The Nation: Beauty Over Bullets

From youthful radicals to such eminent Establishmentarians as Dwight Eisenhower, critics have assailed the military-industrial complex as too powerful for the nation's good. Former FAA administrator E.R. ("Pete") Quesada claims that at least in monetary terms, the vastness of the complex is a myth. He bet a colleague one box of cigars that the value of common stock of the ten largest companies commonly assumed to be part of the complex was less than that of a single cosmetics firm.

Quesada is now smoking contentedly. He produced figures proving that as of April 26,...

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