War In The Balkans - Biggest Weapons Bonanza Since Reagan

By Martin McLaughlin www.wsws.org 5-22-99

Congress approved a $15.1 billion supplementary spending bill for the war in the Balkans and other Pentagon operations Thursday, providing the down payment on what is now expected to be the biggest bonanza for the US weapons industry since the boom years of the Reagan administration.

The emergency legislation passed both houses of Congress after the Senate voted 70-30 to suspend budget restrictions on the new spending, against the opposition of conservative Republicans who wanted to cut domestic spending dollar for dollar to pay for the military expansion.

The $15.1 billion is more than double the $5.9 billion originally requested by the Clinton administration and the Pentagon to pay for the costs of the war and the operation of camps for the Kosovar Albanian refugees through the end of September. Congressional Republicans added bills for additional Pentagon spending, including $1.8 billion to move a pay raise for US soldiers from 2000 to 1999, military aid to Jordan, and emergency use of US troops in the recovery effort from Hurricane Mitch in Central America.

The bill passed the House Tuesday by a vote of 269-158. The Senate approved it Thursday by 64-36, with clear majorities of both parties, 32-23 among Republicans, 32-13 among Democrats. The increase in Pentagon funding is to be paid for out of budget surpluses supposedly set aside for Social Security. In addition, the House voted to partially cover the cost of the measure by eliminating more than $2 billion in social spending, including $1.2 billion in unspent food stamp funds and $350 million from the Section 8 low-income housing program.

The war in the Balkans has already proved a windfall for companies like Boeing and Raytheon, which make cruise missiles (average price $1.5 million) and other high-tech weapons being expended by Air Force and Navy planes at a rapid rate. Even better are the prospects for makers of "dumb bombs, which have not been used at all since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but are now being dropped by the thousands onto Yugoslavia.

In a lengthy article on the front page of its business section May 20, the New York Times pointed to the impact of the war on the financial fortunes of big defense contractors: "Most of the transports, weapons and ordnance now in use in Kosovo is equipment no longer actively produced"including the C-5 transport plane, the B-2 bomber and the Tomahawk cruise missile. So the need for new generations of matiriel, and the money to pay for it, represents the best business opportunity in years for military contractors.

The most hotly contested contract will be the new Joint Strike Fighter to replace the F-16, made by Lockheed, which is out of production. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are the two bidders for what could be $50 billion or more in business, depending on how many of the NATO countries decide to buy the plane, and whether the Pentagon authorizes its sale to such US client states as Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In January Clinton announced the biggest increase in US military spending since the end of the Cold War, $112 billion spread across the next five years, bringing the total Pentagon budget to $319 billion by 2005. This does not include Energy Department spending on the production and maintenance of nuclear warheads. Weapons procurement will jump from $44 billion in Fiscal Year 1999 to $53 billion and $60 billion in the next two years.

While congressional Republicans have always been rabidly committed to the arms industry, House and Senate Democrats have shifted in that direction as well. "Kosovo has definitely changed things here on defense spending issues, said Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) head of the procurement subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. "Folks who used to vote to cut defense massively are now voting to deploy our military more and more.

Even before Kosovo the Clinton administration made far more extensive use of the American military than its predecessors, dispatching American troops into foreign operations nearly 50 times in the past six years, compared to 14 military engagements under the Bush administration.

This has greatly increased the wear and tear on equipment, creating a backlog in orders which is now hitting the defense industry. Daniel Burnham, head of Raytheon, maker of the Tomahawk cruise missile, told the Times, "Kosovo underscores what the industry has been saying"that we need to get a sustainable rate of spending. "We need to get $60 billion in weapons outlays. We are now on that path. And we are getting there faster than we first thought.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 24, 1999

Answers

"50 times in the past six years, compared to 14 military engagements under the Bush administration."

Did you see that No Spam???

Still think the 8:33 ratio is bogus???

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 24, 1999.

Andy,

>Still think the 8:33 ratio is bogus???

Of course it was, and is, bogus.

You have never yet documented the 8:33 claim by posting a list of the 8 or the 33, or by showing us that the same definition was used on both sides of the ratio, have you?

Did you notice, Andy, that the "14 military engagements under the Bush administration" claim is not compatible with your claim that there were only 8 U.S. military interventions between WW2 and the Clinton administration? Hmmm? Did you?

- - - - -

Folks,

Once again, Andy's posting shows how he doesn't really care about getting the facts straight in his anti-Clinton attacks.

