by James Glaser
September 13, 2005

Every year the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars on defense, and some Americans are getting rich off of that spending. You can argue that that money is spent to defend our country, but the truth is, we now spend more than the rest of the world combined on defense.

We keep spending more and more on weapons of death and destruction, because some corporations make millions and millions of dollars in profits and they spread some of that money around in Washington, to keep that money train on the track.

Just selling to the military isn't enough for these people, so they work on pushing us into one war after another. Our troops, who are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, died to keep profits up. I know that sounds so harsh, but every bullet we fire, every humvee that is blown up, every helicopter that crashes to the ground, and every bomb we drop makes some American corporation more money.

These corporations are not patriotic. They are not selling us these arms and equipment at close to cost, so our country can remain free. No, they are making huge profits, and that is what the whole "game" of war is all about.

Even with the hundreds of billions we spend every year and the extra 5-6 billion we spend on our ongoing wars each month, we find this is not enough for those who are willing to trade blood for money.

Frida Berrigan of the Arms Trade Resource Center writes about the annual "Conventional Weapons Transfers to Developing Nations" report. It seems that we, the United States of America, continues to lead the world in arm sales to foreign nations. In the last decade we have sold $177,500,000,000.00 worth. Berrigan reports, "The Congressional Research Service recently found that global arms sales rose to $37 billion in 2004—the highest level since 2000."

The report goes on to say, "the US transferred weaponry to 18 of the 25 countries involved in active conflict in 2003, the last year for which full Pentagon data is available." "20 of the top 25 US arms clients in the developing world in 2003—were either undemocratic regimes or governments with records of major human rights abuses."

Some times America is selling weapons to both sides of a conflict. When the money is this big, and some people are making tens of millions in profits, what are a couple thousand dead Americans? Our country is willing to trade those lives for continued profits and jobs.

When and if the War in Iraq ends, the pressure will be put on Washington to start one some place else. It doesn't matter where, it doesn't even matter why we start a war, what matters is that we continue production and sales.

In Washington, money talks. The Pentagon has a lot of money to spend and those who retire out of there find wonderful jobs with those who sold weapons and equipment. Those people doing the sales know how to keep things going and because you have to spend a little to make a lot, Congress gets money to spend on reelection and both parties get their share.

By selling weapons to poor developing countries, we can help keep the cycle going and who knows, every one of those countries have the potential to explode into something the US military will have to step in to, and that is where to big money is made.

When we go to war we spend or I should say we blow billions in no time and profits soar. When "shock and awe" was developed as a tactic, defense contractors salivated and the money rolled in. Sure thousands of innocent people died, but that is the price they had to pay to make some Americans very rich.

Some day the whole world will be armed to the teeth and then the only way to make more money is to have new wars, and we are not too far from that now. American troops can be killed and wounded by the hundreds and that makes some Americans happy, because then the money will really pile up. Sick huh?