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How Much Does It Cost America To Blow Up American Weapons?

Tyler Durden's picture




 

As many have observed since Obama launched his own personal Iraq war, there is something rather farcical about the latest US intervention in the middile east, namely that US weapons are being used to destroy US weapons, captured by and in possession of ISIS jihadists. As Reuters summarizes the situation, rather poetically, "Islamic State’s  captured an enormous amount of U.S. weaponry, originally intended for the rebuilt Iraqi Army. You know — the one that collapsed in terror in front of the Islamic State, back when they were just ISIL? The ones who dropped their uniforms, and rifles and ran away?They left behind the bigger equipment, too, including M1 Abrams tanks (about $6 million each), 52 M198 Howitzer cannons ($527,337), and MRAPs (about $1 million) similar to the ones in use in Ferguson."

In other words US taxpayers are now paying for military missions, in which US taxpayer paid-for warplans and missiles are used to blow up other US taxpayer paid-for tanks, artillery, MRAPs, and various other weapons of death.

Here is a closer look at the method behind the Keynesian madness from Reuters:

U.S. warplanes are flying sorties, at a cost somewhere between $22,000 to 30,000 per hour for the F-16s, to drop bombs that cost at least $20,000 each, to destroy this captured equipment.

 

That means if an F-16 were to take off from Incirclik Air Force Base in Turkey and fly two hours to Erbil, Iraq, and successfully drop both of its bombs on one target each, it costs the United States somewhere between $84,000 to $104,000 for the sortie and destroys a minimum of $1 million and a maximum of $12 million in U.S.-made equipment.

Lest the US appears alone in this silliness, Reuters is quick to remind readers that the very same situation can be encountered several hundred miles north, in the proxy civil war being waged in East Ukraine:

The Russians and Ukrainians are also facing off with tanks and guns and bombs and planes and uniforms all made in the same factories. They were the same country a mere 23 years ago. And even after they weren’t any more, they maintained close military ties until very recently.

 

Before Russia decided it couldn’t stand losing its friend in Kiev, Viktor Yanukovich, Russian President Vladimir Putin was happy to keep most of his navy in what was then Ukrainian territory: Crimea.

 

I guess that’s the thing about weapons. Once you make them, you never know who’s going to end up pointing them at whom.

You do know one thing, though: the only real beneficiary is the US military-industrial complex which built the weapons being used for both sides, and which are now being put into "accelerated obsolescence", meaning an upgrade cycle is imminent as one or both sides are eager to restock. And who provides the funding for such "restocking"? Why the same banks that the US DOJ is "punshing" with vicious wristslaps of million dollar fines here, and multi-million dollar settlements there such as HSBC and JPM, thereby reducing the total profit on funding global warfare by "money-laundering" institutions to only tens of billions.

Rinse. Repeat.

For more on how the cycle of war works when all other conventional means of boosting GDP or generating bank profits when Net Interest Margins are record low, please watch the film the International, which summarizes all of the above in a tidy package.

 

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Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:06 | 5114107 froze25
froze25's picture

Bullish

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:08 | 5114120 jaap
jaap's picture

Not captured but given. Through Bengazi movie enthousiasts -> Turkish shills -> Syrian rebels

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:13 | 5114138 Latina Lover
Latina Lover's picture

Answer is it doesn't matter what is the cost as long as the MIC profits, and the sheeple pay.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:15 | 5114150 y3maxx
y3maxx's picture

...MEGA Diversions everywhere You look friends....US Petrodollar's Life is at Stake...USSA/ISRAEL/UK vs Russia...each side, tugging on Europe...WINNER TAKES ALL

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:31 | 5114252 onewayticket2
onewayticket2's picture

like Krugman says.....dig holes, then refill them.....it's all stimulative.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:38 | 5114287 linniepar
linniepar's picture

What difference does it make?  Freedom costs a buck-o-five!

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:47 | 5114343 Xibalba
Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:34 | 5114571 espirit
espirit's picture

Doesn't the USSA have 'buy back' program?

I'd kind of like to have a <hummer>.

(put it on my tab)

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:36 | 5114584 El Vaquero
El Vaquero's picture

You have to issue some bonds first.  You could create the "Spirit Central Bank" to buy them.  Poof!  Affordable Hummers. 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:38 | 5114588 Manthong
Manthong's picture

It’s only money.. er, credit.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:52 | 5114709 dontgoforit
dontgoforit's picture

My son was in Afghanistan last year.  He tells me there are crews who do nothing but cut MRAPs up into pieces with blow torches because 'it's too expensive to try to bring them back to the U.S.'  Some of these puppies are $750,000 each.  The bullet-proof glass for one window can be upwards of $10,000 and if it gets the slighest crack it loses 90% of it's effectiveness.  I remember when we ran out of 'Nam and they were throwing Hueys off aircraft carriers so the enemy couldn't get them.  So taxpayers there you are.  Waste on top of waste on top of mismanagement.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:18 | 5114846 tonyw
tonyw's picture

strange, lots of expensive cars get flown from oilland to London for the summer then back a month or so later , up to 30 at a time if i remember correctly

but a hummer would be much heavier than a ferrari.

 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 13:51 | 5115354 Oh regional Indian
Oh regional Indian's picture

Actually debt, other side of the ugly fiat coin...

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:53 | 5114368 Abitdodgie
Abitdodgie's picture

What they should of done is brought all the wepons home and given them out ,free of charge to the police force over here , especially the SWAT teams so they could kill more people and so the revolution would of started much quicker. Make sure you know where the police live so when it does start they cannot run and hide , remember they started it.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:39 | 5114601 El Vaquero
El Vaquero's picture

A large mass of thermite wrapped in something that you can apply a very sticky substance would take out an MRAP or a Bearcat.  Right over the engine block and the vehicle is DOA.  The dumbfucks get armored vehicles, and then cram a dozen officers inside, then have another dozen hanging off of the outside.  A lot of good that armor would do the guys hanging off of the outside.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:15 | 5114833 tonyw
tonyw's picture

do you get that thermite from army surplus or walmarts?

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 13:07 | 5115094 Overfed
Overfed's picture

It's just powdered aluminum and rust.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:05 | 5114422 Oldwood
Oldwood's picture

The ultimate Keynesian dream...creative destruction. What could go wrong?

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:35 | 5114577 El Vaquero
El Vaquero's picture

Diversions?  More like writing on the wall. 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:33 | 5114263 0z
0z's picture

Tyler is learning about the realities of War.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:40 | 5114608 toady
toady's picture

Double+ good.

MIC stocks = strong buy

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:14 | 5114151 Canadian Dirtlump
Canadian Dirtlump's picture

Indeed the light and medium weapons were already gifted to them paid for by drugs, gulf state donors and taxpayers. This latest farce allowed them the  heavy weapons that could not politically be given away and were too big to sneak out the back door.

 

As for these airstrikes, again, this is to protect erbil and the kurds - not for the sake of humanity.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:19 | 5114182 TheFourthStooge-ing
TheFourthStooge-ing's picture

Big Jim McBob: "He blowed up good!"

