Report Shows US Invasion, Occupation of Iraq Left 1 Million Dead

[dreamnightwind]

75. I think it was driven by the military industrial think tank complex

War money flows on both sides of the aisle. More to Republicans than Democrats, but enough of it goes to Democrats to allow the MIC to call the shots.

Some relevant things in this article. I like their term the Military Industrial Think Tank Complex (I think it's theirs, I hadn't heard it before). The focus of the article is on the weapons industry, but IMO could just as well have been on the extraction industries (oil, gas, and mining interests), and though there is some dispute about it, AIPAC was also apparently lobbying for the war behind the scenes.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Military-industrial_complex#Weapons_Procurement_1998-2003

Weapons Procurement 1998-2003

In 1999, according to Foreign Policy in Focus, "the military-industrial complex did not fade away with the end of the cold war. It has simply reorganized itself."

"As a result of a rash of military-industry mergers encouraged and subsidized by the Clinton administration," it continues, "the Big Three weapons makers--Lockheed Martin Corporation, Boeing Corporation, and Raytheon Corporation--now receive among themselves over $30 billion per year in Pentagon contracts. This represents more than one out of every four dollars that the Defense Department doles out for everything from rifles to rockets." [8]

When this article was posted in 1999, the Clinton Administration five-year budget plan for the Pentagon called for a 50% increase in weapons procurement, which would be an increase from $44 billion per year to over $63 billion per year by 2003. Additionally, the arms industry launched "a concerted lobbying campaign aimed at increasing military spending and arms exports. These initiatives are driven by profit and pork barrel politics, not by an objective assessment of how best to defend the United States in the post-cold war period."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Military-industrial_complex#The_Military-Industrial-Think_Tank_Complex

The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex
According to the January/February 2003 Multinational Monitor:

Each major element of the George Walker Bush administration's national security strategy -- from the doctrines of preemptive strikes and "regime change" in Iraq, to its aggressive nuclear posture and commitment to deploying a Star Wars-style missile defense system -- was developed and refined before the Bush administration took office, at corporate-backed conservative think tanks like the Center for Security Policy, the National Institute for Public Policy and the Project for a New American Century.

Unilateralist ideologues formerly affiliated with these think tanks, along with the 32 major administration appointees who are former executives with, consultants for, or significant shareholders of top Defense contractors, are driving U.S. foreign and military policy.

The arms lobby is exerting more influence over policymaking than at any time since President Dwight D. Eisenhower first warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex over 40 years ago.

It is not just industry-backed think tanks that have infiltrated the administration. Former executives, consultants or shareholders of top U.S. defense companies pervade the Bush national security team.

Exploiting the fears following 9/11, and impervious to budgetary constraints imposed on virtually every other form of federal spending, the ideologue-industry nexus is driving the United States to war in Iraq and a permanently aggressive war-fighting posture that will simultaneously starve other government programs and make the world a much more dangerous place.

The overarching concern of the ideologues and the arms industry is to increase military spending. On this score, they have been tremendously successful. In its two years in office, the Bush administration has sought more than $150 billion in new military spending, the vast majority of which has been approved by Congress with few questions asked. Spending on national defense is nearing $400 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2003, up from $329 billion when Bush took office.