Why are we in Vietnam Iraq/Syria?

Bloomberg : Syria-to-Ukraine Wars Send U.S. Defense Stocks to Records :

"Led by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world. 

President Barack Obama approved open-ended airstrikes this month while ruling out ground combat. 

 “To the extent we can shift away from relying on troops and rely more heavily on equipment -- that could present an opportunity.” [enthused a chief investment officer who oversees $66 billion including Northrop Grumman Corp. and Boeing Co.] 

Investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. also is the biggest foreign military supplier to Israel, which waged a 50-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip.

Lockheed, the world’s biggest defense company, reached an all-time high of $180.74 on Sept. 19, when Northrop, Raytheon Co.and General Dynamics Corp. also set records. That quartet and Chicago-based Boeing accounted for about $105 billion in federal contract orders last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

In its first night of airstrikes into Syria, the U.S. dropped about 200 munitions and launched 47 Raytheon-made Tomahawk cruise missiles, according to U.S. Central Command. The military also deployed Boeing’s GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munitions and Hellfire missiles from Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed, creating an opening for restocking U.S. arsenals."

Meanwhile, stop me if you've also heard this one before ... From the LA Times, yesterday :

"Iraqi news outlets reported Monday that at least 18 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in an airstrike on a town under siege by fighters from the extremist group Islamic State.  Hit’s general hospital received 18 bodies, including three women and eight children, all killed in an airstrike.  

Maj. Curtis J.  Kellogg, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said there was “no evidence” of civilian casualties in Hit."

And so it goes ...

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Outsource This! Boeing and Lockheed Martin war bling 'full of fake Chinese parts'

Telegraph : Thousands of U.S. warplanes, ships and missiles contain fake electronic components from China, leaving them open to malfunction, according to a US Senate committee.

In total, the committee said it had found more than a million fake parts had made their way into warplanes such as the Boeing C-17 transport jet and the Lockheed Martin C-130J "Super Hercules".

... each of which Canada has recently signed on to buy more of : a $1.4-billion contract for 17 Lockheed Martin C-130J-30s, and a $869-million for four Boeing C-17s.

No worries though - the Senate Armed Services Committee 'discovered' exactly this same Chinese fake parts racket back in 2005, and again in 2008, and everyone on the committee had a cow both of those times as well but nothing came of it. 

"As electronics manufacturing migrated to China, the US has been less and less able to control the quality of its military hardware. Some of the fake chips are bought by the Pentagon on the open market .... These chips are often salvaged by Chinese scrap merchants from the dumps of electronic waste that have accumulated in the south of the country "

... where they are burned off old computer circuit boards, sanded down, repainted, and voilà - the new F-35 chop shop war bling!

" 'Ello, I wish register a complaint about this plane which I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique."

" Ah yes, the F-35. Remarkable plane, the F-35, beautiful fuselage. What's wrong with it?"

"Well if you scrape away the loose paint just here, you'll see that underneath it says "Hello Kitty".

It's your own fault, said 'a former Peoples' Liberation Army officer who has become a commentator in the Chinese media' : 

"The US has been dismantling its factories since the 1960s," he said. 

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More magic pudding

Yesterday I linked to George Monbiot's article "The US missile defence system is the magic pudding that will never run out".

In it he reviews the utter military ineffectiveness of missile defence : it only works under perfect conditions against one missile at a time, and only as long as that incoming missile is not painted white and there are no balloons or bits of tin foil in the area to fool it.

The system persists, he notes, precisely because it doesn't work.

"Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries that give millions of dollars in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding that won't run out, however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work.

To keep the pudding flowing, the administration must exaggerate the threats from nations that have no means of nuking it - and ignore the likely responses of those that do."

Now that the Czech Republic and Poland are about to become pudding franchises should their parliaments approve the deals, the pudding wholesalers weigh in :

"The new system in Europe, which includes 10 interceptor rockets in Poland and a sophisticated radar complex in the Czech Republic, should cost another $4 billion over the next few years, according to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

Boeing Co, prime contractor for the U.S. ground-based missile defense system, will supply the rockets to be placed in Poland.

Lockheed Martin Corp said its system to integrate separate missile defense elements and provide a common view of the "battlespace", known as Command, Control, Battle Management and Communications (C2BMC), would play a key role in the European missile defense site.

Raytheon Co. built the powerful X-band radar now based in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, which will be moved to the Czech Republic.
Raytheon, also prime contractor for the Patriot air and missile defense system, declined comment on any project sales resulting from the Polish agreement"

Back to Monbiot : "If we seek to understand American foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government's interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at crucial stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be."

It's worth remembering that before he became PM, Harper expressed a wish to revisit Canada's position on rejecting Star Wars, while the Council of Chief Executives have always promoted membership in missile defence as merely the cost of doing business with the US.