Billy Sol Hurok: "He blowed up real good!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUtdXzBSVaU

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:09 | 5114126 froze25
froze25's picture

In the keynesian economic world don't you create wealth by building Gaint Navies and then sink them every year?

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:05 | 5114319 hedgeless_horseman
hedgeless_horseman's picture

 

 

I forget what chapters, but this was all nicely described in Orwell's book, 1984.

The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process — by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute — the machine did raise the living standards of the average humand being very greatly over a period of about fifty years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction — indeed, in some sense was the destruction — of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

 

http://akamat.wordpress.com/2007/07/31/the-purpose-of-war-according-to-g...

Just like Pontiac and 50Cent, Ford has teamed up with rapper and actor Nelly to help them promote the new Mustang 5.0 V8 which will go on sale later this year. In return Nelly gets a customized DUB version of the car which he will feature in his new album’s artwork. Prepared by DUB Magazine, this special ‘Stang comes with a a gloss black exterior paint job, flat black racing stripes and 22-inch Pirelli tires in the front and 24-inch tires in the rear.

______________________________________

Subprime Car Loans Are The New "Cash For Clunkers" - Auto Production Soars Most Since July 2009

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-15/subprime-car-loans-are-new-cash...

______________________________________

One more time...

"...imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable."

 

 

Nelly has a message for protesters in his hometown ... cut the crap!

 

The King of St. Louis finally talked publicly about the shooting death of Michael Brown ... saying the people of Ferguson jumped the gun by protesting too early, contributing to the violence.

 

Nelly tells TMZ ... "I understand the frustration, but we have to strategize before we overreact ... We don’t get no do-over on sh*t like this, so we have to do it right the first time."

 

The rapper adds, "Ain’t nothing happen no different that hasn’t been happening ... At the end of the day, we should have waited to strategize first and take all the right steps to organize."

 

 

 

http://www.tmz.com/2014/08/16/nelly-st-louis-riots-michael-brown-shootin...

 

Ain’t nothing happen no different that hasn’t been happening.  Indeed, Mr. Nellie. Indeed.  We've always been at war with Eastasia.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:09 | 5114431 Oldwood
Oldwood's picture

So you are saying that the only sustainable system is one where the poor remain ignorant. If so, this could last forever!

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:12 | 5114442 hedgeless_horseman
hedgeless_horseman's picture

 

 

Orwell agrees with you.  In 1984, O'Brien tells Smith that,

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face... forever.”

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:42 | 5114961 Kirk2NCC1701
Kirk2NCC1701's picture

That's why all Rulers love Organized Religion: Religion prevents the poor from killing the rich or the Elite.

Its chief purpose is for Social Stability, which allows for Hierarchical Rule to be maintained and kept profitable.  The Poor... well, we're TOLD that they are 'blessed'.  LOL.  Good one.  Who wrote that in, and 'credited' Jesus with it?

We're dealing with a 7,000 year old tradition, deeply ingrained in every culture.  But, as a French philosopher once said: "Mankind will not be free until the last Monarch is hung with the entrails of the last Priest".

p.s. Ever notice how US and other Western powers have NO issue with despotic Monarch (in the ME), but have an issue with Despotic Dictators?  What's the difference?  Well, 'royalty' has 'tradition' and they are predictable to the Money Elite, whereas Dictators rise from the masses, have no tradition and are often unpredictable to the Money Elite.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:41 | 5114621 centerline
centerline's picture

Great post HH.  There is no utopia.  History repeats because human nature never really changes.  Our existence is just rife with paradoxes.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:00 | 5114744 dontgoforit
dontgoforit's picture

Yes, and we are all broken in one fashion or another.  The perfect, imperfect, entity.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 13:31 | 5115126 JuliaS
JuliaS's picture

All is welly-Nelly.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 14:03 | 5115427 Radical Marijuana
Radical Marijuana's picture

Yeah, good post h_h:

"In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."

Therefore, the basic systems are debt slavery backed by wars based on deceits: Wars are rackets run by the banksters. The "money" which pays for the weapons is made out of nothing as debts. The more those weapons are uselessly destroyed, the more opporunities to make more "money" out of nothing as debts to pay for them.

The American taxpayers tend to be mainstream morons, brainwashed to believe in bullshit. However, deeper levels of recognition of the truths about human ecology, that manifests chronic political problems, which are inherent in the nature of life, are excluded from being able to be discussed in any more rational public debates. In the contemporary American situation, we see symbols of that being that both the events on 9/11/2001, and the financial crises in 2008, were deliberately designed an executed inside jobs by the ruling classes, which achieved their purposes.

However, it continues to be the case that the ignorance is the basis for why it is not possible to operate better murder systems. Evil deliberate ignorance towards the death control is the primary driver of the worst human suffering. The basic dilemmas are due to the facts that there must be some death controlling murder systems, but that those were most successfully operated by those who were the best at lying about what they were actually doing.

That continues to get worse faster because almost all of the controlled opposition to the established systems operates from within the same bullshit frame of reference. Therefore, we do not have sane public debates about how to operate better death controls, but rather insane public debates between wars based on deceits versus the silly impossible ideals that there should be no war, or no death controls.

There are no reasons to doubt that this spiral is going to get worse, due to the ways that paradoxical progress in science and technology continues to primary serve social systems whose structures are based on the history of poverty and ignorance. In theory we should go through intellectual scientific revolutions which apply to politics. However, there appears zero practical chance of that happen, when the real world is being overwhelmed by the increasing insanities of wars based on deceits, maintaining a political economy founded on enforced frauds.

Ironically, the more that human beings understand other general energy systems better, the less that they want to understand the human energy systems better. The necessary core concepts are the death controls, inside of systems of artificial selection. However, history has selected for those to be done through the maximum possible deceits, which includes how the "opposition" operates within the same bullshit frame of reference as the established systems.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:13 | 5114141 mr1963
mr1963's picture

Talk about "broken windows" in action, this must be a politicians wet dream, imagine the kickbacks...

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:19 | 5114188 TideFighter
TideFighter's picture

Kind of the militarized version of Cash for Clunkers? 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:57 | 5114385 williambanzai7
williambanzai7's picture

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:31 | 5114540 SilverRhino
SilverRhino's picture

This and Ferguson make for good theater and excellent distractions from the real problems like the economy, Presidential crimes and oh yeah ... now 1229 deaths from Ebola.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/world/africa/ebola-outbreak.html?_r=0

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/19/world/africa/ebola-outbreak/index.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ebola-outbreak-worsens-missing-patients-us-scare/story?id=25024218

Oh snap .... NOW the environmentalists will get on board with ebola. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2728164/Ebola-decimate-Africas-Gorilla-population-researchers-warn.html 

 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:39 | 5114603 booboo
booboo's picture

MIC boner of death

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:03 | 5114774 Nathan American
Nathan American's picture

Exporting inflation!

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:09 | 5114121 Bunghole
Bunghole's picture

Eisenhower was right.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:13 | 5114137 froze25
froze25's picture

He was also one of the bastards that got the ball rolling with the Central Banking Cartel.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:29 | 5114244 optimator
optimator's picture

Even Eisenhower didn't have the guts to make that speech on his first day on the job, he waited till his last day.  That tells you something.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:33 | 5114265 nakki
nakki's picture

He didn't want to be suicided

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:33 | 5114269 1stepcloser
1stepcloser's picture

He avoided kennedy's Head shot Bullet doing so!

