ABSTRACT
The United States is plagued by the acquisition of weapons systems and other federal programs costing billions of dollars that are neither useful nor needed by the military. This aberration is aggravated by a federal government procurement process distraught by fraud, incompetence, waste, and abuse (FIWA). This enduring entanglement has persisted since well before President Eisenhower’s 1961 warning of the threat to liberties or democratic processes from the military-industrial complex 1 and continues into President Obama’s administration. The collaboration between corrupt corporate representatives and incompetent or similarly nefarious public servants in dubious government contract dealings have been familiar to Americans since the United States began its rise as a world power. In his 1935 book War is a Racket, 2 Brigadier General Smedley Butler wrote about his dismay regarding manufacturing companies and bankers that instigate wars to increase their corporations’ profitability, and he noted that corporations profited immensely during World War I. Two quotes from his book, with respect to defense contractors’ profits, are provided below:
In the World War [World War I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their income tax returns no one knows. 2Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplanes and airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars’ worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100 or perhaps 300 per cent.
