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Barking Defense Contractors

So, here we go. Sleep comes hard these days, has for years. I only check in on network TV news to see what the current fairytale is. I get my news from the Internet these days, and some print newspapers.

But BuzzFlash is my home page, the first page I scan in the mornings, and the last page I look at before I say, "aw heck", at night. This morning I found this: Nick Turse on Iraq as a weapons lab

"Back in 1965, Jack Raymond of the New York Times wrote a piece aptly headlined, "Vietnam Gives U.S. ‘War Laboratory.'" And in that era, there were a couple of American commanders who publicly said as much. For instance, General Maxwell Taylor, who served as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, noted that "we have recognized the importance of the area [Vietnam] as a laboratory. We have teams out there looking at equipment requirements of this kind of guerilla warfare." But as Raymond pointed out, most American officials were loath to make such boasts for fear of comparisons to the Nazis, who had, only three decades earlier, used the Spanish Civil War as a training ground for World War II."
What struck me about this article, which goes on to say suggest that the military industrial complex uses every "war" or military action as a living laboratory, is that my brother-in-law (a known wacko) has been saying this for years. He was regular Army sorta, in Vietnam, but most probably special ops. He refuses to say, or melts down completely when pressed. He said it: They use such actions as ways to test new weapons systems. They like that they can do that.

I've gone way past the point in my life where I can discount that the machiavellian cronies do exactly what they want to do where weapons are concerned. But I know that I live in a different bubble from most people.

Do weapons makers salivate like pavolian dogs at the first hint of a military action where they can road test new systems? My mind goes to the Dodge Brothers' Proving Grounds where the prototype cars get tested.

I point. You decide.