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 14:00 | 5115404 The_Dude
The_Dude's picture

He should have known...he was in the pocket of Bernard Baruch and the Wall Street moneymen that were feeding the machine.

http://www.jta.org/1953/08/20/archive/eisenhower-lauds-baruch-at-dedicat...

At least the current POTUS would likely stay on his vacation and pretend not to be completely bought off instead of running like a puppy to their masters feet.

 

 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:10 | 5114128 firstdivision
firstdivision's picture

Greatest Keynesian feedback loop evea!!!

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:11 | 5114131 Dr. Engali
Dr. Engali's picture

It's curious how Reuters seems to have forgotten the fatc that we gave ISIS (the Syrian rebels) the weapons that we are blowing up. Anything to protect the peace prize winner.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:13 | 5114143 froze25
froze25's picture

Al-Qeada = Syrian Rebel = ISIS, Coke vs New Coke

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:14 | 5114157 Dr. Engali
Dr. Engali's picture

AL-CIA-DUH = Syrian Rebel = ISIS, Coke vs New Coke.

 

There fixed that.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:18 | 5114173 trulz4lulz
trulz4lulz's picture

Man, I started using ALCIADUH years ago. Im so happy to see it in use.....

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:24 | 5114519 CuttingEdge
CuttingEdge's picture

Not just Reuters, Dr.

The entire spineless MSM seems to be avoiding the culpability of the US and UK governments in arming and empowering these nutters in Syria in the first place. No looking at how we trash countries back to the stone age and have no moral obligation when this happens to redress our utter stupidity.

At least the joke that is CIA foreign dabbling is consistant over time in its abject incompetence and inability to grasp the concept of cause and effect. Those fuckwits have always been comedy gold. Keep up the good work at Langley, you useless twats.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:15 | 5114471 tvdog
tvdog's picture

No, wait ... aren't the Syrian rebels good? Assad is gassing his own people, the bastard. The civilized world, which the U.S. leads, must destroy him.

Let's see, the U.S. gave weapons to the moderate cannibals, who unfortunately dropped them and ran. IS, who used to be ISIS, who were ISIL before that, or during, who used to be al-Qaeda until Zawahiri disowned them, picked up the dropped American weapons and took them to Iraq without visas or export licenses or anything. Which shows how lawless they are. They must be stopped.

The good, moral al-Qaeda are al-Nusra, if you are keeping notes. IS group is attacking them also. al-Nusra, like ISIS before they were disowned, are supplied with weapons by American allies in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. But that is a secret.

Anyway, the American weapons dropped by the good (non-IS, non-al-Qaeda) terrorists in Syria were the ones used by IS to chase off the Iraqi army, who dropped their American weapons and ran. IS group then picked up those weapons, which were really good, expensive ones. The U.S. now needs more weapons to destroy the American weapons that the Iraqi army dropped, and the weapons that the good terrorists in Syria dropped, as well as more good, expensive weapons for the Iraqi army.

Do I have that right now? The only problem for the MIC is that not all the weapons used in this war are American. The Kurds cannot be given American weapons. As the German foreign minister pointed out, the Kurds are only trained to use Russian weapons. Furthermore, if the Kurds were given American weapons, that would be an affront to the Iraqi army, who are supposed to be the only ones in Iraq supplied with weapons by the West. So the only way is to give more Russian weapons to Kurdistan, thereby enabling the Iraqi government to pretend that the West didn't give any weapons to the Kurds. In return, the U.S. will pretend not to notice that the Iraqi government is buying weapons from Russia.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:41 | 5114611 espirit
espirit's picture

I prefer the 'conspiracy' playbook to the 'public' playbook.

Imaginative concepts are much easier to understand then lies.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:29 | 5114902 photonsoflight
photonsoflight's picture

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 14:10 | 5115455 Oh regional Indian
Oh regional Indian's picture

@tvdog...that is pure, unadulterated dry comedic genius there.

Well done...

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:12 | 5114135 q99x2
q99x2's picture

That is exactly right and why the US military, until trannies and gays took charge, would never use robots in war. They knew they could use them but would not because ultimately the robot weapons would be used to wipe out the oligarchs when the SHTF>

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:14 | 5114155 froze25
froze25's picture

I know a high ranking man in the Army, he told me the biggest crime now is men being sexually assalted (raped) by gay men in the miliatary.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:20 | 5114185 Mad Max
Mad Max's picture

That must do wonders for morale.

 

It's almost as if someone in Washington DC was trying to destroy our military from within.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:43 | 5114618 GeorgeHayduke
GeorgeHayduke's picture

I live near a ton of military people. I know enlisted, men and officers. I have never heard this at all. I'm calling bullshit on this typical, low IQ fear mongering.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:12 | 5114142 Bastiat
Bastiat's picture

Minderbinder for National Security Advisor.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:03 | 5114772 Bollixed
Bollixed's picture

Milo is The Man!

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:13 | 5114147 nakki
nakki's picture

At this point who's oil are we protecting?  I though the Iraqi government signed deals with the Chinese. 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:48 | 5114648 espirit
espirit's picture

Uh, it depends which 'playbook' you're following.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:50 | 5114693 shovelhead
shovelhead's picture

We let IS take those in Mosel.

The stuff in Kurdistan is ours so that's when we start bombing.

Everything we do makes sense in a twisted logical way when you peek behind the propaganda curtain.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:14 | 5114149 Atomizer
Atomizer's picture

Planned product obsolescence. 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:43 | 5114627 espirit
espirit's picture

It's been used, now it's not new anymore.

(some Nic Cage movie methinks)

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:34 | 5114156 JustObserving
JustObserving's picture

Not to worry, the Pentagon has plenty of your money to waste:

The idea that a country spends as much on its military as the rest of the world and has military personnel deployed in three-quarters of the world’s countries does so for purely defensive reasons is the absurdity it appears to be.

As former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright memorably said to General Colin Powell, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” Ah, bipartisanship. Neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have been shy in this regard: The United States militarily has invaded Latin American and Caribbean countries 96 times, including 48 times in the 20th century. That total constitutes only direct interventions and doesn’t include coups fomented by the U.S., such as Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973.

One estimate of actual U.S. military spending in 2013, put forth by the War Resisters League, is $1.355 trillion. The league arrives at that figure by adding military spending deriving from parts of the government other than the Pentagon, including veterans’ benefits and assigning 80 percent of the interest on the national debt. These are in addition to the official Pentagon budget.

http://systemicdisorder.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/us-military-spending/

While everyone knows that the defense budget is large -- even in the numbers that the public sees as the formally admitted figures by the Department of Defense -- the truth is that when one scratches beneath the bureaucratic veneer, national security spending is much larger, nearly double the amount US citizens are told.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/02/the-real-defense-bud...

