$15,000,000,000 to fight the “narcotics trade,” and Blackwater may get some

It gets more and more surreal.

Since the U.S. government is now a wholly owned subsidiary of a conglomerate of defense contractors and the fossil fuels industries, it’s important to find new and better ways for our tax dollars to support those murderous kleptocrats- preferably ways that attract little scrutiny, and play into the warped values so carefully calibrated by our corporate media. We can’t spend money on things that might actually help children, like ensuring that they have safe homes, nutritious food, clean clothes, and quality educations and health care. That would be socialism! But we can try to keep them from having sex! And we can try to keep them off drugs! Homelessness, hunger, and lack of opportunity are of little import, but kids on drugs is bad! And it exists in a vacuum. It has nothing to do with that homelessness, hunger, and lack of opportunity!

So, the Wall Street Journal is reporting today that:

A Defense Department contract involving antidrug training missions may test the durability of the political controversy over Blackwater Worldwide’s security work in Iraq.

The Moyock, N.C., company, which was involved in a September shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqis dead, is one of five military contractors competing for as much as $15 billion over five years to help fight a narcotics trade that the government says finances terrorist groups.

Also competing for contracts from the Pentagon’s Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office are military-industry giants Raytheon Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp., as well as Arinc Inc., a smaller aerospace and technology contractor.

Of course, the first reaction is to wonder why in hell we’d be considering giving more money to a bloodsucking private army that murders civilians and is run by a fundamentalist religious fanatic. That’s the obvious question, and it will remain unanswered. As our nation is dismantled and sold for scrap, Blackwater is the future. But the bigger question, which is, of course, overlooked by the Journal itself, is why are we looking to spend $15,000,000,000 on the war on drugs?!

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The article, of course, makes the offhand assertion that the money is needed because the narcotics trade finances terrorism. Right. You know what really fuels terrorism? According to our own spy agencies, the Iraq war fuels terrorism. You know what fuels the narcotics trade? The fact that by invading Iraq, Bush failed to defeat the Taliban, who are now resurgent, and enjoying the profits of record opium crops.

But why deal with the actual facts, and the actual failures of this astonishingly inept and corrupt maladministration. We’re all still paying tax dollars, and corporate welfare is no longer just a means of siphoning some of it away. Corporate welfare is now one of the primary functions of our government. That and shifting the very functions of government to private institutions that are accountable to no one.

As the Journal article concludes:

Richard Douglas, deputy assistant defense secretary for counternarcotics, counterproliferation and global threats, said Blackwater’s training of Afghan antidrug forces has made them more effective. “We’ve been very happy with the results of our association with them in Afghanistan,” he said.

Of course they’re happy with the results. Because record opium crops means just another excuse for more money to be stolen from the people and given to the corporate kleptocrats.