I applaud our leadership for this responsible maneuver:
The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.
The proposed package of advanced weaponry for Saudi Arabia, which includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters and new naval vessels, has made Israel and some of its supporters in Congress nervous. Senior officials who described the package on Friday said they believed that the administration had resolved those concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has received in the past 10 years.
But administration officials remained concerned that the size of the package and the advanced weaponry it contains, as well as broader concerns about Saudi Arabia’s role in Iraq, could prompt Saudi critics in Congress to oppose the package when Congress is formally notified about the deal this fall.
I personally think that what the region needs is more American manufactured weapons for them to use on us.
ConservativelyLiberal
Beware the Military-Industrial Complex…
One of the few things that we still make (mostly, anyway) in America is weapons and weapon systems. I bet their argument is ‘Well, if we don’t sell them to insert country name here, then insert country name here will sell them. That or ‘We support American jobs!’
Yup, all the ME needs is more stuff to kill each other with. Well, the Rapture Ready crazies will be happy…
‘See! The end of things is coming! We told you that George Bush was chosen by God! He is doing God’s will!’
We love Israel… To death.
semper fubar
So, the take away for us peons is:
Don’t worry about us providing arms for the middle east conflict, because we’re going to arm both sides.
Uh huh.
Ted
Lovely. So we’re now allowing them to use our satellites to guide what will be their bombs. Well, I suppose the administration could make the argument that they’re trying to minimize collateral damage…
Not sure that will make anyone but the Bush family feel any better about it, though.
Andrew
I think that “satellite-guided” just means they use GPS.
Fred F.
We’re not just arming those that are fighting against us, we’re also losing $10 billion in the whole deal. This Bush administration certainly knows how to haggle.
croatoan
Saudis are funding insurgents and make up 45% of the foreign fighters, so it makes total sense to give them weapons. (The first link, from December 2006 mentions that the Saudis were supplying shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, and at least five helicopters were shot down in early 2007.)
jake
Oh noes! Some big meanie might object to this stupid fucking idea! But they couldn’t possibly be objecting for any other reason than they just don’t like Saudi Arabia.
Let’s see. Ask Iran to help with the security situation in Iraq. Ignore the fact that 40% of the detainees in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia.* Ignore the Sunni/Shia split. Throw a bunch of weapons into the mix. What’s the next step in this brilliant plan? Give Turkey a few ICBMs? Wait until SA and Iran have gone from proxy war in Iraq to all out war, reduced the entire region to a smoking ruin and then go in and suck up the oil?
j
*I am not (for now) implying SA is sending people into Iraq in the same way that the Admin readily implies Iranians caught in the country must have gotten their marching orders straight from Amenalongname. However, I am thinking of the blackmarket and what happens when SA starts clearing out the warehouses to make room for their shiny new toys from the US. Urrgh.
Otto Man
Hey, it’s not like all of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia.
Ted
What’s the difference? We most likely paid for and launched said GPS satellites. And there are two GPS satellite systems. One civilian, and the other military. I would assume these bombs are JDAMs designed to use the latter.
capelza
So I read, amongst other world news, “Iran Daily” and it’s other mouthpiece (if you go there, it’s on the top right hand corner). They say that Saudi Arabia is trying to build nuclear weapons in a hidden facility outside of Riyadh, with the help of rogue Pakistanis, etc.
I have no idea if this is true, but I can tell you there is no love lost between S.A. and Iran.
jg
is there still any doubt that this war is meant to go on and on and on and on?
I wish someone with a powerful blog could push the idea that the Bush administration, while demonizing the dems as wanting to surrender, doesn’t show any sign of trying to win, or even wanting to win.
capelza
jg…are you suggesting that Bush read 1984 and though that Eastasia idea was a pretty darn good one?
ThymeZone
Yes, this goes back to threads from years ago, in other galaxies, far far away.
What is a “war on terror?” What does it look like, using historical examples to illustrate? Where are its boundaries? How is it won? What does winning look like? How long will that take? What are the objectives? What are the expected costs, and what commitments do the participants have to make enroute to the final victory?
So far in six years since 911 (!) I have not seen even one attempt to answer those questions, in public, in terms that ordinary people can understand. Not one. Not here, not anywhere else.
As recently as this week, George Bush suggested “victory” as the standard we should pursue in Iraq. I defy him or any of his apologists to adequately answer the questions I pose above. And I defy anyone to explain why I should support a “war on terror” without having those answers.
Andrew
There are 2 orbiting systems, GPS and GLONASS (Russian, semi-functional), and the EU wants to put up a third, Galileo. There are not two GPS systems for military and civilians. Once upon a time, the military could degrade the precision to non-military receivers, but they gave up after the the troops ended up using better commercial GPS units during the gulf war and from FAA pressure.
However, more importantly, satellite guided bombs are not something particularly useful for a terrorist.
On the other hand, fuck the Saudis.
