America's $2.3 Trillion Dollar Foreign Aid is Mostly a Defense Contractor Subsidy

Here's a 'Connecting the Dots Moment' for Americans to ponder:  It's a well documented fact that Congress wiped out the Social Security Trust Fund over the decades to the tune of at least $2.5 trillion and left a worthless pile of IOU's, here.  It's also well documented that foreign aid, according to 2007 figures, totaled an astounding $2.3 trillion.  How would Americans feel if they knew that the government they elected and trusted plundered their Social Security and that their retirement funds landed in the laps of defense contractors and corrupt foreign officials?  

Flushing $2.3 trillion in American tax dollars down the foreign aid toilet, here, is not only an act of grand theft but also a gargantuan welfare program for defense contractors.  The $2.3 trillion figure quoted in the link is based on 2007 data and hundreds of billions have been added to the foreign aid tab since 2007.  Still, it has been estimated that 2/3 of foreign aid lands right in defense contractor laps.

Two Thirds of US Foreign Aid Is Really Military Aid

Foreign aid is one of the biggest scams ever because gobs of American taxdollars end up lost, missing, stolen  unaccountable and untraceable.  Nobody really knows what happens to unaccountable foreign aid dollars.  Our government that disburses the money doesn't even know or, more likely, refuses to disclose who got the money.

Revealed: How $6.6billion of taxpayers' money sent to Iraq by Bush may have been STOLEN

It is thought to have been the biggest international cash airlift of all time, when $12billion in aid was flown by the Bush administration to postwar Iraq.

And now, for the first time, investigators auditing the cash have admitted that more than half of that huge amount may have been stolen when it got there in 'the largest theft of funds in national history'.

Iraq isn't the only recipient of massive foreign aid that is riddled with scandal.  Although $90 billion in aid has poured into Afghanistan since 2001, here, nobody really knows where that money went and Afghan and US officials are determined to keep it that way.

Karzai blocking probe of missing U.S. $billions in Afghanistan

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is blocking efforts by U.S. officials to locate billions of dollars given to aid Afghanistan's economy, stymieing efforts to combat money laundering of drug money, corruption and funding terrorists.

Karzai is prohibiting U.S. Treasury agents from accessing the Afghan government's central bank by allowing and even contributing to “hostile working conditions” for advisers there, according to a new report by the U.S. Inspector General's Office for Afghanistan Re construction.

Afghanistan is just one of many corrupt nations that are the recipients of tons of US foreign aid and even the NYT chirped in on the corruption in Afghanistan, here. Furthermore it is estimated that Afghanistan will need an additional $6-7 billion in aid over the next 10 years, even if aid dollars are slowing down a bit.  Reuters reported that a staggering 90% of Afghanistan's budget comes from aid, here.

More than 90 percent of Afghanistan's $17.1 billion national budget comes from foreign donation...

How did Afghanistan survive before the era of BIG aid?   Just fine! Heck, it's heroine trade could comfortably bankroll any nation which, of course, raises the issue of precisely why America is so interested in Afghanistan.  It's widely believed and documented that the CIA, frequently dubbed Cocaine Import Agency, is the biggest drug dealer on the planet, here.

As fiscal and economic woes pile up in America, most Americans remain absolutely clueless as to what is really going on and what their government actually does.

The US Globalized Military Dictatorship Strangling the Planet with Nukes and Military Bases

Most Americans believe that the US Military exists to defend America. That assumption is no longer true, hasn't been true in decades and in fact may never have been true. The modern US Military exists for one purpose only:  to become the UN's Global Governance Military. The taxpayers of the broke and bankrupt nation of America fund the endless wars for resource control, ruthless militarized people control and a globalized tyranny, all on behalf of the New World Order, defense contractors, the banksters, the corporatists and the statist elites.  Simply put, America murders for corporate profits and empire.

CBS reported that there are 700 US and/or NATO military bases in Afghanistan alone. 

The 700 Military Bases of Afghanistan

Nearly a decade after the Bush administration launched its invasion of Afghanistan, TomDispatch offers the first actual count of American, NATO, and other coalition bases there, as well as facilities used by the Afghan security forces.? Such bases range from relatively small sites like Shinwar to mega-bases that resemble small American towns.? Today, according to official sources, approximately 700 bases of every size dot the Afghan countryside, and more, like the one in Shinwar, are under construction or soon will be as part of a?base-building boom that began last year.

Existing in the shadows, rarely reported on and little talked about, this base-building program is nonetheless staggering in size and scope, and heavily dependent on supplies imported from abroad, which means that it is also extraordinarily expensive.? It has added significantly to the already long secret list of Pentagon property overseas and raises questions about just how long, after the planned beginning of a drawdown of American forces in 2011, the U.S. will still be garrisoning Afghanistan.

How many US military bases dot the planet?  Nobody really knows as some bases are quite large and many are small.  There are also numerous NATO military bases. Estimates of the number of military bases do not include the US Navy that literally operates floating military bases on the seas or the highly secretive CIA bases that are mostly used for torture, drone operations and many other clandestine operations.  The CIA bases generally operate out of the US State Department and many US consulates and US Aid offices are nothing more than CIA fronts that funnel money and arms to terrorists and radical Islamists for the purpose of regime change.  The Benghazi cover-up was a classic CIA mission and it was providing arms and money for Syrian terrorists.

