Sorry, I was trying to shorten this more before posting ...

I disagree that the MIC isn't a significant part of our current difficulties. First off, there was a strong incentive to rely expensive technological approaches to intelligence gathering … that led to our underestimating the capabilities of Al Qaeda.

If you add to the end of my quote you cited, “… instead of the stuff we really need”, then you’ve just given an example of what I was talking about. It’s pretty far off from the MIC choosing enemies for us and marshalling their allies to make us fight to pad their bottom line.

The GE/NBC connection is the most obvious example but I'm sure that the boardrooms of all those related industries have a bit of an incestuous feel to them.

One of the more incestuous aspects of these boards is the presence of institutional investors like CALPERS and TIAA-CREF, and private equity firms ... but so far no one has seen fit to include them in the MIC ...

I said I was sympathetic to the MIC narrative, esp how we needed to be vigilant. Connections between these sectors (though Eisenhower wasn’t imagining the media at the time; maybe that’s one of the parts I suggested needed to be updated) is one reason to be especially vigilant.

In fact, I think we should be vigilant enough not to stop where we usually do, with hints about how those connections might work in the dark shroud of the ‘complex’, but to trace the processes as they actually work, within the actual dynamics that they operate in, so that we can be vigilant about them. Motive, means, opportunity, right?

The reason I’m a skeptic about our occasional catch-all reference to the MIC is that what we speculate about sometimes just doesn’t fit. To use your example, GE is a conglomerate with multiple lines of multibillion dollar business, including manufacturing, defense, industrial distribution, finance, etc. The financial performance of NBC is a concern, as is that of the defense business, but the dynamics between them, between management and between them and outside entities, are extremely complex. And the dynamics matter. The devil is always in the details.

The incentives as understood by the business are not the same as the way we talk about them; stock price (and bonuses) are not directly related to how many GE-90 engines come out of one part of the defense business, nor is there a direct connection between going to war and selling more engines (or other product). Saying that Karl Rove forced Jack Welch to call down to NBC from his corner suite and fire a reporter because she was too critical of the administration, as someone suggested here a few threads ago, doesn’t make sense in terms of any of these dynamics. It’s too crude.

What I’m getting at is a) the way we talk about the MIC is naïve enough to invite skepticism, because b) the narrative flatly contradicts some easily discoverable information about how the various entites work, c) the likely explanation may be simpler and have a simpler fix (like internal dynamics, personalities, bad management, egos), or d) there might be an altogether different culprit, equally dangerous and nefarious, attention to which has been distracted by our fascination with an MIC ... also bad, but not the source of the one we’re looking at.

A counter-example: Did you read ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’? If not, I recommend it. Several of the examples given in his ‘confessions’ are completely coherent, resonate perfectly well with the way things work in the real world, and point to a different set of players than the MIC story would suggest; the distraction is, I’m sure, a welcome thing for them. They don't suggest plausible alternative hypothese with the ease that the MIC story does.

All of which is why I said to RMP that the other threat he mentioned is the greater one, and the more proximate cause of our having been hijacked into a stupid, ruinous, catastrophic war.

The efforts by ClearChannel to support the depletion of armament inventories is also well documented.

That one I don’t know anything about. Can you give me a decent link, or should I just google?

That's the sickness that gnaws at America's heart. That going into the military, supporting the military, that big bloated Wackenhutts (read your Smedley Butler, please) is somehow serving AMERICA.

Too many people are going into the military? That's the sickness?

The sickness gnawing at America's heart is Distraction. As in, the hawks and right wingers who do photo-ops with soldiers are the ones supporting the military, whereas the Democrats want to abandon the soldiers just when we're turning the corner, and make all their sacrifices in vain.

As in, here's a 'reasonable' bit of sophistry about why the President actually should be a Dictator. How can you argue with reason?

As in, here's another one about how torture really isn't all that bad, and why we should go ahead and do it. Unless you're one of the ones who just want to give them therapy.

As in, the Democrats have all been taken over by the Far Left Wing and are under the iron fist of MoveOn and CodePink.

As in, is Scott McClellan a traitor, a weasel, or a converted truth-teller?

As in, Obama's flag pin, Hillary's laugh: Discuss. Loudly. Over and over again.

As in, Al Jazeera: Threat or Menace?

As in, 9/11 was plotted and carried out by the government to consolidate their power, al Qaeda is just a fiction created by the government, or half a dozen other distractions we contribute to the fray. If you don't believe us, you must be one of Them.

We're the cats.

They've got the string, the flashlight, and the catnip. And they can keep it up a lot longer than we can.