Ask him if he can list the "8", the "33", the "14" or the "50". Ask him if he actually cares one fig about the factual accuracy of a statement as long as he can attack Clinton with it.

Remember: Andy wants you not to vote in state or national elections. He posted that request in this very forum not too long ago.

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), May 24, 1999.

You have never yet documented the 8:33 claim by posting a list of the 8 or the 33, or by showing us that the same definition was used on both sides of the ratio, have you?

Did you notice, Andy, that the "14 military engagements under the Bush administration" claim is not compatible with your claim that there were only 8 U.S. military interventions between WW2 and the Clinton administration? Hmmm? Did you?

[yes I did no spam but it tends to prove my contenetion is correct about Clinton doesn't it ... i.e. 50 "excursions" - now fifty is bloody high by anyones's standards doncha think - no wonder the USA doesn't have many friends...]

Folks,

Once again, Andy's posting shows how he doesn't really care about getting the facts straight in his anti-Clinton attacks.

[not true meerkat merely pointing out the galringly obvious, something which seems to zoom over your cranium with great regularity - now it's the 14:50 ratio, remarkably similar to the 8:33 n'est-ce pas my little chickadee...]

Ask him if he can list the "8", the "33", the "14" or the "50". Ask him if he actually cares one fig about the factual accuracy of a statement as long as he can attack Clinton with it.

Remember: Andy wants you not to vote in state or national elections. He posted that request in this very forum not too long ago.

[ok when did I post that request and in what context MK???]

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 24, 1999.

As of 1988 (yes, over 10 years ago) and excluding world wars and expeditions to supress piracy or slave trade, the U.S. has made armed invasions or interventions in other countries on more than 130 separate occasions, inlcuind China (on 18 separate occasions), Mexico (13), Nicaragua and Panama (9 each), Honduras (7), Columbia and Turkey (6 each), the Dominican Republic, Korea and Japan (5 each), Argentina, Cuba, Haiti, the Kingdom of Hawai'i and Samoa (4 each), Uraguay and Fiji (3 each), Guatemala, Lebanon, the Soviet Union and Sumatra (2 each), Grenada, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Chile, Morocco, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Syria, Iraq, Peru, Formosa, the Phillipines, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (1 each).

Most of these incursions were obviously small scale.

This list is based on the House Armed Services Committee's reports and reproduced in several books by Carl Sagan.

-- JX (JXD29@hotmail.com), May 24, 1999.

JX (JXD29@hotmail.com),

For purposes of comparison to the supposed 8:33 ratio of post-WW2-until-Clinton:Clinton military interventions that Andy keeps championing but which neither Andy nor Geoff Metcalf (author of the original article) has yet documented, will you please provide more details:

(A) What are the definitions of "armed invasions or interventions in other countries" and "separate occasions" as used in your statement?

(B) How many of the occasions on your list occurred after World War 2? Will you please list or itemize the post-WW2 occasions separately for us?

(C) Will you please list specific references to the House Armed Services Committee's reports and to at least one of the Carl Sagan books?

Thanks.

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), May 24, 1999.

Thank you JX.

get the picture now mk?

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 24, 1999.

Andy,

Do you, or do you not, admit that you requested forum readers to boycott (U.S.) state and national elections?

Let's have a straight, non-weaselly answer from you before I post proof.

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), May 24, 1999.

... and while we're at it,

Andy, what is your citizenship and U.S. residency status?

Are you qualified and registered to vote in any level of election in the U.S.?

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), May 24, 1999.

I may have said the same - please post it to refresh my memory. getting a bit personal aren't we??? 6 year legal resident, contemplating citizenship in (ha!) 2000. Then I can vote for Ross Perot :)

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 24, 1999.

Andy,

In forum thread Lies at http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000kre the last paragraph of your first posting in the Answers section is:

We need to stop looking to politicians for answers and start organizing ourselves in our own communities to build local economies and organizations which can operate outside this manipulation. A good statement of intent, in my view, would be a mass-boycott of all state and national elections. To vote under present circumstances is to give credence to a system that is designed to control us and not to set us free. By refusing to vote and have any part in it, we can show how we feel. We can say to the manipulators: " We know what you are doing and the game is up. We will no longer be manipulated into supporting and maintaining the one-party state and a one-party world."

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), May 25, 1999.

Thank you No Spam, (aka Mere cat),

you have just reminded me of a great thread. Thanks.