The National Post (Canadian) provided a stellar infographic of US military bases around the world.

Graphic: Mapping a superpower-sized military - United Bases of America

America just isn't strangling the planet with military bases, soldiers, drone operations and CIA bases, it's also strangling the planet with nuclear weapons. Armscontrol.org discloses that America has a staggering 5,113 nuclear warheads.

Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance

China: About 240 total warheads.

France: Fewer than 300 operational warheads.

Russia: Approximately 1,499 deployed strategic warheads [1]. The Federation of American Scientists estimates Russia has another 1,022 nondeployed strategic warheads and approximately 2,000 tactical nuclear warheads. Additional thousands are awaiting dismantlement.

United Kingdom: Fewer than 160 deployed strategic warheads, total stockpile of up to 225.

United States: Approximately 5,113 nuclear warheads [2], including tactical, strategic, and nondeployed weapons. According to the latest official New START declaration, the United States deploys 1,722 strategic nuclear warheads on 806 deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers [1]. The Federation of American Scientists estimates that the United States' nondeployed strategic arsenal is approximately 2,800 warheads and the U.S. tactical nuclear arsenal numbers 500 warheads. Additional warheads are retired and await dismantlement.

How many trillions of dollars have been spent/squandered over the decades to manufacture nuclear weapons and constantly update the inventories? We don't know. However, going forward the US is planning on spending hundreds of billions on nuclear warheads according to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post.

How many nukes does it take to be safe?

The country is engaged in a costly, ambitious modernization of its nuclear weapons complex and development of a new generation of delivery systems — new strategic submarines, bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles that will be operating more than 50 years from now.

Start with the Navy’s plan for 12 new SSBN-X strategic submarines to replace the 14 Ohio-class subs now in service. A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on the program, released Dec. 10, asks whether the Navy can stay within the cost targets for their procurement ($4.9 billion each) and whether each sub should carry 16 or 20 missiles.

But shouldn’t the questions be more basic, such as who is the enemy and how many subs would be needed to deter that enemy?

There will be at least four or five warheads on each of the 16 ICBMs carried on each of the new subs. Their destructive power will be eight to more than 20 times that of the atomic bomb that all but destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

That bomb killed 45,000 men, women and children instantly. Another 19,000 died during the next four months, according to a 1946 study by the Manhattan Engineer District, which built the bomb. The majority of those killed were civilians, though Hiroshima was picked because planners saw it as a military target with army barracks and defense factories. But the bomb — its 12.5 kiloton explosive power [equal to 12,500 tons of TNT], its heat effects and radiation — went well beyond those military targets. Today’s nuclear weapons are 100 kilotons and above.

It’s agreed that nuclear weapons don’t deter terrorist groups. And if history is any guide, the more the United States and other nuclear-armed countries modernize their weapons, the more tempting it is for other countries to want nuclear arsenals.

So how many warheads does the United States need over the next 40 years to deter others?

That’s a multibillion-dollar question, and among those President Obama and his new national security team will have to wrestle with as they try to tighten Defense spending.

I have written before that it’s time to get a rational, long-range nuclear strategy because the cost of replacing the nation’s three nuclear delivery systems will top $100 billion and require another $300 billion over the next 10 years to keep them operational.

Empire and military worship are latest deities that the American people embrace and worship as evidenced by how they vote.  Republican or Democrat, American voters reliably and consistently vote for war and empire.  Even more horrifying is the fact that Americans have also sacrificed their humanity and morality which begs the question: are the American people evil?  Americans have willfully and consciously sacrificed their prosperity and liberty on the alter the the most evil and murderous gods ever to exist in human history.

But by far the worst manifestations of power transgress beyond the horrifying spectacle of the physical carnage of war because those same folks who deceptively internalized that war is noble also become its ultimate victims. Sooner or later the flag waving stops when folks realize that they have been systematically shorn of their own liberty and prosperity. The film clips of euphorically happy flag waving Germans idolizing Hitler and his evil is a stark contrast to the starving, homeless and terrified Germans in bombed out and burned out cities after Nazism was defeated. Worshiping the flag is most dangerous when folks fail to even realize what precisely the flag stands for.

For Americans, they will eventually come to the frightening realization that they put their faith and trust in a government that betrayed them as they are forced to accept that they have been nothing more than pawns on the financial chessboard of empire wherein the wealth and power of the nation has been viciously concentrated into the hands of the ruling few – defense contractors, banksters and their power brokers who delivered unto the people unemployment, economic misery, fiat currency, wars and grim futures. At this point, what does the flag stand for? Nothing but the tens of trillions poured down the scary black hole of dark nothingness and militarism gone mad as they ponder the failures of an evil debt ridden empire that bankrupted a once great, glorious, free and prosperous nation.

This is what U.S. foreign policy has delivered to America, yet we drink the poison because we lack the courage to think the unthinkable and to speak the unspeakable as we sellout out our liberty with each election and march off into totalitarian statist hell.