The rest - all of it - the carrier battle groups, the scores of air wings, the dozens of bases, the tens of thousands of tanks, the hundreds of thousands of soldiers stationed all over the world - it's really all about projecting power - that is, about war - on others. Who have done nothing to us, other than resist American hegemony, or otherwise behave uncooperatively. All for the sake of the profits of the military industrial cartel.

And just like the old Soviet Union, it is going to be the end of this country. It is killing us economically - and ruining us morally. We have become a pariah state - rightly hated the world over for our arrogance, our casual violence toward any who refuse to kowtow to our "interests."

We have reduced ourselves to a state that would be considered criminal under the same Nuremburg standards that were applied to hang Nazi war criminals: our president claims the right to commit extrajudicial murder. We torture people openly, as a matter of state policy. We nacht und nable them to "undisclosed locations" to practice "enhanced interrogation." We erect places of horror such as Abu Ghraib; we machine-gun helpless people from helicopters & laugh about it; we blow up farmers with UAVs & don't bat an eye. We kill anyone we like, just because we can. There are no repercussions. The My Lais that happen today are dismissed as collateral damage, unavoidable. The fight for freedom goes on. Those who try to tell the world about our crimes are treated as if they are the criminals, for daring to question the policies of the Imperium.

We regard ourselves as above the law - because we are America and we love freedom.

We have a burgeoning police state that no one seems to care very much about - everything from random, warrantless stop-and-frisks to much worse besides - because you cannot embrace tyranny abroad without becoming tyrannical at home, too.

Our 'Defense" Industry: The Great Untouchable