BY JULIA GLEDHILL AND WILLIAM D. HARTUNG
While Republicans may now be “weaponizing” the political scene, the Pentagon’s weaponization story has lasted forever and a day. As TomDispatch regulars and Pentagon experts William Hartung and Julia Gledhill point out, when it comes to major purchases of weaponry (and the “investment” of taxpayer dollars in the giant weapons-making corporations that produce them), there simply is no parallel on earth (or, best guess, anywhere else in the galaxy).
After all, more than half of the taxpayer dollars that Congress appropriates every year now goes into what passes for “defense” in this country. More than half of that, according to the latest report from the invaluable Costs of War Project, goes directly to military contractors. And speaking about weaponization, much of that money lands directly in the pockets of the big five weapons-making corporations — Lockheed Martin ($39 billion), Boeing ($23 billion), Raytheon ($20.6 billion), General Dynamics ($16.6 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($14.7 billion).
And worse yet, as Hartung and Gledhill document today, despite congressional freezes or funding cuts in many programs in the debt-ceiling-debate moment, the Pentagon will continue to prove exempt from ceilings of any sort when it comes to the weaponization of our world. Tom
After the truth-shower 