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:17 | 5114158 Number 156
Number 156's picture

So, "accelerated obsolescence" can also be defined as blowing up the same stuff they sold to terrorists before the warranty expires.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:15 | 5114160 Bastiat
Bastiat's picture

How does ISIL know how to operate these weapons ?  Without a maintenance infrastructure they won't be operational for too long either.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:42 | 5114194 astoriajoe
astoriajoe's picture

Indeed. Aren't they all computerized these days? That's what the military-credit for college-job training ads would have me believe. Why can't we just shut them down remotely? If they can control a Mercedes...

Hello, Onstar? My tank has been stolen.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:24 | 5114871 tonyw
tonyw's picture

maintenance infrastructure, just throw it away when it stops working and get a new one.

its like broken windows, you get new windows don't glue the old ones back together

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:16 | 5114161 directaction
directaction's picture

This doesn't seem very smart.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:17 | 5114169 JRobby
JRobby's picture

How much can Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen & Co. print?

Revolt citizens. The ground has been sold out from beneath our children's feet.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:17 | 5114172 Berspankme
Berspankme's picture

someday, i dream anyways, that 10 million americans will wake up and march into DC , ring fence the capitol and the white house and begin the treason trials. sentence is death by hanging. i dream. and I will piss on a dead bernanke

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:20 | 5114197 viator
viator's picture

A Keynesian wet dream.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:23 | 5114205 petkovplamen
petkovplamen's picture

So what are the names of a few good military based stocks I can buy? Come on, time is a-wasting, this is an oppootunity to make some real serious cash here!

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:40 | 5114294 DOT
DOT's picture

The money will flow to the upper tranche "investors" that used free money. to be a "qualified investor" in this group requires membership.

It's a small club...

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:23 | 5114211 Dre4dwolf
Dre4dwolf's picture

It costs America nothing.

Ill prove it.

U.S. govt borrows 1 trillion freshly printed 0's and 1's , hands it to arms manufacturers, whom in part manufacture tanks, ship said tanks to the U.S. who deploys them to the middle east and parks them infront of a Arabic-walmart with the keys in the ignition and the windows down, Jihadists boost the tanks, and then proceed to engage our allies with our own weapons, which forces us to destroy our own tank.

The arm factory never spent that trillion dollars into the economy, so its as if the money never existed, the tank no longer exists so that never existed and the net effect is, we have no new money and no new tanks, and since most of the parts to make the tanks are produced by other countries, we aren't even short the materials.

 

Net cost = zero under Federal Reserve Math, and to boot if you multiply everything by X. the magic variable X that turns all bad gdp data into good gdp data, inflation is low, unemployment is actually negative, and everyone is rich, except the poor, but its ok because they are on welfare, section 8, EBT, Snaps, Food-Stamps, Govt Assistance, Disability, Social Security, Financial Aid, Grants, and reciving benefits.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:30 | 5114247 hoist the bs flag
hoist the bs flag's picture

"except the poor, but its ok because they are on welfare, section 8, EBT, Snaps, Food-Stamps, Govt Assistance, Disability, Social Security, Financial Aid, Grants, and reciving benefits." which is also a win, win...since JP Morgan is a recipient on the FOMC...print away bitchez.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:14 | 5114825 Kirk2NCC1701
Kirk2NCC1701's picture

Oh, but it doth cost something... it costs plenty.  And I will prove it.

The MIC and and the Dollar are the Sword & Chain of Global Slavery.  The size and usage of the Sword varies by country, but it is used.  The more financial slaves you want, the more Swords & Chains you need.  Although it is true that foreign slaves live far worse than domestic ones (DOD abroad, LEAs in US), but both are slaves to the same Neo-Feudal Masters.  And they remain slaves for as long as the Fed can create Currency (they call it Money) out of thin air, and they use violence (LEAs and DOD) to force people to use their fiat Currency.

Never lose sight of the true Nature of The Beast.  It is not per laws of Moses (Mosaic?), nor is it Christian.  It is anti-Christian, it is not even Predatory in the true sense (predators kill only to survive).  It is something else.  It is Parasitic, it is Reptilian.  It is the face of Evil, with a human countenance.  Metaphorically speaking, the Anti-Christ is already among us.  All we are waiting for is its Figurehead to appear, when these Neo-Feudal Masters (Ruling Elite+Banksters) formally unveil the NWO -- right after the Big Reset.

There's no prophecy like self-fulfilling prophecy, where the original one (intended as a Warning) is leveraged for Inspiration and thus made self-fulfilling.  It's a 'Jedi Mind Trick' thing.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:26 | 5114223 boattrash
boattrash's picture

How Much does it cost?

Judging by my taxes, Way. Too. Fucking. Much!

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:27 | 5114229 tvdog
tvdog's picture

Things seem to be going to plan in Iraq. Obama & friends declare that they need to resuce the Yazidis. MSM shows heartbreaking pictures of people stranded on the mountain, everybody cheers the humanitarian mission. "Oh," Obama adds, "and we need to arm the Kurds too. The Kurds are the only ones who can fight the IS group that went after the Yazidis." MSM shows pictures of Peshmerga firing weapons from WWI. Everybody nods, yep, Kurds need new weapons, that's reasonable.

Meanwhile, U.S. special forces finally get to Mount Sinjar, and the Yazidis are all gone. Kurds rescued them with U.S. help! USA! USA! everybody shouts. Others claim that the Yazidis are still there - the Americans only looked at the north side of the mountain, and the Yazidis are on the south side. Or maybe not. But it doesn't matter where the Yazidis are or whether there were ever any Yazidis in the first place, since MSM reports they are all safe now, and Americans are proud of their country again. Obama said so.

Also meanwhile, Obama bombs IS since the Kurds don't have their new weapons yet. That's sensible, everybody says. MSM shows cool pictures of stuff blowing up.

The Republicans accuse Obama of being wimpy. Obama assures them that there is no time limit for American military action in Iraq, thereby rescuing his manhood. MSM confirms that Obama is in fact very manly.

Suddenly, it is announced that, thanks to American bombing raids, the Kurds - and the Iraqi army that dropped all their weapons earlier - have been able to recapture the Mosul dam. MSM has quit talking about how the Iraqi army dropped all their weapons and ran, so everybody has forgotten about it. Everybody has also forgotten the pretext about the bombing being to help the Kurds temporarily until they got their new weapons, and the pretext before that about rescuing the Yazidis. It's a victory! USA! USA!

Now they are 20 miles down the road from Mosul. Skittish Kurds mutter that there's no way they are fighting house to house in a major city comprised of Sunnis who hate them. Maliki, a U.S. puppet until the U.S. decided they didn't like him any more, has built an army consisting almost entirely of Shia, which the Sunnis in Mosul hate even more than they hate the Kurds. And there is that thing the Iraqi army has about dropping their weapons and running away.

So who do you think will have to go in with "boots on the ground" and rescue Mosul? Obama has already declared that there's no time limit on U.S. deployment in Iraq. David Cameron is back to warning the British people about decades of war to come. The Coalition of the Willing is willing once more; the future of military procurement budgets is secure.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:05 | 5114782 dontgoforit
dontgoforit's picture

Good analysis, tvdog!

