War and Terror Inc.

"Take Viktor Bout, a Russian air-transport magnate and the world's premier gray- market arms provider. Every year, warlords, gangsters, militiamen and terrorists kill tens of thousands of people in wars that are only sporadically reported to the outside world. They do their butchery using weapons obtained and delivered, to all sides of these conflicts, by Bout and his ilk. These are the real weapons of mass destruction in the post-Cold War world, taking lives and shattering communities from the slums of Baghdad to the jungles of Colombia, from the streets of Beirut to the impoverished diamond-mining hamlets of West Africa."

The invisible merchant of war, gaining wealth in the midst of blood and tears. A 21st century "entrepreneur" is taking the full advantage of partisan world's lack of remorse.

The Marine Corps has a saying: "If you want it bad, you get it bad." With Bout and his ilk, we are getting the worst by allowing him to prosper under the illusion that he is a necessary evil. Ask the amputees in Sierra Leone, the child soldiers in Congo and the abused women of Taliban-era Afghanistan what the true cost is."

Ask the countless other dispossessed refugees from brutal wars, and go and see marked and unmarked graves in near and distant places to see the effects of "a necessary evil" illusion. For many this "illusion" is the harshest reality paid by endless miseries and gruesome deaths.

The Washington Post Article Link:
War and Terror Inc.