So who does benefit from all this war stuff?

Now that the US has pretty much admitted that there were no WMDs and thus Iraq posed no threat to the US or the UK, and as it quietly emerges that the current scapegoat – the intelligence services – believed Iraq posed little threat. We’re left with the big question: why did the US and UK bother?

Cicero argued that to know this you have to look at who profits. And who has profited? The vice-president’s last company Halliburton certainly did – a no-bid, no cost limit, open-ended government contract is the corporate equivalent of a blank cheque. Bechtel, International American products, Perini Corp., Contrack, Fluor, Washington Group International, Research Triangle Institute and Creative Associates International Inc have all won big out of Iraq and Afghanistan. You can see the scope of the Iraqi contracts’ pork barrel at the Center for Public Integrity.

But Iraqi contracts aren’t the only pork barrel in town. The Department of Defense is the largest employer in the US, with more employees than ExxonMobil, Ford, General Motors and GE put together.The US military has a rather larger budget than usual this year too — which is great news for all those companies that supply it.

The Iraqis of course have freedom now – and at the low cost of 8,000 — 10,000 civilian deaths.