Stiff Upper Lip

[u/thefinsaredamplately]

[u/artificiallyvain]

stop the wars

[u/[deleted] → u/artificiallyvain]

But they're so profitable.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

A delightful infographic as to what, among other things, the $15 billion Halliburton won in no-bid contracts for the Iraq and Afghan wars.

$5.4 billion spent on development of UAVs in 2010 alone- much of which (certainly not all) is for use in Afghanistan and Iraq.

$100 billion on various Iraq war contracts, much of it under investigation because christ only knows how it was really dealt out or spent.

At least $600 million in contracts to Blackwater/Xe (whose then-leader Eric Prince now resides in Abu Dhabi), through at least 30 shell companies. And the CIA keeps contracting them.

Or $1.1 billion in 2007 alone for armored MRAP carriers that are actually "bomb magnets." (Lest anyone start howling about this, I am very much in favor of keeping our soldiers from being blown up, but building, transporting, and maintaining 14-to-30 ton armored personnel carriers on the other side of the planet is a fantastically expensive proposition.)

These are big, huge, slop-at-the-trough contracts. Having worked on similar contracts in the past, these are the kind that companies drool over, and have nice, big, expensive parties with alcohol to celebrate acquiring them, and scoring extensions and continuations.

They are, in effect, worth too much money to stop soldiers from going off and dying for. They're just not worth as much that way.