Community | September 01, 2010 | 3 comments

US Weapons Sales to Middle East Skyrocket under Obama

source: http://www.thestruggle.org/brenner_looking_back.html

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http://www.thestruggle.org/brenner_looking_back.html

"U.S. to Sell F-15s to Saudis." That was the Wall Street Journal's 8/9/10 front page headline. "The Obama administration... won't equip them with... weapons... opposed by Israel." But the "$30 billion, 10 year arms package" is still "one of the biggest single deals of its kind."

Obama "has championed advanced weapons sales to Gulf states as a way to check Iranian power." The U.S. sells weapons "to the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states." The 8/12/10 NY Times reported that Obama plans to sell 200 Patriot intercepter missiles, worth $900 million, to Kuwait. The White House also supplies the Lebanese army and Palestinian security forces in the West Bank, training Fatah’s police in Jordan.

Massive sales to Arab “allies” started under Bush. Between 2001 and 2008, Kuwait bought $1.7 billion worth of arms, Egypt $10.4 billion. The U.A.E. purchased $10 billion. Sales to the Saudis brought in $10.5 billion. Pakistan bought $4.5 billion. Post the 2003 invasion, Bush’s Iraq sales came to $3.5 billion. According to the Journal, Bush saw these regimes “as a bulwark against Iranian expansionism, and the Obama administration has expanded the effort."

In that 2001-08 period, Israel purchased $5.9 billion worth of American weaponry and now, at least until after November’s Congressional election, Democrat Obama and Likudnik Netanyahu are political and military pals.

The Gaza flotilla crisis bent the Turkish-Israeli partnership out of shape, but Washington and Ankara are still NATO military allies, even as Turkey continues to denounce anyone in Congress that dares to say that the Ottoman army committed genocide against Armenians during the 1st world war, or complains that today’s Turkey denies independence to millions of Kurds.

It is impossible to deeply understand any one aspect of Middle Eastern politics, Zionism and Palestine, or Iraq or Afghanistan, etc., without seeing it in its matrix, U.S. imperial involvement with the entire region.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT LINK:
http://www.thestruggle.org/brenner_looking_back.html

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