Ike Eisenhower warned us about the Military Industrial Complex in his farewell speech back in 1960. Was his warning merely the baseless, paranoid rant of a senile old man?

He had once been a five star general, Chief of Staff over every branch of our armed forces, as well as its Commander in Chief and our President for the previous eight years before he made that famous speech.

Maybe, just maybe, he was speaking from experience. He knew that certain people made huge profits from the wars in our past, and he saw these same entities drooling over new conflicts to come.

Another famous high ranking American military general had come to the same conclusion twenty five years before this speech. Major General Smedley Butler, one of our most decorated war heroes, wrote an expose titled, 'War is a Racket', back in the mid-thirties.

He's quoted as saying, 'I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.'

He also listed the huge profits various industries made during World War I as opposed to their peacetime profits, and stated accurately that 'War makes millionaires into billionaires'.

After Eisenhower left office, JFK was murdered and LBJ escalated the war in Vietnam. In hind-sight we can see that the war in Vietnam had strange limitations, limitations that made it impossible for our military to ever achieve a final victory.

That's strange, don't you think?

LBJ, the Secretary of Defense, McNamara, and all of our military leaders, for some reason made hundreds of policy decisions that made victory impossible. Why would they do that?

It took eight years, almost 60,000 American lives, and almost a million Vietnamese lives, before anti-war protests and President Nixon finally put an end to that insanity.

Once again, just like Butler described and Eisenhower warned us, millionaires were made into billionaires.

All these years later, and the war mongering has not stopped. Our politicians, both Democrats and Republicans are all puppets of the military industrial complex, and big industry in general. We've seen it by their actions time and time again.

Monsanto was just given a free pass to do whatever they wish without fear of prosecution by the FDA by a law that was introduced ANONYMOUSLY by a member of congress. How can a bill be sponsored anonymously? Does this not seem contrary to everything democratic?

The fact is that things like this happen all the time. Congress cannot be regulated by any other entity. They regulate themselves. They give themselves raises and they answer to no one but themselves.

This has led to a runaway train of taxing, spending and courting special interests for self-interests.

Congress is a ruling class with no term limits, and, therefore, no incentive at all to make responsible decisions.

Congress, with it's good ol' boy policies, weed out any 'good politicians', the ones who won't play ball, and indoctrinate the ones who will 'play ball', welcoming them into a system of back room deals and financial compensation from lobbyists.

It's the same as it has always been. Nothing has changed.

The greed of the few, over-rules and subjugates the needs and well-being of the many. That is the creed of our Congress, and that is what will destroy our country.