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renew America’s commitment to missile defense. Newt Gingrich, the architect of this Contract, was persuaded by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy to include a missile defense provision. This right-wing think-tank was a nest of missile defense and space weapons advocates. Including Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Bennett and many Lockheed Martin corporate officers.
                To fully grasp how this arms race got so hot during the 2000s, you have to understand a very familiar three-way partnership.  Defense contractors, such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, along with Congress and the Pentagon, all depend on each other in a big, big way. A relationship that has come to an “Eisenhower fruition.” Eisenhower, at the end of his presidency in 1961, made the timeless plea to beware of the “Military Industrial Complex.” And when it comes to missile defense, he was dead on. Lockheed Martin and Boeing remain the Pentagon’s first and second highest-paid defense contractors respectively and they want it to remain this way. To do so, they spend millions lobbying the US Congress trying to convince office holders there is a need for such weapons. And thus keep billions of dollars flowing on a yearly basis for decades to come.
                The Pentagon, the US Space Command and the Air Force also lobby Congress, begging them for their new toys. It is this group that is the creative force behind space weapons. This is the group in need of a Space Bomber that can strike a target anywhere on the globe within one hour and fly in and out of the atmosphere at will. But it is the civilian missile defense contractors that need the billions to engineer and build such a craft. Allowing this money to flow in a deluge to missile defense contractors, are of course, those members of Congress who have the keys to the nation’s safes. It shouldn’t come a surprise than, that missile defense contractors are some of the biggest campaign financiers out there.
                And at the start of the Bush administration, missile defense contractors broke out buckets of Crisco so to grease their large cash intake pipes. Because Bush was prepared to pump billions of extra dollars into missile defense research and development.
                Jokes aside, the Bush years would be a “Golden Age” for Lockheed Martin, Boeing and many other missile-defense contractors, and also for those politicians in these defense contractor pockets. Consider the two current Senators of Alabama: Democrat Richard Shelby and Republican Jeff Sessions. Between 2001 and 2006, they ranked first and second when it came to receiving campaign contributions from the likes of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Both are high-ranking members of Senate defense-funding related committees. And in return for a several-hundred thousand dollars in campaign contributions, they have approved billions in funding for missile defense research in northern Alabama, home to Huntsville, Alabama, known as “Rocket City”; or the city Wernher von Braun built. The city claims to have 50 civilian companies working on missile defense, including all the giants, i.e., Lockheed Martin. By 2010, over 6,000 missile defense scientists and researchers will be working in and around Huntsville, a region of 380,000 people.
                Besides the Crisco, also coming out during the early days of the Bush administration were the Space Hawks.
                Before Bush even was raced through Washington streets so to be sworn in as quickly as possible on inauguration day January, 20 th , 2001, his Space Hawks were giving birth to the “Son of Star Wars.” That same month, the now disgraced Donald Rumsfeld released a report that warned a “Space Pearl Harbor” or a colossal space-combat sneak attack from an enemy could cripple the nation. This meant the US needed to build space weapons so to protect satellites. Rumsfeld’s report also stated the US