What you see in America is the jingoists are good at making it. Look at Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. Filthy rich. Imagine if he were the head of the EU!
Money leads to power, and often political power. And that explains George Bush. Doesn't take brains to make money from oil, but it probably takes guts. Then we have Dick Cheney=Halliburton.
When people have gamed the system for wealth, somehow find themselves with political power, all questions about their knowledge of the world should be dropped. At that point it's, "Hold onto your hats."
It should be obvious to anyone that the last administrations were masters at mismanagement, or else you're forced to take this statement from Bush literally:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91oBxESzpUk
I'd like to dig deeper into the issue, but it's a daunting task, and outside of competence. In other words, I wouldn't know where to start. Not that I knew what I was getting into with foreign policy, but by now, I've 8 months of web searching, and a huge turnover of sites until I found the best sources available. And that's STILL changing on a weekly basis.
The thought of searching for whose congressional district gets what out of the deal, how they're voting, who their campaign contributors are....
If anyone wants to pick up on that, be my guest. I'm certain it'd be illustrative of just how dirty the defence procurement system is.
Have you heard about Chas Freeman being forced out of his nomination for Chairman of the National Intelligence Council? (here and here). AIPAC got him. He was in favor of restricting settlements on the West Bank and the Two-State solution, and maybe he wasn't as hard on Iran as the AIPAC hardliners wanted. Otherwise, I guess he was well suited to the post. "It Can't Be Just About Us"--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire
