Reply #13: Exactly -- a very familiar ring

[Time for change]

I didn't fully realize how much so until I went through the book a second time while I was writing this post.

Here is something similar, from Chalmers Johnson's "Nemesis -- The Last Days of the American Republic". After explaining in great detail how absolutely worthless is the Reagan and Bush "Star Wars" system, costing over a trillion dollars, Johnson says:

Did the Bush Administration and its Republican associates in Congress actually intend to build a missile defense system or were they only interested in a plausibel public relations cover for using the defense budget to funnel huge amounts of money to the military-industrial aerospace corporations. As a cash cow, missile defense goes on enriching its sponsors precisely when it is not working...

The iron triangle of the air force, Congress, and the MIC, sanctified by the high-tech jobs it offers to American workers, is driving our country toward bankruptcy...