Editor, OBSERVER:
Your columnist Paul Christopher and I have to live on different planets or one of us has a cognitive disorder.
In his Sept. 5 column he writes that the military industrial complex is driving the economy? Huh? I remember Vietnam. My father worked in the steel plant. In the '60s he could work all the doubles he wanted, worked till he dropped.
If we jump ahead to the first Gulf war I have some interesting facts. I made medical adhesives for the operating rooms. Everything that was peeled open in the rooms had my adhesive or a derivative on it. A huge spike in orders was seen in anticipation of large casualties. That did not happen.
Same again with the second Bush. The only adhesive that spiked was the one for bulletproof vests.
What weapons are we building? Drones and smart bombs? They are low cost. A hit virtually everytime. I believe it is entitlements driving the economy now. Look at Exxon, it is willing to risk doing business with Russia's Vladmir Putin rather than President Obama.
So much for the mighty oil companies. We really never had a military industrial complex till after World War II. If I remember we had to as the commies were developing weapons and did not like us. Since half the population does not pay income taxes and 5 percent pay 60 percent, something is wrong and it is not the military industrial complex.
We do not even have a space program any more.
TOM BATORSKI,
Angola
