[Aerich]

It's difficult to gauge the level of influence, no matter what anyone says (from either side of the debate).

I think it's too easy just to blame it all on the companies. They do have influence, but it is more from the fact that they are power players, not from some insidious bribing scheme. There are kickbacks and "perks" (see Cheney and Halliburton, for example), but I can't believe that those are the prime motivators. The people making the decisions have to believe that what they are doing is right, or at least have to justify it to themselves in some fashion. To take the invasion of Iraq for a recent example, I believe that Bush & Co really did think that Saddam had WoMD, and maybe had links to terrorist organizations.

On the other hand, one has to question the pre-existing beliefs of the administration and the extent to which contact with the military-industrial complex has shaped those views. There are enough circumstantial links between the adminstration (Bush, Cheney, Rice) and oil and the weapons companies that we must at least be aware that such contacts have molded the ways in which the administration will think about certain things.

To me, the scary thing is belief. Although we cannot know what goes on behind the scenes (absent the type of disclosure to the public of things like the Pentagon Papers, a large set of Pentagon documents relating to the Vietnam war which were stolen and published by a Pentagon employee), it appears that there is a lack of diverse thinking within the establishment about foreign policy etc. It is very possible that the weapons companies are in part responsible for that.