Never overlook the aspect of money as a motivating factor in political decisions. Let's take just one example. Dick Cheney, (he's still the vice president even if you don't see much of him) was CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000.
Halliburton, through it's French subsidiaries, did $73 million dollars in business with Iraq in the late 1990's. Chainey publicly denied any sales by his company or subsideraries to Iraq on ABC. Although completley legal the public denial by Cheney and the undermining of the spirit of the Iraq embargo are quite ironic:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/6/24/80648.shtml
Hallerburton already has contracts to clean up the oil fields after the Iraqi war and is lined up to recieve an even bigger slice of the post war Iraq pie:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030310/pl_nm/iraq_construction_dc_2
This is a Reuters article (July 22 2002) on Halliburton's recent government contract award to build more prison cells at our Cuban military base in Guantanamo Bay:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0727-02.htm
Side commentary:
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I believe the basic human rights afforded to US Citizens should be afforded to any we deam terrorists. How can we go about declaring human rights abuse in other nations when we detain world citizens at OUR MILITARY BASE IN COMMUNIST CUBA?:
Although we should pursue alQaeda with aggression, I believe America has been known as a country high moral integrity with laws protecting the rights of individuals. By denying rights to some we set a dangerous precident to the world. This precident states, "Human and Civil rights are for United States citizens only.". This is a double standard that should not be allowed.
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Dick Cheney and Halliburton represent only one example of how the military-industrial complex works.
People of money and power wrap themselves in the flag so as to let emotion overshadow the obvious. The obvious being that money is their motivation and patriotism is their shield.