Tim F.
They have no fucking idea what they are doing. On even days we’re funding tweedle dum, on odd days we’re shipping mortars to tweedle dee. Are we following the 20% solution this month? Or are we back to 80%? Next week the plan will be to give nukes to the Kurds and hand over the keys for the whole mess to them.
It probably stretches back to the sad fact that none of the neocons would even admit that Iraq had sectarian tensions before they provoked our glorious little war. Schmucks.
The Other Andrew
This is one time when the Democrats should be like the Republicans, at least in terms of strategy. Giving weapons to a nation that has (at least) circumstancial ties to the insurgency? If President Obama did that, you can bet that every Republican on the planet would be calling for an independent investigation, impeachment, possible treason charges, etc. But we have a party of timid moderates who don’t want to offend the delicate sensibilities of maniacal, greedy theocrats.
jake
To talk about sectarian violence one must discuss the various groups involved and you know neo-cons hate to talk about sects. [/snark]
At the risk of sounding like a broken record (a scratched CD for you younger folks), these goons didn’t care that all the evidence pointed to no viable WMD program in Iraq before they launched Operation Ultimate Furious Unremitting Clusterfuck.
It is a fairly safe assumption that they didn’t give a fuck about the various factions in Iraq. Some days I even doubt they care all that much about the oil and suspect they were just in a mood to trash a country. From a safe distance of course.
bird
The White House is setting up a fight with Congress. Rove figures if he can pitch impeachment fever, maybe he can buck up w’s poll #’s with his peeps.
While Clinton’s #’s went up during the impeachment, I doubt w would enjoy the same benefit, but who knows?
Chris
With Bandar Bush’s cut and the off-the-books intel shenanagans funded by these deals through him, maybe he can take his 35 million dollar Aspen ski bunny house off the market.
jg
I do remember someone posting a series of umm, posts, about the Schiavo affair which objectively drilled down to the facts of the case. Something like that would be cool.
I never suggested that Bush could read.
BIRDZILLA
And we were selling scrap metal to japan before WW II and they made bombs and used it on PEARL HARBOR
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Can someone explain to me why Israel would be worried about the Saudi navy?
searp
If everyone here is worried about arming bad guys (I am too, not knocking it), then we ought to stop sending them oceans of money to pay for imported oil.
Don’t be worried about the measly 20 billion or whatever, worry about the trillions and trillions we have paid the Saudis and other “friends” for oil.
In my mind, every dime we send countries like Saudi Arabia is another couple of pennies towards an IED purchase.
myiq2xu
Kinda reminds me of Molly Ivins comment on Iraqi WMD’s prior to our invasion:
“We know they have ’em cuz we still have the receipts.”
ConservativelyLiberal
I sure loved Molly Ivins. She had a way with words, and with that drawl of hers she could sarcastically cut through steel. I read her columns every time I ran across one. We are all the poorer without her.
Regarding the oil trade, what gets me about the way that the US operates is that in the past we were more than happy to prop up some creeps who would give our businesses sweet deals on the oil. As the creeps would oppress their people more and more, we would help them stay in control. In some cases, the people of that country would revolt and overthrow the government, and then they would cut off trade with us.
Then our press would go into overdrive, pumping out propaganda about how evil the nation was. Then we would start into subversive actions there to screw things up and try to put another group of straw men in control so big business could continue ripping off that country.
We did this with oil, fruit, sugar and so on. Many of the smaller wars we have fought were only because of big business losing the ‘investment’ they had made in that country.
Why not deal honestly with a nation? Pay them a fair price for their assets? Because the profit margins are much smaller.
Absolutely stupid, and short sighted. With the global communications that we now have, oppressing people in the name of extracting their resources is going to get a lot harder to pull off. I think that is part of the push by Bush and Company to frame things as they have in Iraq, and they are working on Iran.
You can bet that if we attack Iran, the oil companies would be some of the first industries from the US that would show up there. Of that I have no doubt.
‘But it is not about oil!‘
Bullshit.
ATS
“Phoenician in a time of Romans Says:
Can someone explain to me why Israel would be worried about the Saudi navy?”
The military aid we give Israel dwarfs all the aid to Saudi amd the Arab states combined. The idea is to preserve our special ally’s capability to invade whomever they please when they please (vide Lebanon) and still have a little juice left over to spy on us.
Nakes sense to me. And certainly made sense to fomer AIPAC execs Wolf Blitzer and Martin Indynk when they held a “objective” discussion the other day on CNN.
TenguPhule
We’re on the 25% solution, the one that says serious people want to bomb Iran for weapons they don’t have because they’re bad people who hate our freedom but will immediately tranform into freedom loving democracy when the freedom bombs liberate their burning bodies from the tyranny of subsidized gasoline.
canuckistani
Why not just pay Haliburton to kill American troops and cut out the Saudi middleman, thus saving billions?
Every day, Josepth Heller seems just a little bit wiser.