{"id":31394,"date":"2013-04-07T08:22:55","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T07:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=31394"},"modified":"2013-04-07T09:41:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-07T08:41:00","slug":"how-the-pentagons-military-industial-complex-corrupted-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/how-the-pentagons-military-industial-complex-corrupted-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Pentagon&#8217;s Military Industrial Complex Corrupted Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>tomdispatch.com<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-31395\" alt=\"Corruption-in-Afghanistan\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Corruption-in-Afghanistan.jpg\" width=\"360\" height=\"235\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Corruption-in-Afghanistan.jpg 360w, https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Corruption-in-Afghanistan-75x49.jpg 75w, https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Corruption-in-Afghanistan-150x98.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>America\u2019s post-9\/11 conflicts have been wars of corruption, a point surprisingly seldom made in the mainstream media. Keep in mind that George W. Bush\u2019s administration was a monster of privatization. It had its own set of crony corporations, including\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/175036\/chatterjee_inheriting_halliburton's_army\" target=\"_blank\">Halliburton<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2005\/07\/05\/AR2005070501655.html\" target=\"_blank\">KBR<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/news\/article\/Bechtel-pulling-out-after-3-rough-years-of-2486307.php\" target=\"_blank\">Bechtel<\/a>, and various oil companies, as well as a set of mercenary rent-a-gun\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/10\/07\/AR2007100701212.html\" target=\"_blank\">outfits like<\/a>\u00a0Blackwater, DynCorp, and Triple Canopy that came into their own in this period.<\/p>\n<p>It took the plunge into Iraq in March 2003, sweeping those corporations and an increasingly privatized military in with it. In the process, Iraq would become an example not of the free market system, but of a particularly venal form of crony capitalism (or, as Naomi Klein has labeled it, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0312427999\/ref=nosim\/?tag=tomdispatch-20\" target=\"_blank\">disaster capitalism<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>Add in another factor: in the wake of the 9\/11 attacks, the Bush administration began pouring money into the Pentagon, into, that is, an organization whose budget has never been able to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/blog\/175431\/\" target=\"_blank\">pass an audit<\/a>. There was so staggeringly much money to throw around then &#8212; and hubris to spare as well.<\/p>\n<p>Among the first acts of L. Paul Bremer III, the new American proconsul in Baghdad, was the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/03\/17\/world\/middleeast\/17bremer.html\" target=\"_blank\">disbanding<\/a>\u00a0of Saddam Hussein\u2019s army (creating an unemployed potential insurgent class) and the closing down of a whole range of state enterprises along with the privatization of the economy (creating their unemployed foot soldiers).<\/p>\n<p>All of this, in turn, paved the way for a bonanza of \u201creconstruction\u201d contracts granted, of course, to the administration\u2019s favorite corporations to rebuild the country. There were\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/v27\/n13\/ed-harriman\/where-has-all-the-money-gone\" target=\"_blank\">slush funds<\/a>\u00a0aplenty; money went missing without anyone blinking; and American occupation officials reportedly \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fpif.org\/articles\/americas_other_dark_legacy_in_iraq\" target=\"_blank\">systematically looted<\/a>\u201d Iraqi funds.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/blog\/175677\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s post-9\/11 conflicts have been wars of corruption, a point surprisingly seldom made in the mainstream media. Keep in mind that George W. Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s administration was a monster of privatization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[71],"class_list":{"0":"post-31394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news","8":"category-war-terrorism","9":"tag-afghanistan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}