How the war on terrorism became a business model.
By Mike Lofgren
Washington Monthly, March/April/May 2015
EXTRACT
The syndrome the Bush administration created in Iraq was what former Pentagon critic Chuck Spinney has called a “self-licking ice cream cone”: the measures to fight the war on terrorism guaranteed more terrorists, which in turn guaranteed the agencies more money to fight the war on terrorism. The same process was at work with respect to torture and drone strikes. It is a great business model for contractors and bureaucratic empire builders, but far less favorable as a national survival strategy.
Phi Beta Iota: Congress lost its integrity when Speaker Gingrich destroyed Speaker Wright and turned the Members into “blocs of votes” that could be sold to the highest bidder. Congress has since then abdicated its Article 1 responsibility and failed to balance the power of the Executive or to exercise its power of the purse (other than to be profligate and borrow unncessesarily in our name) or its power to approve treaties and wars. We have a unilateral monolythic government of, by, and for the corrupt — not We the People.
See Especially:
Review: The Ambition and the Power–The Fall of Jim Wright : A True Story of Washington
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