Corporations and National Security

Pentagon Spending Spree: The Wartime Opportunists on High Alert

By William D. Hartung

Despite repeated assertions by President Bush and his top advisers that their global campaign against terrorism will be a “new kind of war,” the biggest recipients of the new weapons spending sparked by the September 11 attacks will be the usual suspects: big defense contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Once emergency anti-terror funding and supplemental appropriations to finance the war in Afghanistan are taken into account, this year’s Pentagon budget could hit $375 billion, a $66 billion increase over last year. MORE>>

Too Cheap to Deter? The Nuclear Power Industry Pushes Ahead Post-9-11

By Charlie Cray

With the election of George W. Bush as president, the U.S. nuclear power lobby geared itself up for yet another attempt to revive a dying industry. Arguing that nuclear is a “clean” power source without carbon dioxide emissions, the industry sought to position itself as the remedy for global warming.

The terror attack of September 11 has not shaken the administration’s ardent support for the industry. President Bush even suggested in a late October speech that the case for nuclear was stronger after September 11, because it enhances U.S. energy self-reliance. “It is in our nation’s national interest that we develop more energy supplies at home,” he told a group of business leaders at an October 26 White House meeting. “It is in our national interest that we look at safe nuclear power.” MORE>>

The Great Game: Oil and Afghanistan

An Interview with Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid has covered the war in Afghanistan for more than 20 years. He is the author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press). He is the Central Asia correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and the Far Eastern Economic Review. MORE>>

The Corporate Tax Break Feeding Frenzy

An Interview with Nancy Watzman

Nancy Watzman is research and investigative projects director for Public Campaign, a group ìdedicated to sweeping reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of special interest money in Americaís elections and the influence of big contributors in American politics. Public Campaign has recently launched a web site, www.howdarethey.org, which highlights wartime profiteering. Watzman is the author of a November 2001 Public Campaign study, Buy Now, Save Later: Campaign Contributions and Corporate Taxation. MORE>>