Want a Job? Benefits? Join the Military

Under Bush, the nation has launched the largest program of welfare for the otherwise unemployable. (And by not enforcing the laws against illegal immigrants, Bush has assured that few citizens will have any other choice than to enlist.)

Read

The Volunteer Army: Who Fights and Why?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21201

Why Kenya?

Kenya suffered in the previous century under British tyranny, why is the U.S. now involved? Demonstrating its dissatisfaction with President Mwai Kibaki's administration, the U.S. backed Kenya's political opposition, and, when they failed to win the election, supplied the arms that underlie today's atrocities. But why? Kenya has no oil and poses no economic threat to the United States. But readers of Chalmer Johnson's Nemesis will understand that the US wants an air base there (here, there and everywhere). Kibaki (sensibly) refused to allow the camel's nose in his country's tent. He wants to play hardball does he? So we give him hardball. I don't like us.

The Wages of Peace

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031708O.shtml
Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier write for The Nation: "The economic consequences of Iraq run even deeper than the squandered opportunities for vital public investments. Spending on Iraq is also a job killer. Every $1 billion spent on a combination of education, healthcare, energy conservation and infrastructure investments creates between 50 and 100 percent more jobs than the same money going to Iraq. Taking the 2007 Iraq budget of $138 billion, this means that upward of 1 million jobs were lost because the Bush Administration chose the Iraq sinkhole over public investment."