MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHO'S THE WORST WAR MERCHANT OF THEM ALL?

Nazi propaganda poster; under Bush, the shoe kind of fits

Who says America doesn't manufacture anything anymore? We certainly do turn out lethal weapons. In fact, according to a report in this morning's NY Times we sell more arms to the third world than anyone else ($10.3 billion). Russia ($8.11 billion) and Britain ($3.1 billion) are numbers 2 and 3. And the big buyers are Pakistan (oy), India and Saudi Arabia. "The global arms market is highly competitive, with manufacturing nations seeking both to increase profits and to expand political influence through weapons sales to developing nations, which reached nearly $28.8 billion in 2006."

The U.S. is pissed off that Russia sells weapons to Venezuela (the world' 4th biggest arms buyer since Bush started saber-rattling in their direction) and Iran. The U.S. sells weapons to countries Russia wishes it wouldn't sell to.

War is big business and from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower, we as a people have been warned about not allowing the military-industrial complex to have undue power. Now we're in a situation where the military-industrial complex-- of which the Republican Party and a good chunk of the Democratic Party is a subsidiary (see Rahm Emanuel's disgraceful appearance on Bill Maher's show)-- allows the citizens of this country very little influence. As a people we are a disgrace ourselves; we've allowed our liberty and our dignity to slip out of our hands while we watched Monday Night Football.

On Friday The Nation published a piece by John Nichols about how Congress surreptitiously passed more financing for the occupation of Iraq.

The Senate agreed on Thursday to increase the federal debt limit by $850 billion-- from $8.965 trillion to $9.815 trillion-- and then proceeded to approve a stop-gap spending bill that gives the Bush White House at least $9 billion in new funding for its war in Iraq.

Additionally, the administration has been given emergency authority to tap further into a $70 billion “bridge fund” to provide new infusions of money for the occupation while the Congress works on appropriations bills for the Department of Defense and other agencies.
Translation: Under the guise of a stop-gap spending bill that is simply supposed to keep the government running until a long-delayed appropriations process is completed-- probably in November-- the Congress has just approved a massive increase in war funding.
The move was backed by every senator who cast a vote, save one.

Instead you get a congressman (John Hall) introducing a bill to limit the use of the private Republican army of mercenaries put together by Erik Prince a mentally disturbed, billionaire Bush supporter (Blackwater) and the immediate response is for the Bush Regime to award them a big shiny new contract and to give Congress the finger.

Those who would be leaders-- Obama and Hillary (as well as Biden, McCain and Brownback)-- were out campaigning and managed to avoid the vote. Milt at PleaseCutTheCrap says they all need brains, heart and courage-- and he's the most moderate Democrat I know! Meantime, Russ Feingold (D-WI) voted against the bill, a lonley voice once again. In the House the only votes against this were 13 anti-war Democrats and Ron Paul (R-TX). The Democrats:
Earl Blumenauer (OR)
William Clay (MO)
Keith Ellison (MN)
Bob Filner (CA)
Barney Frank (MA
Maurice Hinchey (NY)
Dennis Kucinich (OH)
Jim McDermott (WA)
Donald Payne (NJ)
Barbara Lee (CA)
Maxine Waters (CA)
Diane Watson, the Congressmember from DWT Headquarters (CA)
Lynn Woolsey (CA)

John Arovosis over at AmericaBlog discovered that not all western countries are following Bush's lead: Iceland is the latest to pull out of the "coalition of the willing"-- and with great panache.

Bob Dylan hasn't lost his relevance since I was a kid. Maybe someone should do a hiphop version or a trance version of this song. People need to hear its message again: