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Is War still a Racket ?

category national | miscellaneous | news report author Friday March 21, 2003 13:28author by Smedley Butler

... it seems so ....

WAR IS A RACKET WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns.

Read the original:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

As relevant today as when it was written.

Related Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/white01092003.html


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