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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