"America's Priorities," by the Beltway elite
source: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2009/1...
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- WakeUpPeople
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Something very unusual happened on The Washington Post Editorial Page today: they deigned to address a response from one of their readers, who "challenged [them] to explain what he sees as a contradiction in [their] editorial positions": namely, the Post demands that Obama's health care plan not be paid for with borrowed money, yet the very same Post Editors vocally support escalation in Afghanistan without specifying how it should be paid for. "Why is it okay to finance wars with debt, asks our reader, but not to pay for health care that way?"
The Post editors give two answers. They first claim that Obama will save substantial money by reducing defense spending -- by which they mean that he is merely decreasing the rate at which defense spending increases ("from 2008 to 2019, defense spending would increase only 17 percent") -- as well as withdrawing from Iraq. But so what? Even if those things really happen, we're still paying for our glorious, endless war in Afghanistan by borrowing the money from China and Japan, all of which continues to explode our crippling national debt. We have absolutely no ability to pay for our Afghan adventure other than by expanding our ignominious status as the largest and most insatiable debtor nation which history has ever known. That debt gravely bothers Beltway elites like the Post editors when it comes to providing ordinary Americans with basic services (which Post editors already enjoy), but it's totally irrelevant to them when it comes to re-fueling the vicarious joys of endless war.
more at link...
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artemis6
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War is sensational and sells .
- 2 years ago
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artemis6
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RFIDemocracy
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US attorney Jim Garrison-The Pentagon and the CIA are the government and Congress is little more than a debating society.
Just like the ISI and the People's Liberation Army and the KGB, the US is run by the Pentagon and their astonishing 0.68 trillion $$ annual budget that they simply *must* have in order to protect America from the existential threat of a bunch of disorganised post-stone-age Arabs riding donkeys with antique machine guns and home-made fertilizer bombs 8,000 miles away.
- 2 years ago
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RFIDemocracy
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hunzedog
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dont matter how big our armies are. we are a financial flyweight....
- 2 years ago
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hunzedog
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Progresshiv
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America- you don't matter. Get used to it.
- 2 years ago
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Progresshiv
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Donald_Mulligan
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Americas priorities are based on industry(money and power). The military industry grows with war. The insurance, pharma, and private health care industries grow without a fed. program. The Washington Post doesn't publish for people, its for industry.
- 2 years ago
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Donald_Mulligan
