P .T. Barnum, eat your heart out...

The US bombed Afghanistan as a direct reaction to 9/11. Five years on Osama bin Laden remains at large and the Taliban are ‘back’. In Iraq where no weapons of mass destruction were found, a bloody civil conflict rages. And while Washington runs the Iraqi oil reserves show, post construction firms like Halliburton are said to have pocketed millions. The Palestinians are fast becoming a forgotten peoples and although a peace deal has been brokered by the UN and the EU, the Israelis remain in southern Lebanon. Then there is Iran and the nuclear issue. Overall events since 9/11 do not forebode well for conflict resolution.

The above is the intro to an article in The Guardian, by Saundra Satterlee.

Read it if you will, and I assure it is both interesting and thought provoking, but I have a different, yet related axe to grind here:

And it is this: Hundreds of billions (perhaps even exceeding a trillion) dollars (you could get mesmerised just by the zeroes) have been flushed down the gurgler financing our wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Success?

You've got to be joking!

But...

Who paid for it?

Taxpayers (workers, mostly in the US, but also in the UK and other Client States of the American Empire.)

Taxpayers...

Taxpayers paid for these hugely expensive acts of idiocy, hubris and failure.

Cui bono? (Who benefited?) Easy...

The weapons manufacturers and their shareholders benefited immensely.
The munitions manufacturers and their shareholders benefited immensely.
The corporate giants involved in "reconstruction" and ""infrastructure" and their shareholders benefited immensely.
The private security contractor companies and their shareholders benefited immensely.
Oil and gas corporations and their shareholders benefited immensely.

Have we joined the dots yet, boys and girls?

The rich are laughing all the way to the bank whilst the poor (the taxpayers) are coughing up for the money! It's the biggest and oldest scam there is! Perpetual war equals perpetual wealth for the rich ( and perpetual hardship for the poor.)

All in the name of "patriotism", "freedom", and "democracy".

It's the biggest show in town and there's a sucker born evey minute!

Good night...

(Thanks to Kurt for the heads-up on the Guardian article.)