Grand Theft Pentagon: by Jeffrey St. Clair

Grand Theft Pentagon: by Jeffrey St. Clair:

Grand Theft Pentagon tells the scandalous story of how some of the world's mightiest and must ruthless corporations exploited the tragic events of 9/11 to make billions upon billions in the form of government contracts with the connivance of the Bush administration.

In a riveting work of investigative reporting, Jeffrey St. Clair shines a merciless searchlight into some of the murkiest corners of the Pentagon, exposing the sweatheart deals between the defense department and its favorite coterie contractors: Boeing, Bechtel, Halliburton and the Carlyle Group.

Among the many explosive revelations in Grand Theft Pentagon is a first--hand account from an emissary to Afghanistan of how the Bush administration refused an offer by the Taliban to turn over Osama Bin Laden and his top leadership.

They wanted total war instead. First on Afghanistan, then Iraq. In shocking detail, St. Clair unveils how the Bush administration hired a team of marketing and PR executives to sell their fraudulent war claims to a panic--striken public, a complicit congress engorged with arms PAC money and a gullible national press corps. Here you will find scathing portraits of the enablers of this corrupt system----

From George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, to Senators Ted Stevens and the pseudo--maverick John McCain---- and the war profiteers themselves, from DynCorp and Lockheed to the devious machinations of the RAND, Corp and Magnequench, the missile company that outsourced its work to China.

In the wake of 9/11, the Pentagon was handed a blank check, which it used to resurrect some of the most baroque relics of the Cold War, from the B--2 steath bomber and the F--22 fighter to the most fanciful of all boondoggles, the $80 billion Star Wars missile defense system. In this hard--hitting exposé, St. Clair shows, through the use of the Pentagon's own damning internal documents, that none of these big ticket weapons systems are needed and that none of them has ever worked as advertised. Indeed, these destabilizing arms programs have backfired, hurling the nation to the brink of bankruptcy and sparking a new global arms race.

From the war room at the White House to the board room of Halliburton, Grand Theft Pentagon is a harrowing trip through the new imperial order, where the weapons companies make a killing, while the citizens of the world cower under the shadow of perpetual war.