At the start of the podcast, Scheer, who has written extensively about the Military Industrial Complex, including in his book on defense spending, The Pornography of Power, recounts the many military failures that Cockburn documents in “Spoils of War,” including making useless weapons.
“Is this really the gang that can’t shoot straight?” asks Scheer.
“In a way yes, but the question is whether they care about shooting straight,” responds Cockburn. “The American defense system has only a coincidental relationship with actual defense. They don’t really care that much about it. What they care about is the money. Defense spending, developing weapons, and doing what they do, is only a means to that end.”
The Harpers’ Magazine editor then points to the trillions of dollars the defense industry made during the Afghanistan War as evidence that, while it may look to the rest of us as a failure, it was a “failed war” that was wildly successful when measured by dollars made as opposed to lives lost. The two journalists then go on to discuss the crazily dangerous threat America’s drive for increasing its unmatched nuclear weapons arsenal poses to the survival of the human race.
Listen to the full discussion between Cockburn and Scheer as they go on to examine the new high-tech threats Washington is drumming up to justify unconscionable defense spending, as well as the full extent of the U.S. military’s deadly infighting.
FEB 6, 2020 The Pentagon’s $35 Trillion ‘Accounting Black Hole’
$35 trillion is about one-and-a-half times the size of the entire US economy. It sounds more appropriately news out of The Onion or Babylon Bee given this is *Trillions* and not just billions — though that itself would have been remarkable enough. Naturally, the first and only question we should start with is: how is this even possible?
https://www.thestreet.com/phildavis/.amp/stocks-options/the-pentagon-s-35-trillion-accounting-black-hole
Mar 13, 2021 Closing Speech on “Defend the Guard” by Del. Pat McGeehan of West Virginia, 2021
“Defend the Guard” would prohibit a state’s National Guard units from being deployed into active combat without an official declaration of war by the U.S. Congress. The bill failed to pass, 26 yeas to 71 nays.
https://youtu.be/K-vytc_NipQ
I knew that from 1998 to 2015 The Pentagon was unaccountable for $21 trillion dollars and was being audited by 2,400 auditors, an audit that they failed. With your revelation, it looks like nothing has changed. It’s amazing that MSM has never mentioned this subject.
9/11 provided an excellent excuse for no follow up as well.
2.3 TRillion Dollars Missing from DOD
SEPTEMBER 10, 2001 Defense Business Practices
Secretary Rumsfeld and other officials talked with reporters about the need to refine the Defense Department’s business practices. An opening ceremony will kick off Acquisition and Logistics Excellence Week. They answered questions from members of the media
http://www.c-span.org/video/?165947-1/defense-business-practices
even if the weapons end up in “the wrong hands” don’t worry, the money from the sale of those weapons always end up in “the right pockets.”
the fact that the American taxpayer armed the Taliban military is well, it’s just the same as the fact that Osama bin Ladin and his friends received millions of dollars in CIA paychecks.
I know my anti war friends here don’t need to be told this. these wars have made us a lot less safe and they have made us financially much much weaker too.
of course if you’re not anti-war you are heartless. but at this point, if you’re not anti-war, after everything we have seen in afghan, Iraq, Libya, etc., then you are BRAINLESS too.