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:32 | 5114235 Grimaldus
Grimaldus's picture

"At this point, what difference does it make?"

       Hillary Clinton, after destroying Libya and killing the American ambassador.

The death toll from Hillary's illegal war on the Libyan people continues to rise as the country descends further into chaos.

The bloody leftists, progressives, neo-stalinists always stack up more corpses. Not content with murder of millions of defenseless babies and uncounted millions dead from eco-murderer inflicted malaria (remember malaria was wiped out don't you?) unchained American progressive criminals infesting the FEDGOV have unleashed hell upon Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and here at home in the states. Hillary complains that America is not killing enough Syrians, maybe obama is trying to appease her blood lust by killing Iraqis?

With heroes like Mao and Bill Ayers, you can bet the criminal progressives are not done killin. They are just warming up on the middle east.

Grimaldus

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:32 | 5114256 Racer
Racer's picture

At least they are blowing them up and not giving them to the US police force! Spose that is something in the madness

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:34 | 5114274 ziggy59
ziggy59's picture

Its all Pro Growth GDP for and extra bonus ka-ching for the M.I.C.
..which is really the hit team for the Banksters..

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:45 | 5114329 tony wilson
tony wilson's picture

the pentagon gives

the cia takes away

the cia gives

the pentagon takes away

the pentagram gives israel

israel drops the pentagon gifts on gaza.

 

im just sittin here watchin the rabbi wheels go round and round

i really love to watchum go

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:21 | 5114855 Kirk2NCC1701
Kirk2NCC1701's picture

Are you saying that "The Pentagram giveth, the Hexagram taketh"? 

Shocking.  Shocking, I say.

p.s. The other day I watched an old Quentin Tarantino film 'Pulp Fiction', and noticed in one scene (Get the Gimp) that the perv Sheriff's Deputy wore a 6-star, rather than a 5-star of 7-star.  Interesting.  I tend to notice things in movies or in life, where things don't fit.  Part of my trained Active Observation, that has become a reflex/habit.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:52 | 5115017 Grimaldus
Grimaldus's picture

Hey Tony Wilson, ya know what is really stupid?

Arab conspiracy theories are!

Everybody knows how bad the Arab "suck" is, their very own "suck" that Arabs created for themselves without help from anyone. And everyone knows stupid Arabs are all about blaming everyone else but themselves for their sorry state of "suck".

It really is lame behaviour man, Arabs embarass themselves and look incredibly stupid to the rest of the world. They need to just embrace the suck, ok? EMBRACE THE SUCK man.

Don't get me wrong, not one racist bone in me, Grimaldus loves all, including very very fine Arab bitchez. But damn,get a f**king grip.

Grimaldus

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 16:05 | 5116178 tony wilson
tony wilson's picture

maybe they just suffering from the 10 thousand tons of depleted uranium dropped on the by the zionist run usa.

i mean you suck what is your excuse numb nuts

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:45 | 5114332 Voicefather
Voicefather's picture

To be fair this is mostly Iraqi-Soviet equipment rebuilt by the US. Most of the captured actual American made gear is going to be Humvees.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:57 | 5114387 tony wilson
tony wilson's picture

your a cunt old boy and should know better.

isis has gear direct from us military facilites

fresher you cannot get.

paid by the jewish house of saud and qatar.

sorry for the cunt remark you cunt.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:01 | 5114761 Voicefather
Voicefather's picture

Oh no not a bunch of armored Humvees, the horror! Seriously dipshit just watch all their parade footage. Their "impressive" tanks are old soviet T-55, T-62 and APC's. We didn't leave anything particularly impressive for the Iraqi army, like Abrams. Sure that old Soviet stuff may be trouble for the Syrians, but if we actually flexed some muscle it would all melt. ISIS has bravado and aggression going for it, but its army is still ragtag gear.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:32 | 5114916 Voicefather
Voicefather's picture

To clarify, we didn't "leave" Abrams for the Iraqi army, they bought some export versions which are underarmored and lacking other abilities the US military uses. The same Abrams version we sell to Egypt.

Wed, 08/20/2014 - 23:47 | 5123906 Sedaeng
Sedaeng's picture

actually they build the tanks in Egypt.

Egypt obtained US approval in 1984 to build a factory to produce new tanks. Under the initial agreement, the Egyptians would assemble 524 M1A1 tanks, and Egyptian officials hoped that this number would eventually rise to 1,500 tanks.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/egypt/m1a1.htm

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:50 | 5114354 Wrascaly Wabbit
Wrascaly Wabbit's picture

The truth of war explained in 1min 42sec Brilliant!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiN1xHaNDJ0

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:10 | 5114807 dontgoforit
dontgoforit's picture

The International - great flick.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:52 | 5114364 yellowsub
yellowsub's picture

They should ship GM cars there to blow up.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:53 | 5114370 czarangelus
czarangelus's picture

Don't worry, ZHers are too busy screaming for an extermination of blacks because they did $140.50 in damage to a McDonalds to worry about this.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:17 | 5114484 Loucleve
Loucleve's picture

per the FBI in 2012, 85% of all INTER racial violent crime is black on white.

blacks comprise 12% of the population.  AND Hispanics count as whites.

so to put it kindly, STFU.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:24 | 5114515 czarangelus
czarangelus's picture

America lives under unspoken and unofficial apartheid, primarily perpetrated by the government, whether municipal, state, or federal. But your statistics don't really have much to say about that because they're compiled by the same governments that stop, search, arrest, and prosecute blacks more often, and give them longer sentences for the same crimes. Not to mention the clearly racially biased "War on Drugs" where people are thrown into a rape cage for possession of politically incorrect plants.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:12 | 5114814 dontgoforit
dontgoforit's picture

Bullshit!  The only apartheid - where it exists at all in the U.S. - is that practiced by blacks for blacks against anything not black.  I've seen it.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 13:03 | 5115087 Grimaldus
Grimaldus's picture

Ever see "White Entertainment Television" ?

Ever see "The Congressional WHITE Caucus"

How about "National Assorciation for the Advancement of WHITE People"

Why not?

Because they are blatantly RACIST. Cities would BURN if those organizations existed.

But if you substitute "BLACK" for "WHITE" in those titles then it magicaly becomes non racist?

Ha! yeah, right I don't think so.

I hear ya dontgoforit, racisim in the USA is coming from the black community by a f**king loooooooooooong shot.

Grimaldus

 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 10:59 | 5114394 SAT 800
SAT 800's picture

Impeach Obama ! for FAILS ! In the meantime; I bought back my ZB's @140.05 today; for -64$; or something; and went short the S&P500, ES; times four, basis Dec. from 1967.5/ this corresponding to the days high, so far, of 1978 CASH. Leaving the Shorts on GBP as it looks like Cable is in the hands of the shorts, now, and they're having fun.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:00 | 5114400 localizer
localizer's picture

Yes, good reference to The International. While it's certainly not a great film it features some memorable lines e.g.

