On 2/7/07, soula avramidis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The genius of American empire is that everyone is a partner in crime.
You said it. Ironically, the state most defiant of the American empire -- Venezuela -- is also among the most dependent on the American market.
so in that fiat dollar, the us military and its ability to presume operations abroad is a principal component.
The WSJ says the Iraq War is cheap, compared to the Vietnam War: "Comparisons to Vietnam are tempting but Iraq isn't, at least yet, as costly as Vietnam, when compared to the overall economy. It's running about $100 billion a year, or about 1% of GDP. By the time it was over, Vietnam cost the equivalent of about 660 billion in today's dollars. Overall defense spending today is higher than it was during Vietnam, when adjusted for inflation, but is just about 4% of GDP" (Deborah Solomon, "How Six Years of War Didn't Strain Economy," 5 February 2006, A13). -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