This is my take on voting. I think voting is a GOOD thing. In principal.

However I've just turned 41 and I now believe that we have all been failed by those whom we vote for. This is an understatement.

E.g.

If I was back in England I would most definitely have voted for Blair at the last election. Dano recently said he voted for Clinton. I used to support Clinton, when I was back in England, I soaked in all the blurb. I now know better.

So I stand by what I said on the thread. Is that so bad? - to come to the conclusion that you are being sailed down the river towards the Niagra Falls?

On the military adventurous excursions - that is not really my bag, I take an interest and I know your family is big in those circles and you do too. I admire you sticking this out and demanding clarification. I will get it if I can - however I am totally satisfied in my own mind that I am right about Clinton. I know you have the sort of mind that needs finality on issues such as these, so my guess is that your silence in posting the true facts support my contention about these two ratios.

Which are remarkably similar. Even to a dolt.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 25, 1999.

Andy,

>I admire you sticking this out and demanding clarification.

Cute rhetorical trick.

What I am doing, as you know, is demonstrating to other readers that you have no factual basis for either the 8:33 or the 14:50 ratios. They are both bogus.

You continue to show yourself unable to support either claim with verifiable detail. And you will continue and continue to do so because (a) neither ratio has a basis in reality and (b) you are unable to admit that you are wrong about them.

>I will get it if I can

Weaselly qualification, Andy. You know very well that you can't.

>- however I am totally satisfied in my own mind that I am right about Clinton.

... and you don't need any facts to determine that, do you?

>I know you have the sort of mind that needs finality on issues such as these,

[Folks, notice that Andy again uses a rhetorical trick to try to mislead the reader. He pretends that my complaint about his false claims is a matter of wanting finality instead of what it really is -- demonstration of the falsity of the claims.]

>so my guess is that your silence in posting the true facts

[Folks, here we have a just-plain-lie. I have posted specific facts showing that the claim about the 8:33 ratio is false, and Andy's been reminded of that in the recent past.]

>support my contention about these two ratios.

Yet another rhetorical trick, in which you attempt to use a supposed absence of data [but, as noted above, I _did_ post data, so there's no such absence] as evidence to support a false statement.

Andy, why don't you just admit that these claims about the 8:33 and 14:50 ratios have no factual basis? You have lots and lots of negative accusations about Clinton that have more basis in reality than these, so why damage your credibility on those [heh] by clinging to these so-obviously-and-plainly false accusations?

Anyone familiar with the Vietnam era can plainly see that the involvement of U.S. military force in that one alone far exceeded the total of both the Clinton and Bush administrations' military involvements. This single example alone clearly refutes your assertion that somehow the Clinton administration has out-militarized all other post-World-War-Two administrations by a 33:8 ratio. Why not just admit that?

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), May 25, 1999.

No Spam,

the simple reason you are not posting YOUR figures is that they support MY figures.

that is quite evident.

you have had ample opportunities to do so and you haven't, therfore these figures that I have quoted from reputable sources stand as valid.

put up or shut up.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 25, 1999.

Andy>put up or shut up.

Folks,

Notice that, just as when Andy posted this same challenging phrase to me on an earlier occasion, _I had already met his challenge (by having already "put up") before Andy even posted it_.

I (a) _have already "put up"_, and (b) _have already pointed that out to Andy_, in the posting I made to this thread just above this one.

- - - - -

Andy,

Please read my preceding posting _carefully_ again, Andy. I wrote, "I have posted specific facts showing that the claim about the 8:33 ratio is false, and Andy's been reminded of that in the recent past"

What part of that is unclear?

Have you already forgotten that I posted refuting data on thread A David Icke link for Spidey at http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000gFD ??

Andy>the simple reason you are not posting YOUR figures is that they support MY figures.

Wrong: (1) I have already posted figures. (2) They refute your 8:33 claim.

Andy>that is quite evident.

This is either the Big Lie technique, the result of a recent stroke impairing your ability to read and comprehend what I posted, or laziness.

Andy>you have had ample opportunities to do so and you haven't,

Yes, I have. On April 3, 1999. Look at the thread, Andy. Or are you afraid to see what I posted 53 days ago?

Andy>therfore these figures that I have quoted from reputable sources stand as valid.

(A) Those sources are not reputable.

(B) Those figures are not valid. My Vietnam example alone refutes them. So does my April 3 posting.

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), May 26, 1999.