Umberto Calvini: [In explaining the "true" nature of banking in the world] The IBBC is a bank. Their objective isn't to control the conflict, it's to control the debt that the conflict produces. You see, the real value of a conflict, the true value, is in the debt that it creates. You control the debt, you control everything. You find this upsetting, yes? But this is the very essence of the banking industry, to make us all, whether we be nations or individuals, slaves to debt.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:04 | 5114419 Lea
Lea's picture

Never mind how much it costs, the Fed can print as many dollars as will be needed. They don't even need taxpayers (or just enough to buy them the paper and the ink).

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:08 | 5114429 kchrisc
kchrisc's picture

"We owe it to ourselves" "Ourselves" being the Rothschild banksters.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:15 | 5114469 Loucleve
Loucleve's picture

you forget the CFR and Rockefellers.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:40 | 5114955 shovelhead
shovelhead's picture

The CFR are just the guys who take orders from the men upstairs and spin a rational argument for what we're gonna do, because the Dummies in Congress only read the summary and vote the recommendation. The body of their 'white letters' are to convince staffers who read them, that usually belong to rookie Congressmen that actually care about their vote, to go with the summary.

It's not an entirely thankless task for the legions of international studies grads because some of the exceptionally crafty rascals will be placed in a higher power ring, or perhaps Nirvana itself, the State Dept.

Being able to lie on the fly in State is a treasured commodity. The problem is that they give the top jobs to politicos who are not very good at it.

Not everyone can be a Kissinger or Brzezinski.

 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:12 | 5114452 derryb
derryb's picture

the makers of these weapons and the weapons used to destroy them are laughing all the way to the bank.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:15 | 5114466 Loucleve
Loucleve's picture

In case you missed it, the guy running this isis show is former saddam hussein # 2 honcho, the King of Spades on the Most Wanted take down list.

forget his name, but saw this yesterday.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:08 | 5114794 CharlieMike
CharlieMike's picture

King of Spades executed in 2010.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:14 | 5114459 CHX
CHX's picture

Woar machinery cronies must just LOVE this.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:19 | 5114472 ekm1
ekm1's picture

The writer is correct about all except for one thing:

 

FUNDING

 

Banks provide zero funding on anything because "funding" nowadays is just typing up number on computers.

 

Military complex can simply create their own banks and type up numbers on computers for "funding" and they will do that.

 

All large corporations are banks also. They don't need any stinking banks to "fund" them.

Toyota, caterpillar, siemens etc are banks also. They can type up numbers on computers as "funding" themselves.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:31 | 5114506 ekm1
ekm1's picture

Also, it is no secret that a military needs a war from time to time in order to be kept in shape.

US and Israel do that. Russians are doing that now. China will do that soon.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:15 | 5114475 Seize Mars
Seize Mars's picture

Every made-in-Connecticut exploded bomb, every wrecked piece of equipment, every ruined highway, tortured psyche and blown mind, all adds up to a higher GDP.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:20 | 5114496 disabledvet
disabledvet's picture

"Paging Major Yossarian! Paging Major Yossarian! War on Line 2! War...online Too!

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:23 | 5114512 The Shodge
The Shodge's picture

Krugman must get an erection reading this

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:24 | 5114525 luckylongshot
luckylongshot's picture

Rather than focusing on the cost to America of blowing up its own weapons, why not address the issue of why we need weapons of mass destruction and wars any more. What seems clear now is that wars do not solve anything and that 99.9% of the population would be in favour of destroying all the weapons of mass destruction and outlawing war as a crime against humanity.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:17 | 5114837 dontgoforit
dontgoforit's picture

Now if there were just some group that could be trusted to enforce that....ain't happening.  You can see immediately that that kind of power would corrupt entirely and then the outcome would truly be an unarmed world against an armed authority.  I'll keep my little weapons of minimal destruction, thanks very much. 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:23 | 5114864 JimS
JimS's picture

Actually, wars solve a lot, for the world's banking community. They profit by financing these adventures (winners and losers) around the globe, and then extract their "rent" from both sides. International bankers have been using credit-based monetary systems and profiting from this constant warring between nations, for the last 400+ YEARS. This particular type of third-party monetary control (bankers/credt-base) was used in financing William of Orange's quest to gain the throne of England (Bank of Amsterdam, early 1600's), and then in one form or another since (think: Bank of International Settlements financing Hitler and the Allies via the clearing of internatioal trade during WW2). This evil process continues today with the IMF, BIS, Federal Reserve, and the world's central bankers (in general) because they profit beyond imagination on constant warfare (think MIC and "jobs": the whole "broken window" thing). Read "The Lost Science of Money: The Mythology of Money-the Story of Power" and all of this "money" shit becomes crystal clear.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 17:41 | 5116724 magnetosphere
magnetosphere's picture

nice book

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:47 | 5114995 shovelhead
shovelhead's picture

Pfffftt.

What a nancy.

War is the health of the state.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:30 | 5114551 SantaClaws
SantaClaws's picture

If ISIS is using U.S. weapons, why can't we simply send a repo man or woman to reposses them?  More to the point, why can't we send that reality TV guy with the gold chain, Dog, Dog the Bouty Man, to get all those humvees and other U.S. weapons.  What a great idea -- we get our weapons back and his TV ratings could only go up.

 

And we'd teach ISIS a lesson more Americans are learning every day.  You no pay the piper, the repo man finds you.  Life isn't Christmas every day, and I should know.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:58 | 5114742 espirit
espirit's picture

In case you didn't notice, 'The Old Expendables' aren't effective as they used to be.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:34 | 5114575 Casserole of no...
Casserole of nonsense's picture

You realize we have been blowing up American made weapons for the last 13 years right? The weapons your hero Ronnie gave to Osama bin laden and saddam Hussein.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:36 | 5114579 Yancey Ward
Yancey Ward's picture

intended for the rebuilt Iraqi Army. You know — the one that collapsed in terror in front of the Islamic State, back when they were just ISIL? The ones who dropped their uniforms, and rifles and ran away?

Well, tanks, APCs, and automatic rifles are no match for machete wielding fanatics willing to be completely and utterly ruthless in their use.

The more ruthless of two combatants will usually prevail

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:37 | 5114581 Peter Pan
Peter Pan's picture

Makes you wonder why with all the technology available the USA caanot reneder any of its equipment inoperable by remote control once it has been captured. At least it would save them a lot of time and expense it tracking it down and destroying it.

In fact I am sure they could install some kind of tamper proof kill switch if they so wished. After all, they can do that with our phones when they are lost or stolen.

I am no technology geek so I stand to be corrected by someone who knows about these things.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:39 | 5114605 SantaClaws
SantaClaws's picture

But anything can be hacked.  Imagine what your enemy could do with such a kill switch as you begin your attack.  Ouch.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:43 | 5114625 Peter Pan
Peter Pan's picture

Did those Malaysian Airlines planes have kill switches?

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:54 | 5115036 shovelhead
shovelhead's picture

Why?

Because drones are more fun. The trick is to use more stuff to wreck the stuff you already sold.

Think of it as the only govt. funded job program that really works.

Wed, 08/20/2014 - 09:55 | 5114586 Comte d'herblay
Comte d&#039;herblay's picture

"One man's ceiling is another man's floor".

