US to supply Egypt with more mobile air defense units ideal for protecting invading forces

OT Putin will has ordered the FSB to track down and Kill the terrorists who murdered the 4 Baghdad diplomats.

http://www.lenta.ru/news/2006/06/28/willdo/

"We will work to ensure that not one terrorist escapes from his punishment" said Patrushev, the FSB Director of the anti terrorism committee. "The work will take as long as it takes" he added.

Chances are someday they will be using those Avengers to shoot down our own blackhawks if islamists ever take over that country....

Maybe Putin will do what we WON'T do.

Islamists don't need more weapons. This is insane. Who are they going to protect themselves from??? Just other muslims? Now, who are they going to attack? You got it. The civilized world. If these islamists get their hands on really good weapons they will take them to Somalia and other African nations to make sure the muslims wipe out everyone else. If we keep giving these maniacs weapons, we will have a lot more "Irans" to contend with.

I hate to say it, but history may prove us to be idiots.

I say....VERY bad idea.

That this is a VERY bad idea, freewoman is right on target. I call it a "No-brainer"

Why?

A good question given the help over the years for a massive arms buildup, even producing the Abrams in Egypt I believe.

The only reason I can think of is for the coming battle with Israel.

Israel's "cold-peace" with Egypt has certainly been a disappointment, particularly as it concerns 1) Egyptian state-run media incitement against Israel and America and 2) the paucity of trade and other contacts between Egypt and the Jewish state.

But let's not blind ourselves to the over-riding benefits that the peace has brought. In the 29 years between the birth of Israel in 1948 and Sadat's trip to Jerusalem in 1977, the Israelis were forced to fight 4 major wars of survival against the Arab/Muslim world. In the 29 years since Sadat's initiative, the have been NO major Arab-Israeli wars.

Israel defeated Syria over the skies of Lebanon in 1982 and lost to Hezbollah in protracted conflict over the ensuing 18 years of occupation in southern Lebanon. But neither conflict could even remotely qualify as an existential threat to Israel, the way the October War in 1973 was.

And let there be no mistake about the October War. Golda Meir's plea for Nixon to "Save Israel" was not a contrivance. The early days of the war were indeed devestating for the Israelis, where Syrian armor attacks pierced Israel's defenses in the Golan...and where the Israeli attempt to beat back the Egyptian crossing of the Suez resulted in the loss of scores of aircraft at the hands of Soviet-operated anti-aircraft missile batteries.

Over 2000 of Israel's finest were killed in the war. Thousands more were wounded. There was hardly a family in Israel that wasn't effected. Battlefield fortunes changed, but only after a massive US airlift, the likes of which hadn't been seen since Berlin in 1948. In the aftermath, one Israeli general was quoted as saying "Israel cannot afford another Yom Kippur War."

In essence, Camp David meant the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No supporter of the Jewish state could possibly perceive this change in equation as anything but advantageous for Israel.

Egypt is preparing for war against Israel, it's obvious. And I hope this time, Israel will use its nukes to wipe out these nazi beasts once and for all, and do it pre-emptively, just as it did in the 1967 Six Day War, and not listen to American or European leaders tell it to wait until it's attacked. Golda chose the latter approach in 1973, and as a result Israel was almost conquered by the barbarian jihadist hordes.

While US rhetoric is inconsistent at least they are consistent when it comes to arming the enemy.

I think that the answer to the question "Why?" with which Robert begins his commentary is that the US has been trying to preserve some leverage over the Egyptian government; this is what I interpret the decades of subsidies to be about. And it means business for a US armaments company.

Doubtless this request was initiated by the Egyptians, and it was not considered so consequential as to be worth endangering the "relationship" by refusing it.

I think that's why, though it does not look like a good justification. Much more worrisome is the question of why the Egyptians think that they need such weaponry. It scarcely seems likely to be used against Libya or Sudan.

Finally, I think that we should recognize the difficulty of the situation from the perspective of American policymakers. No-one in the US government in the past 30 years can have thought that Egypt was an ally of the high calibre of, say, France. But the alternative to supporting the de facto government has been to let the place fall into the hands of Islamists. So we have supported ugly regimes hoping that the regimes and the underlying society would evolve in ways favorable to us. These hopes have proved vain.

I have another (silly as it may sound) idea.

We all pay income tax. There should be a box on the form asking if we want to take out a dollar amount to go to foreign governments for aid, jizyah or any humanitarian aid. Those who check yes and the dollar amount can contribute what they wish and when all the money is counted, divide it up as they please and those of us who don't want to support islamic and savage nations keep our money.

No more sending billions of our hard earned dollars to countries that use the money for weapons (and having them turn on us) instead of for the people it's intended to help.

