War as Economic Development

The "weapons of mass destruction" argument has been debunked. No matter how many times Saddam Hussein's name is mentioned in the same sentence as the terror attacks of 9-11, we know that's not where the responsibility lays. Turkey, our ally and the recipient of billions in US economic aid, has been conducting a genocidal campaign, that upstages Iraq's, against its Kurdish population since 1992 - destroying 3,000 plus Kurdish villages; so, we can't claim we care enough about the Kurds to go to war. Hell, you can't even claim it's the oil. All Middle-eastern oil accounts for less than 10% of the US's annual oil consumption. That is just $11 billion in oil compared to the $50 billion we spend annually "protecting" the Middle East, not to mention the $289 billion and growing that we have spent on the war in Iraq.

Perhaps, it's all just a post Cold War, unartfully constructed, economic stimulus package for the US defense industry... After all, Halliburton has done quite well for itself and Lockheed Martin has that government subsidized loan to repay. I wonder how many at home we could educate and what discoveries and technological advances we could make that would reposition our economic base and put our unemployed back to work if the $289 billion was but applied to more peaceful and productive purposes?