Budgie Twitter's most excellent Primer on "Cost".    There is never, no such thing, as "Cost".   It's a fiction that is perpetrated on the KNs (Know Nothings) about economics 100.

There is only a "Transfer"  of money from the pocket you play with yourself in, to another person, corporation, govt, porn site, Bill Gates, or Larry Ellison's lesbian daughter, Megan. 

Depending on how fast Megan spends some fraction of  the money her pop gave her for her birthday----- something around $1.12 BILLION, this is called  "Velocity"----the effect her buying, say, a black chubby 9" strap-on dildo for one of her current lovers, Barbara Boothe, and then the Adult Dildo store's owner spending of his profit on that little item, on say, Chocolate Almond Tort at Panera, and on and on and on.....the effect is essentially equivalent to a perpetual motion machine, which the word "Cost" effectively disguises to the detriment of Full Disclosure. 

The AICPA is rethinking how to re- label the Expense section of their audited Profit and Loss Statements in their ARB Bulletin 356 since most have caught on to the fact there is only a chain letter like effect in the movement of money called the, "Mulitiplier".  

You shouldn't think of the Taxes you pay as a Cost.  In fact for most you, you never actually get a paycheck that is for the Salary  or hourly rate you accepted. That proves that a portion of your gross pay is merely a transfer, taken without your consent, to the governments that are the succubi on your testicles. 

 

 

 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:38 | 5114594 Bagbalm
Bagbalm's picture

Y'all act like it is real money...

 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:43 | 5114629 TrulyStupid
TrulyStupid's picture

I've got a great idea...let's cut out the middleman and simply taxpayer fund useless military equipment, that will never be used efectiv ely again. Something that has an exorbitant initial cost and an exorbitant ongoing maintenance cost and is incompetent for its stated use....like the F 35.  The profiteers profit, the banksters over lever, the politicians posture and no one needs get hurt.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:46 | 5114640 Tekrunner
Tekrunner's picture

"And who provides the funding for such "restocking"? Why the same banks that the US DOJ is "punshing" with vicious wristslaps of million dollar fines here, and multi-million dollar settlements there such as HSBC and JPM, thereby reducing the total profit on funding global warfare by "money-laundering" institutions to only tens of billions."

And at the same time, BNP was fined billions for conducting non-military transactions with Cuba and Iran, two bloodthirsty countries that have become threats to global stability through their ruthless international actions.

Err, oh wait.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:49 | 5114658 shouldvekilledthem
shouldvekilledthem's picture

Transacting in $, eur or other fiat supports these criminals.

Bitcoin and physical PM FTW.  

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:52 | 5114704 MrBoompi
MrBoompi's picture

Looks like a win-win for the arms industry and bankers, who both have made fortunes from arming both sides of every conflict.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:57 | 5114716 alexanderstollznow
alexanderstollznow's picture

perhaps the exercise wouldnt seem like such a "farce" if it was your head IS were trying to cut off, or your wife they wanted to impregnate to dilute your culture out of existence.   just a thought.

 

not that i would expect any better of this racist, trash website, but the reference to "obama's private war in iraq" must surely be a joke, right?  i think you will find the GOP has been making alot of mileage pushing the idea that obama should have acted sooner and harder.

 

on the plus side, it is most amusing to note that, contrary to the enthusiastic claims from this site and its readership in the past, gold didnt go to $3000, the stock market didnt crash again, unemployment keeps falling, NFP keeps increasing, and QE turned out to not be infinite.  

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 13:02 | 5115080 shovelhead
shovelhead's picture

Uh Oh,

MDB's got some real competition here, folks.

Pure deadpan too.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 11:57 | 5114729 homiegot
homiegot's picture

Government job creation. What's not to like? Also, an excellent way to launder money. Win-win.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:15 | 5114819 Duffy
Duffy's picture

To reiterate jaap - many or most of ISIL's weapons were given to them in Syria, via Turkey, by the US.

We have a neocon deep state in which arming Salafist terrorists in Syria makes as much sense as fighting them in Iraq.

The idea this was for Qatari pipelines, even as Israel expands its theft of Lebanese and Palestinian gas in the Leviathan find, was and is absurd.  Preventing an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, however, was always on the menu, as was the Balkanization of Syria and Iraq per the Oded Yinon>PNAC line of plans.