You know good and well if you hand twenty bucks to a drunk on the street, he's just going to buy more booze.

It's the same with islamic nations. Weapons are more important than healthcare, REAL education, infrastructure, agriculture and people.

STOP GIVING OUR MONEY AWAY!!!!!!!!

Here is a link to a brief description of this system

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/md/avenger/index.html

The one consolation I have is that they will not buy many of these; I'll bet that they are close to a million dollars a pop. According to Boeing's site, there are 1,100 of these in service with US armed forces. Egypt, a country with 1/4 our population and much larger army, per capita, will have a much smaller proportion of these systems than the US military considers optimal.

I also suspect that they are highly vulnerable to countermeasures, particularly artillery. But it is one more threat that will occupy the concerns of Israeli military planners. There are people in authority in Israel who are keenly aware of the danger posed by Egypt.

http://arabist.net/archives/2006/04/20/the-israeli-who-feared-egypt/

I'm not too worried about the possibility of a system like this falling into Jihadist hands, not that it is not a concern, but that they already have much easier access to less effective but more concealable systems. It would, for example, be much harder to hide one of these in Iraq than the man-portable systems that have been used to down our helicopters thus far.

The timing on this one couldn't be more ironic, given that Israel is Egypt's only real threat in the region, Israel is moving on Gaza as a result of the latest Palestinian aggression, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is calling for Egypt to attack Israel.

Write your elected officials.

Here is a link to the contact list (substitute your state at the end)

http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newseek.cgi?site=ctc&state=nj

I just sent the following to my senators and representative:

-----------------------------------------
Dear ...,

I have just seen a report that Boeing has signed a contract to supply Egypt with 50 million dollars worth of Avenger mobile air defence systems.

These are offensive weapons, used to protect mobile ground forces as they advance beyond the umbrella of less mobile heavy air defense installations.

What enemy can Egypt be concerned about that it thinks it needs systems like this? I cannot imagine that it is worried about a land war with Libya or Sudan, and while Ethiopia may antagonize Egypt throught its manipulation of the upper Nile, it is no military match.

The only purpose I can imagine that these systems have in Egyptian military thinking is to protect its mobile land forces in a war with Israel --- and that is a war that Israel is unlikely to start.

I don't understand why we are arming Egypt for its next war with Israel. Both of these nations are notionally our allies. Why are we arming them against each other?

Sincerely yours,

------------------------------------------------

Many posters here will be unhappy with the equivalence I draw between Israel and Egypt in this post, but I want to appear evenhanded. And it's written in a way that invites the reader to question whether Israel or Egypt is the better ally of the two. And an alert reader will be aware of the fact that Israel faces threats to its East and North from countries that the US regards as enemies, while Egypt faces no such threats; so while it makes no sense to arm both Egypt and Israel, it does make sense to arm Israel against the other threats it faces from our enemies.

My concern in this letter is to call attention to the folly of arming Egypt against our ally Israel. To be taken seriously, I cannot come at this from the posture of, say, a pro-Israel lobbyist.

Is there a purpose for our government to be giving our enemies the knives that will be used in our backs? Who in our government is doing this to us? Why are they doing this to us? Who's applying the pressure/money to make this happen in our government?

This deal will keep American workers in jobs, paid for by the US tax-payer. Just so happens the systems are going to Egypt.

However, given the power and sophistcated capability of such arms systems it is also necessary to have the ability to control or limit functionality. To deny usability to the enemy if captured. In other words, a built in "kill" device in case weapons fell into the wrong hands or were impending use was not authorised by the US. Alternatively, the systems could only be activated with US authorisation and mission specific encryption.

You know, like the so called "independent" UK Trident missile system.

WHAT are they THINKING???

This is the same thing as

a. Sending the Nazis more Jewish workers (based upon an agreement that they will be treated fairly) sure and i have a bride for sale in New york..

b. Training Saudis as airline pilots... (they have a nasty tendandy to ram their aircrafdt into Buildings killing all onboard and on the ground).

c. Handing the Islamo nazis plans for the us defense and tracking of Islamic terrorists (Thanks to the New York Times)...

d. Handing Iran pure enriched uranium for (cough).. use in civilian nuclear power plants..

e. the worst is the Peanut farmer (Jimmy the FOOL) carter who hands north korea 5 years worth of heating oil (which saved them millions of dolllars which were diverted to ) gasp
The production of nuclear weapons..

ARE all the Liberals , the STATE department and The Liberal Main stream news media trying to comitt SUICIDE???

Handing ANY advanced weapons to ANY ISLAMIC NAZI TERRORIST is exactly the same as putting a 9mm glock inside your mouth and pulling the trigger..

But with one difference..
If the Liberals kill themselves they only die..

