The Progressive has a nice article, "The H-Bomb Secret" [pdf]. It's very much worth a read. It talks about the realities of atomic weapons, but possibly more interestingly, the political and social side effects involved.
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I haven't read the entire article. I've skipped through chunks of it. However...
I'm sure conspiracy theorists will love this article. It's from way back in 1979, yet it actually details an almost exact replica of this year's military activities. For example, it talks about the depression of the 1930s, and the realisation that large spending by government can turn an economy upward. The war helped out immensely (as a way to spend public money), and the application of the notion that the free world should trade freely (ie. stay open to US exports) ensured that the US had a whole new playground in which to operate. And thus the US depression ends and prosperity begins.
Last year, the US economy was most certainly taking a battering. We even heard the president saying people should shop more to keep the economy up. This year, the country spends enormous amounts of money, but will then get lucrative contracts in Iraq (and thus, once again, depression ends and prosperity begins).
There are other important details to this: Economic depression flattens social hierarchy. That is, the rich are affected, just like the poor. Ultimately, everyone becomes poor, and the difference between "poor" and "very poor" is relatively small (certainly far smaller than between "rich" and "poor"). Thus, economic downturn is actually more detrimetal to the select few who have the wealth and the power than to ordinary people.
I guess the consipracy here is, "did a couple of governments flatten a country just so they could go in and rebuild it?". The spending of public money means more has to be raised. Provided the population are happy to help out with this, then all is good. Of course, that public money bought military assets, which are now used up, and need to be replaced. Someone's got to make them, and they're hiring. It's a nice little circle of upward prosperity (provided the population go along with it).
There are many more conspiracies - for example, despite recommendations from scientists, and even branches of government, atomic information has been kept secret by just about all western governments. Indeed, a culture of fear about this information has been promoted. This is of course only a small area in the culture of fear that is well established in many societies.
This all goes to show: the more you learn, the less you know. Still, you've just got to do it.