Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "The Viciously Profitable Business of War" video.

The tales about eye-popping contractor profits are always dubious. Why? BLACK/ DARK PROJECTS. One example: the SR-71 was built dark -- and hence -- cost Congress absolutely nothing. Our NSA is Dark. It costs nothing in most public accounts. If any contractor REALLY gouges the DoD the law requires it to be clawed back. Such issues were what HST (Senator) was doing during WWII. His numbers WERE eye-popping. The Manhattan Project was Dark. Hence the atomic bombs cost absolutely nothing -- in the public record. Similar antics occur in every branch of the DoD. The cost of the M1 tank EXPLODED once it was assured of Congressional passage. What was happening was Dark Funding was being shifted to this High Dollar account. The last minute price bump? over a million bucks a tank. The insane prices for aircraft carriers = Dark Funding. The total dark funding in any given budge year is astounding... easily $100,000,000,000 per year. You might note that Wall Street is aware of all of this -- and refuses to bid up defense contractors. Whereas Googlel/Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and most media -- get bid to the Moon. During the Vietnam War, Avon Products had a higher capitalization than the top five defense contractors. Heh. Lipstick was where the profit was. Heh.
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The WORST tales occur when a given anything is locally sourced. Non-Americans look upon the DoD as an infinite bank that needs looting. And in the Third World, graft and payoffs are part of the culture. The US has found that it's very often drastically cheaper to buy off the locals -- essentially protection money. The CIA did that in the early daze of Afghanistan. When this or that Northern Alliance tribe decided to flip sides -- they were famously introduced to a one-ton smart bomb -- in seconds. The rest of the boys quickly decided to stay 'loyal.' Famously, Bush allowed the Pakistani dictator to retrieve his anti-American fanatics by plane just ahead of our occupation of Kabul. This connection was made all too obvious in 2011 when bin Laden was neutralized just down the road from 'Pakistan's West Point.' And then, there's the obvious Saudi Connection.
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