But if ALL the Liberals, the state department and the main stream news media gets their way...

ALL of us will be killed (and again the liberals still wont get it)...

President Bush you better stop these VILE morons..

Before they KILL ALL of US..

"But if ALL the Liberals, the state department and the main stream news media gets their way...

ALL of us will be killed (and again the liberals still wont get it)...

President Bush you better stop these VILE morons.."

-Posted Above

Please stop blaming liberals when it is clear that this sale was blessed by the current adminstration.
I stand in complete opposition to this transaction and others like it.

Who has attacked Egypt lately?

Other than their own inbred terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood type? Who don't use helicopters.

Who would these weapons be used against?

What countries border the land of the pharoahs?

Sudan? Libya? Saudi Arabia? Jordan?

Time to email my representatives again.

With that bafoon Dubya waving enemies in, what did one expect?

This deal problly wont be a factor, to much time before these get delivered, if they do at all.

Israel is underway now.

Boeing is only getting a return on it's investment. It's 1.4 million dollar contribution to the RNC and Dubya's 2004 re election, along with of course Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman.

It's all about money, stock prices, golden parachutes, the bottom line.

Why just look at the windfall profits of Haliburton, Bechtel, security firms, Exxon Mobil, Texaco, OPEC, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait as a consequence of the invasion of Iraq.

US to supply Egypt with more mobile air defense units ideal for protecting invading forces

Why?

In reality the US does not see eye to eye with the rest of Europe and the UK when it comes to military arms deals. As we all are aware that providing a country with any type of military technology mean big business and large income. The question is not really about Egypt defending it self from any attacks from the outside but its more the case of US selling high level technology to earn a massive income before anyone one else in Europe or UK get their first.

There is a massive revolution stirring up in the Middle East and Asian pacific, this is the Islamic revolution which has been down played by the policy makers sat in US and Europe. I’m a lecturer at a well known University in England and travel around the world visiting many well known universities. Since 1999 a group of 3 lecturers including my self have researched “the next west in the world” which looks at different civilizations present and in the past and tries to put together a picture of which is the next rising nation which will dominate the world like the UK and USA. People are not aware of what type of storm is building up in the Muslim world and surrounding countries.

Revolutions are mostly caused by younger generations, who are inspired by history and mainly history of their own. The inspiration leads to a revolution to bring back the power of their own civilization. In my entire academic life I have never come across anything more powerful than the Islamic nation and its determination to succeed. In the Middle East those of you who have visited will regularly hear about the great USI nation. This USI stands for United States of Islam, 1979 this word “USI” use to be mentioned in great secrecy in the Muslim world mainly amongst the top level Muslims but recently it has become more widely and freely used.

The revolution has gone beyond incubation period has started to resist the governments in the Muslim world, these are the governments which were humble towards the west, but this is changing. Hamas in Palestine is one example of what the people want in the Middle East.

I presented my findings to the board of International Cultural Strategic Thinking at London in 1999 where my work was not taken seriously. At that board presentation I advised the members to think carefully of the younger generation of the Muslim world, as they are the ones who will unite under the banner of Muslim brotherhood, where boarder lines will erased and a united front will evolve backed with oil control to change the rest of the world. This united front will shape the world.

My point of mentioning such information is for everyone to think very hard as to which direction we as the western power want to travel. Already countries such as Germany, Russia, China, India and Pakistan have become neutral towards the Muslim world, as they sense that a power is rising from within the Muslim countries. But our government policies are linked to individual people who have interests in multinational companies and in the greed of earning more wealth and prosperity they are selling technology to this exact nation which is rising. The technology being sold to the Muslims is no long sat there ready to be used, but is being stripped apart and copied to produce their own technologies which ultimately makes the Muslim countries independent from the western world. Iran is a fine example of this.

The revolution storm in the Muslim world has started, we hear about it every day. Where ever they are they have a strong presence and challenge every part of society. They have the ability to change the society even if they are the minority. The Islamic revolution is what we need to think about.

If you want more information then contact me.

What have they done for us? Why they've bought our weapons. They're a good customer for arms and selling arms is America's primary foreign policy goal.

Reverse engineering will be the bane of the 21st century.

The Muslims students of high-tech topics infiltrating the western universities can filter back home to begin what the Chinese are already becoming masters of:

intellectual property theft on a scale that will render the technological advantages that we enjoy less and less meaningful. And will allow us to stay less and less ahead in this race. One run by our thieving enemies who are trying to catch up, from a position of slavery, with what freedom alone can bring:

-a creative marketplace of ideas.

Now the planetary pickpockets can dissolve the difference.

A.Q. Khan being their tin (or should I say plutonium) 'god'.