Terror Attacks are Great for US Arms Makers, ISIS Literally Just Sent the Bomb Business BOOMING

By Matt Agorist

“WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” – Two-time Medal of Honor recipient, Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

The United States is dropping bombs faster than the military industrial complex can manufacture them. The spike in demand for weapons of war since the attacks in Paris have sent stock prices and arms sales through the roof.

According to US officials, arms manufacturers have added shifts and hired workers, but they warn that this may not be enough to keep up with the world’s demand for weapons of mass destruction.

As the US sends tens of thousands of warheads to Saudi Arabia so they can bomb schools and hospitals in Yemen, they are placing a strain on domestic production. Since the terror attacks in Paris, American forces have increased their efforts and have begun dropping 453 bombs a day in Iraq and Syria.

Instead of realizing that the bombs and US foreign policy are the actual sources of terrorism, ignorant politicians are now fear mongering about the production of arms being too slow.

Thanks to the invasive and murderous US foreign policy, there is no shortage of ‘Islamic Extremism’ to attack in the Middle East. Not only is Saudi Arabia receiving US arms, but so are many of the other Gulf states as well as Syrian ‘rebels.’

“It’s a huge growth area for us,” said one executive with a U.S. weapons maker, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

“Everyone in the region is talking about building up supplies for five to ten years. This is going to be a long fight,” said the representative as if mass murder on a global scale is somehow something to be celebrated.

According to a recent report from Reuters, American cities are rejoicing over the new windfall, job creation and the economic benefits associated with propping up the military industrial complex.

The impact is palpable in Troy, Alabama, where Lockheed Martin Corp builds its 100-pound Hellfire air-to-ground missiles at a 3,863-acre highly secured facility surrounded by woods and horse pastures. Realtors are adding staff in anticipation of new hiring at the plant, and the large grocery chain Publix is opening a store soon.

“What’s good for Lockheed is good for Troy,” said Kathleen Sauer, president of the Pike County Chamber of Commerce, adding that the expansion was helping a local economy where unemployment rates are already among the lowest in the state.

“Look at our downtown,” she said. “Almost all the stores are open and we have more coming in.”

Sadly, the clueless politicians who are boasting about this economic growth are missing the point entirely. There is no ‘growth’ happening at all as every single dime given to the weapons manufacturers must first be stolen from the US taxpayer, either directly or through increasing the debt to the federal reserve and passing the bill on to future generations.

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Not to mention the fact that millions of innocent people are being blown to a fine red mist from these things.

As General Smedley Butler pointed out decades ago, there are incredible monetary costs associated with war, noting that it is indeed the taxpayers who fund this expansion of empire.

The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven’t paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children’s children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.

$52 billion in 1930 was a lot of money, and all of it stolen from American citizens and used by the oligarchs as investment money to turn them into billionaires. Butler was entirely correct as well. Our children’s children and their children are still being buried under a mountain of debt for war.

Sadly, this growth of the military industrial complex shows no signs of slowing. In fact, this year alone, foreign military sales approvals only, surged 36 percent to $46.6 billion in the year through September 2015 from around $34 billion a year earlier.

According to Reuters,

This year alone, the U.S. government has approved the sale of Hellfires to South Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, France, Italy and Britain. In June, the U.S. Army said it had asked Lockheed to boost production of the Hellfire from 500 per month to 650 by November.

“There are essentially waiting lists for Hellfire. They can’t make them fast enough,” said one State Department official, who asked not to be identified.

As the threat of World War III looms across the planet, the American taxpayers are being fleeced to build the weapons with which this world war will be carried out. It is sheer lunacy.

The ridiculous nature of the warfare state was recently highlighted in a video uploaded to YouTube, which shows how US-manufactured weapons are being used by both sides of the conflict in Syria. A US-made TOW missile was fired at and destroyed a US-made Humvee with a 14mm anti-aircraft machine gun mounted to the top — also Made in the USA.

Matt Agorist writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com