Neverending Wars (Cash Cows for Contractors)

The Federal budget for the "war on drugs" this year in 2009 is more than $22 billion. When including state and local costs, the true number exceeds $40 billion each year. In many large cities is easier for a teenager to score illegal drugs than it is to obtain alcohol. 1,200,000 people are expected to be arrested in 2009 for drug related offenses, half of which are marijuana charges.

The cost of the Iraq war is now more than $640 billion per year. Each soldier deployed costs roughly $390,000 for a year in Iraq. A car bomb killed 38 people in Baghdad yesterday and injured hundreds. More than 2,000,000 Iraqis have died in the two conflicts and embargoes since the early 1990s.

The cost of the Afghanistan occupation is more than $240 billion, before the escalation of conflict into Pakistan and not including conflicts in Uzbekistan. President Obama recently warned troops that things are about to get "bloody" in Afghanistan - a region where 800 American troops have already given their life.
The Defense Department reports 69 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, three were the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen.

If we are not winning these wars, have been losing them for in some cases decades, and continue to pay the steep price in terms of life, reputation and costs why are they being fought?