from Asia Times
"Twenty-one reasons Iraq is not working"
How many active-duty US Army troops have been deployed in Iraq?
About 400,000 troops out of an active-duty force of 504,000 have already served one tour of duty in Iraq, according to Peter Spiegel of the Los Angeles Times. More than one-third of them have already been deployed twice.
How is Iraq affecting the army's equipment?
By the spring of 2005, the US Army had already "rotated 40% of its equipment through Iraq and Afghanistan". Marine Corps mid-2005 estimates were that 40% percent of its ground equipment and 20% of its air assets were being used to support current operations, according to analyst Carl Conetta. In the harsh climate of Iraq, the wear and tear on equipment have been enormous.
Conetta estimates that whenever the Iraq and Afghanistan wars end, the postwar repair bill for army and marine equipment will be in the range of US$25 billion to $40 billion.
This last sentence is the only significant sentence in the article, if you want to understand our leaders' perspective.
If you do not live in the DC area, you do not understand how significant this is for the defense industry, the most profitable industry headquartered in the DC area. Since the gentrification of DC and the inner suburbs began, the Washington Post has kept tabs on the source of the massive economic boom that DC has experienced while other cities stagnate. It is the national security state.
An enormous spending boom has been started by the neocons, the likes of which LBJ could only dream of. All this money is going to security agencies, security contractors, spy-owned corporations, and defense industry on the Dulles and I-270 corridor.
WRAP-AROUND ADS now appear on Metro trains and Metrobuses ADVERTISING WEAPONS SYSTEMS. That is unprecedented.
They are now the region's number one advertiser, rivaled only by Macy's (the last remaining department store -- shades of 1984) and their audience is the tens of thousands of wealthy defense contractors who are moving into the city and Arlington and Tysons Corner, Virginia.
Wealthy urbanites, social liberals and economic conservatives -- "neoliberals" -- who support, aid and abet the security state. When the Republicans are ousted, they will go to work for the Democrats. They are the real "velvet mafia".
It IS ALL ABOUT THE BUILDING OF NEW WEAPONS SYSTEMS.
Remember -- US Law says that GENERALS CANNOT BE PROMOTED IN THE ABSENCE OF WAR.
WE MUST HAVE A WAR EVERY TEN YEARS OR THE STRUCTURE OF OUR ARMED FORCES WOULD COLLAPSE, according to laws governing promotion in the ranks.
More important to the neocons, we must have a major war or our defense systems will not need replacing by DC's number one profit-making industry after they are worn out and destroyed by the enemy.