That there is a “terror industrial complex” shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, though the story of Colin Powell referring to it in an interview seems to have slipped by all the MSM.
From The Raw Story:
When MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann welcomed three former members of Monty Python to Countdown on Wednesday, his biggest surprise was a question from Terry Gilliam, “How come that Colin Powell interview about the terror-industrial complex didn’t become a bigger story?”Olbermann was taken aback by the question, but by the next day he had uncovered Powell’s September 12, 2007 interview with GQ Magazine. Powell’s apology in that interview for his use of faulty intelligence prior to the Iraq War grabbed the headlines at the time, but he also delivered a far less-noticed warning against what Olbermann now calls “an entire aspect of the nexus of politics and terror.”
Naomi Klein talks about this at the end of her book “The Shock Doctrine“. She refers to it as “disaster capitalism complex”, and she talks specifically about the move towards “homeland security”, private armies, etc.. towards the end as the wave of the future, and the opportunity presented for these corporations with this endless “War on Terror”. She talked about “losing the peace incentive”.
What incentive is there for peace when there is so much money [profits] to be made, and power to be had… It’s big business, the wave of the future, and it’s booming. In fact, there is no real incentive for people to NOT be ‘terrorized’.. Peace is bad for business.
“How come that Colin Powell interview about the terror-industrial complex didn’t become a bigger story?”
Because the MSM were complicit in the enablimg of the terror-industrial complex, and so for that matter was Powell.
Powell could not have presented a better ad for the mercenary industry than if they paid Frank Luntz, Saatch&Saatchi and the Rendon group to put together his UN dogs-of-war-four-ponies-of-the apocalypse-show.
As a General and as Sec. State he knew damn well about the massive increase in contracts to mercenary security organizations in Iraq and in the US—if he didn’t then he was incompetent.
The MSM were undoubtedly instructed to call the military mercenaries “contractors” and they of course obeyed.
For every 100 mentions of Iraq troop levels there’d be 1 mention of the number of “contractors” (I’m guessing of course).
The MSM has reported on individual “contractors” but I can’t recall anyone ever noting how many from the industrial-terror complex were, and still are, employed by the US.
The MSM simply isn’t interested in connecting significant dots and drawing significant conclusions. Research is an overhead, not a profit center. Loud opinion has replaced actual analysis, distraction has replaced news.
As for Powell, it’s fucking typical of him. “I feel kinda bad about playing such an important part in enabling an illegal war with claims I knew were bullshit but sold anyway like Billy Mays, so I’ll just crib off Eisenhower, 4 years too-late, to make myself seem sage instead of being a spineless apparatchik whose biggest concern has always been to ensure I’d be a 4- star general with a comfy retirement package”
And 5thstate, these privately owned military mercenary corporations have no loyalties. For the right price, even YOU can have your own private army.. /snark
we are on the brink of a major change. There are corporations that have more money than many governments. They want a say in how the world is run. And they have found their voice. Private armies are coming back, the days of the warlords are returning.
There will never be another world war, we are coming into the age of corporate wars. Look at what we have for a government. The most advanced country on the globe is leading the way in corporatocracy. Political government is so 19th century.