I thought I'd share a couple of paragraphs from a book I recently acquired.
The book was written quite some time ago.

"War is a racket.  It always has been.  It is possibly the oldest, easily the
most predictable, surely the most vicious.  It is the only one international
in scope.  It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and
the losses in lives.

"A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems
to the majority of people.  Only a small "inside" group knows what it is 
about.  It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the
very many.  Out of war a few people make their fortunes.

"In the recent World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict.
At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States
during the World War.  That many admitted their huge blood gains in their 
income tax returns.  How many other war millionaires falsified their income 
tax returns no one knows."

The book goes on to document specific industries and boondoggles.  It's not
a huge volume and one can read the whole thing in probably an hour.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+