Obama Uses Bush Rhetoric To Support Military-Industrial Donors

By Steve Hynd

Glenn Greenwald has a post on Obama and his supporters' use of exactly the same rhetoric on his Afghanistan escalation as Bush and his pro-war cheerleaders used to justify Iraq. It's impossible to excerpt so just go read it. Everything old and Dubya is new again and to be given a thin gloss of "change we can believe in".

But it's worth noting who that rhetoric is being employed to aid, and it isn't you or the Afghan people.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org database, the top recipient of defense industry money in the 2008 election cycle was Barack Obama, whose haul of $1,029,997 far surpassed Republican contender Sen. John McCain's $696,948.

During the 2008 cycle, the industry contributed a total of $23.7 million to federal candidates -- far more than the $17.4 million it invested during the 2006 cycle or the $18.1 million in the 2004 cycle.

The top five defense industry contributors during the 2008 elections were Lockheed Martin at $2.5 million, Boeing at $2.1 million, Northrop Grumman at $1.8 million, and Raytheon and General Dynamics at $1.7 million each.

And it appears their investment may be paying off: The Associated Press reports that analyst Howard A. Rubel of the global investment bank Jefferies & Co. sent out a client note today stating that the fiscal 2010 Defense Department Budget will likely boost demand for precision munitions, communications gear, helicopters, armor and surveillance systems.

Among the companies whose stock Rubel rated as "Buy"? General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.

Arms stocks rose immediately when Obama was elected and rose again when Gates announced his budget plan back in April. Today, military manufacturers' stocks are still on the up.

All twelve of the S&P 500 Aerospace and Defense stocks were trading up this morning on the news that President Obama has decided to expedite the deployment of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.

Way back when, during the election camapign, I hoped that Obama wouldn't turn out to be America's Tony Blair: bought and paid for by the corporatocracy but willing to say whatever he needed to say to win votes. Unfortunately...