The One Trillion Dollar Question: “Blow up the Planet”, “Bankrupt the Country”
“Blowing up the Planet” through the use of “peace-making nuclear bombs” is a money making undertaking, a corporate bonanza for what Eisenhower called “the military industrial complex”: “All three legs of the “nuclear triad” must receive considerable investments to ensure their long-term viability” (Adm. Haney, op cit).
The expenditure is for a 30-year program to “modernize” the US nuclear arsenal and production facilities. … This plan, which has received almost no attention by the mass media, includes redesigned nuclear warheads, as well as new nuclear bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons labs and production plants. The estimated cost? $1,000,000,000,000.00 — or, for those readers unfamiliar with such lofty figures, $1 trillion.
Critics charge that the expenditure of this staggering sum will either bankrupt the country or, at the least, require massive cutbacks in funding for other federal government programs. (Prof. Lawrence S. Wittner, The History News Network)
Hillary Clinton –whose election campaign is also supported by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman et al favors the first strike use of nuclear weapons:
… “the nuclear option should not at all be taken off the table. That has been my position consistently.” (ABC News, December 15, 2015)
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” (ABC “Good Morning America.”, quoted by Reuters, April 22, 2008 during 2008 presidential election campaign)
The World is at a dangerous crossroads. A new arms race has been launched. It’s planning horizon is thirty years. The money allocated by the US federal government to the development of America’s pre-emptive nuclear war arsenal is of the order of one trillion dollars, that is the preliminary estimate, an astronomical amount (which could be increased