lawmakers have as much as $196 million “invested in companies doing business with the Defense Department, earning millions since the start of the Iraq war.”

Civilian firms such as PepsiCo and IBM form the backbone of what more accurately can be described as a “military-corporate complex.”

PepsiCo and IBM ranked among the Pentagon’s top 100 contractors, taking in $286,696,943 and $291,825,309, respectively

top 100 suppliers also included such well-known civilian firms as Tyson Foods ($335,239,095), Goodrich Corp. ($344,091,017), Procter & Gamble ($362,461,808), Kraft Foods ($500,799,104), Dell ($636,343,593), ExxonMobil ($1,176,354,936), FedEx ($1,303,032,027) and General Electric ($2,327,705,161)

It’s high time we at least recognize that PepsiCo, IBM, Microsoft, and Johnson & Johnson and just about every other corporate giant

are benefiting not only from our purchases of cola, computers, software and bandages but from our tax dollars, via the Pentagon