The Human Price of Neocon Havoc | Consortiumnews

http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-mid...

 ~~~

 

These two forces — the crypto-Zionists infiltrated in the government and the pro-Israel lobby — sometimes act in criminal conspiracy, as illustrated by the charge against Larry Franklin in 2005, who, as a member of the Office of Special Plans working under Douglas Feith, passed classified defense documents to two AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, who in turn transmitted them to a senior official in Israel. Franklin was sentenced to thirteen years in prison (later reduced to ten years of house-arrest), while Rosen and Weissman were acquitted. Most neoconservatives are active members of the second most powerful lobby pro-Israel, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), of which Dick Cheney and Ahmed Chalibi are also members, among others responsible for instigating the Iraq invasion. JINSA was founded in 1976 by American army officers, intellectuals, and politicians, with one of its stated aims “to inform the American defense and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East”. Colin Powell, according to his biographer Karen DeYoung, privately rallied against this “separate little government” composed of “Wolfowitz, Libby, Feith, and Feith’s ‘Gestapo Office’”, which he also called “the JINSA crowd”.

In 2011, Powell’s former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson openly denounced the duplicity of neoconservatives such as David Wurmser and Douglas Feith, whom he considered like “card-carrying members of the Likud party. […] I often wondered if their primary allegiance was to their own country or to Israel. That was the thing that troubled me, because there was so much that they said and did that looked like it was more reflective of Israel’s interest than our own”. In fact, a significant number of neoconservatives are Israeli citizens, have family in Israel or have resided there themselves. Some are openly close to Likud, the nationalist party in power in Israel, and several have even been official advisors to Netanyahu; many are regularly praised for their work on behalf of Israel by the Israeli press. Paul Wolfowitz, for example, was nominated “Man of the Year” by the pro-Likud Jerusalem Post in 2003, and « the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the Administration » by the American Jewish daily newspaper The Forward.

~

The duplicity of the neoconservatives is brought to light by a document revealed in 2008 by authors such as James Petras and Stephen Sniegoski (see bibliography); it is a 1996 report by the Israeli think tank Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”, sent to the new Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The team responsible for the report was led by Richard Perle, and included Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and his wife Meyrav Wurmser. Perle personally gave the report to Netanyahu on July 8th, 1996. The same year, the authors signed the founding manifesto of PNAC in the U.S., and four years later, they would be positioned in key posts of the U.S. military and U.S. foreign policy. As its title suggests, the report Clean Break invites Netanyahu to break with the Oslo Accords of 1993, which committed Israel to the return of the territories it occupied since 1967 and to retract illegal settlements. The new Prime minister should instead “engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism” and reaffirm Israel’s right over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: “Our claim to the land — to which we have clung for hope for 2,000 years — is legitimate and noble. […] Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, ‘peace for peace,’ is a solid basis for the future”.

~

The authors of Clean Break therefore encourage Netanyahu to adopt a politics of territorial annexation, not only contrary to the official position of the United States and the United Nations, but also contrary to public commitments made by Israel. Even though he signed the “roadmap” intended to lead to an independent Palestinian State in September 1999, and maintained his position at the Camp David summit in July 2000, Netanyahu followed the advice of Clean Break and secretly worked to sabotage the process. During a private interview filmed without his knowledge in 2001, he bragged how he undercut the peace process: “I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the ’67 borders”. He also said: “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in our way."

~

The recommendations to the Israeli government to sabotage the peace process in Palestine are presented by the authors of Clean Break as part of a larger plan to allow Israel to “shape its strategic environment”, by “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq”, weakening Syria and Lebanon, and finally Iran. When Perle, Feith and Wurmser moved to key positions in the U.S. government, they arranged for the United States to implement the program themselves, without Israel having to pay a single drop of blood. If there are differences between the Clean Break report written for the Israeli government in 1996 and the report Rebuilding America’s Defenses written by the same authors for the U.S. government in 2000, it is not in the program itself, but rather the argued reasons. First, Clean Break does not have Iraq as a threat, but as the weakest of the enemies of Israel, the least dangerous and the easiest to break. In a follow-up to Clean Break, entitled Coping with Crumbling States: A Western and Israeli Balance of Power Strategy for the Levant, Wurmser emphasizes the fragility of Middle East States, particularly Iraq: “the residual unity of the nation is an illusion projected by extreme repression of the state”. Thus the same action of first overthrowing Saddam is recommended to Israel and the United States, but for opposite reasons. The weakness of Iraq, which is the reason for Israel, does not constitute a valid reason for the United States; and so it was therefore necessary to present Iraq to the Americans as a mortal threat to their country. Netanyahu himself authored an article in the Wall Street Journal in September 2002, under the title “The Case for Toppling Saddam”, describing Saddam as “a dictator who is rapidly expanding his arsenal of biological and chemical weapons, who has used these weapons of mass destruction against his subjects and his neighbors, and who is feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons”. Nothing of such a threat, however, is mentioned in Israeli internal documents, which also make no mention of any further connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, nor even Al-Qaeda in general. The perspective on Iraq in Clean Break was the realistic one, while the motives given America was pure propaganda: by the time American troops moved into Iraq, the country had been ruined by a decade of economic sanctions that had not only rendered its army powerless, but also destroyed its once exemplary education and health care systems, taking the lives, according to UNICEF, of half a million children.

~

The second fundamental difference between the strategy recommended for Israelis and the propaganda sold to the Americans: while the second highlights both the security interest of the United States, and the noble ideal to spread democracy in the Middle East, the first ignores these two themes. The changes proposed by the Clean Break authors are not expected to bring any benefit to the Arab world. Instead, the goal is clearly to weaken Israel’s enemies by sharpening ethnic, religious and territorial disputes between countries and within each country. After the fall of Saddam, foreseen in Coping with Crumbling States, Iraq would be “ripped apart by the politics of warlords, tribes, clans, sects, and key families”, for the benefit of Israel. Furthermore, it is not democracy that Clean Break recommended for Iraq, but rather restoring a pro-Western monarchy. Such an outcome would obviously be unacceptable to the Americans, but when Lewis Paul Bremer, as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in 2003, brought about the destruction of the military and civilian infrastructure in the name of “de-Bassification”, it was viewed as a success from the eyes of the Likud. Better still, by dissolving the army, Bremer indirectly created a disorganized pool of resistance of some 400 000 angry soldiers, ensuring chaos for a few years. Daniel Pipes had the gall to write, three years after the invasion of Iraq: the benefits of eliminating Saddam’s rule must not be forgotten in the distress of not creating a successful new Iraq. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition’s responsibility nor its burden”. And besides, he adds, “when Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice-versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one” (New York Sun, February 28, 2006). Under Bremer’s leadership, 9 billion dollars disappeared in fraud, corruption and embezzlement, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen, published January 30th, 2005.

...~

Passing off a threat against Israel as though it were a threat against the United States is a trick to which Netanyahu had no need to be converted; he has been employing it since the 1980s to rally Americans alongside Israel in the “international war on terrorism”, a concept which he can claim to have invented in his books International Terrorism: Challenge and Response (1982) and Terrorism: How the West can Win (1986). In their book An End to Evil (2003), Richard Perle and David Frum likewise work to embed the fears of Israelis into the minds of Americans; for example, they ardently urge Americans to “end this evil before it kills again and on a genocidal scale. There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust”. It is, however, impossible for anyone to be consistently hypocritical, and it happens eventually that neoconservatives recklessly open their thoughts to the public. This is what happened to Philip Zelikow, Councelor to Condoleezza Rice and Executive Director of the Commission on September 11, when, speaking about the Iraqi threat during a conference at the University of Virginia September 10, 2002, he let slip: “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat is and actually has been since 1990: it’s the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell”. That’s really it in a nutshell: the United States must be led to make war with the enemies of Israel, and in order to that, Americans must be convinced that Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies.

~

In addition, it is necessary that the Americans believe that these enemies hate their country for what it claims to represent (i.e. democracy, freedom, etc.), not because of its support for Israel. The signatories of the PNAC letter to President Bush on April 3rd, 2002 (including William Kristol, Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes, Norman Podhoretz, Robert Kagan, and James Woolsey) go as far as claiming that the Arab world hates Israel because it is a friend of the United States, rather than the reverse:No one should doubt that the United States and Israel share a common enemy. We are both targets of what you have correctly called an “Axis of Evil.” Israel is targeted in part because it is our friend, and in part because it is an island of liberal, democratic principles — American principles — in a sea of tyranny, intolerance, and hatred”. It is a well-known fact that America had no enemies in the Middle East before its covenant with Israel in the late 60s.


 - http://www.voltairenet.org/article178638.html

 

 


Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:18 | 5114844 Duffy
Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:16 | 5114834 Who was that ma...
Who was that masked man's picture

Makes a lot of sense if you don't think about.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:26 | 5114876 Wrascaly Wabbit
Wrascaly Wabbit's picture

"Life is like a shit sandwich, the bore bread you have the less shit you have to eat"! says it all.

 

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:30 | 5114890 Wrascaly Wabbit
Wrascaly Wabbit's picture

Should read more Duh

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 12:42 | 5114964 JR
JR's picture

Reuters has kind of become the formal voice of Kiev, hasn’t it?

If you are going to put together a force of NATO, the IMF, US/CIA intelligence, the ECB, and an illegitimate coup-established government in Kiev, the one thing you really need is a worldwide news network to carry your propaganda: Reuters.

Tue, 08/19/2014 - 13:09 | 5115107 SmittyinLA
SmittyinLA's picture

I believe all those brand new ISIS pickup trucks built after 2012 (FORD GM Toyota) all have RFID remote shut off capabilities as well as GPS locators, we bought them we have a list of serial numbers.

We don't have to missile those trucks, we can just shut 'em off, strand them in the boonies, but doing that would limit debt.

 

 

Thu, 08/21/2014 - 02:54 | 5124147 ACasey
ACasey's picture

The International.  Excellent call.  The powerful force of avarice revealed in full.

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