Pigs at the Trough of War

The Bush Administration's reign of error and terror has left a pile of corruption, waste, and destruction that rivals the muck of the Augean stable. Jeffrey St. Clair’s new book, Grand Theft Pentagon, accomplishes the Herculean task of exposing these abuses with brilliant investigative journalism carried off with unmatched sarcasm.

After the Cold War, the military industrial complex was desperate for a new conflict to legitimize profligate spending on war, weapons systems, and their associated services. St. Clair chronicles how Bush’s so-called War on Terror has enabled our rulers to rekindle the incestuous relationship between politicians, the pentagon, and military contractors.

The marriage councilor of this foul union is none other than George Bush himself. In perhaps the funniest expose of the Bushes yet written, St. Clair tells the story of this company masquerading as a family.

The portrait is not very flattering, politically or personally. Demonstrating their congenital penchant for putting profit before all else, the dynasty’s founder Prescott Bush barely escaped charges of treason for wheeling and dealing with the Nazis during WWII.

But the Bush clan does not find a haven from such heartlessness at home; matriarch Barbara Bush lost so little sleep over her daughter’s death from leukemia that she was out golfing the next day.

The unlikely hero of family saga is “W.” St. Clair shows how he spent his youth boozing, snorting coke, womanizing, failing classes, securing draft deferments, dodging national guard duty, and starting and wrecking corporations for which other people paid the price.

But this loser found himself reincarnated as a caring conservative. With the help of corporate money, lessons at the foot of Karl Rove, lots of dirty tricks, and apparently direct conversations with the deity, he found himself selected by the Supreme Court as ruler of the United States on the eve of 9/11.

Bush and the military industrial complex used the tragedy to fulfill their imperial fantasies and line their pockets. With Bush threatening war on the planet, the Pentagon asked for and got the useless and dangerous Star Wars Missile Defense, the unneeded B-767 tanker plane, the practically untested F-22 fighter, and the Stryker armored personnel carrier that is almost useless in Iraq since it is vulnerable to improvised explosive devices.

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