What services will have to be cut to pay for this?

Social security?

Medical benefits for the needy?

Posted by: Borg at July 31, 2007 12:55 PM

Looking for a clarification here...are we selling these arms or is this a free-be? I don't like it either way, considering 15 out of 19 attackers on 9/11 were Saudi nationals, but I really hope we are not giving away arms to the nation that is choking us to death with the oil we found for them, taught them how to process, and purchase from them. What we should be selling them is the famous $800 toilet seats nasa developed...or would they know what to do with a toilet seat?

Posted by: GamblersChoice at July 31, 2007 1:06 PM

GamblersChoice--

Unfortunately, neither this article nor the earlier one linked above are entirely clear on the nature of the "aid" package, regarding how how deep a discount the Saudis may be getting, and how much we're just plain giving to various Mideast countries.

Whatever help they're getting, they don't need or deserve it, as you noted (not even toilet seats!).

Posted by: MarisolJW at July 31, 2007 1:43 PM

Does the administration really believe that helping out the saudis, etc over the iranians is in our best national interest? I don't get it....we shouldn't be helping any of the mid-east countries other than israel.

Posted by: eve_anne_gelical at July 31, 2007 1:51 PM

This will not happen, just like the sale of the ports. The truth will out, Resistance is building already. This administration is truly incompetent and its folly will haunt America for decades to come. The damage is almost irreversible. But it can be done, its not too late.

Screw the MF's!

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at July 31, 2007 2:24 PM

Winning their hearts and minds thru advanced weaponry.

Posted by: TheOmegaMan at July 31, 2007 2:32 PM

This is just more business for Bush's buddies. Remember Kuwait. The Saudis couldn't send their tanks. The company that produces sand filters for them wouldn't succumb to corruption, so they Saudis didn't buy it. They don't even have the manpower to operate it.

Posted by: Swissy at July 31, 2007 2:43 PM

Admittedly I don’t like jazya anymore than the next guy, but if we can sell the Saudis some (not too state of the art) weaponry to recycle some of our own money, our tres chers petrodollars, and then recycle that over to help out Israel’s survival in a sea of hostility, the only sane state of the Middle East, then it may not be too bad an idea. It washes to make Saudis pay for Israel, in the end. I hope they don’t catch on here, but this could be a pretty good way to get some money back, money we spent at the pump, to drive a wedge against the future nuke state, Iran, sandwiched between Kabul and Baghdad. Not necessarily a win-win situation, but we should look at it from a longer term strategic perspective, not all bad. I don’t expect the House of Saud to like us for it, but for them it’s probably more survival at this point than world domination Jihad ambitions.

Though, that said, I’d watch my back with those new weapons, because the jihadi sword will always slice at us any way it can, regardless of how much they smile solicitously as we throw jazya their way. What does Russia think of this ‘great game’, or the EU, or China? Does it even matter? We should always work on the assumption that Saudi oil is in our pocket, regardless of what they think in their supremacist Wahabi world dominating dreams. It’s not all bad, as long as they pay for it, and it helps put Iran quietly to bed, their Shii-ty sweet dreams of the ‘end days’ safely tucked in with Saudi weapons. The bigger question should be: will this strategy quietly put Iraq to bed, or will it continue as a never ending jihadi nightmare? The real game here, nation building and democracy for Middle East aside, is the smell of oil and money. Smells pretty good to me, that maybe GW, Blair, Rice & co., may actually be getting something right: Oil, on which we will be still very much dependent until new energy (sans huile) sources are developed.

Posted by: Battle_of_Tours at July 31, 2007 2:43 PM

Mind-boggling, to say the least.

Posted by: awake at July 31, 2007 3:27 PM

The only thing that will fix this insanity is an Islamic nuke in DC.

Posted by: KAOSKTRL at July 31, 2007 6:15 PM

If these Masters of the Inverse would take just one of these squandered billions and give it instead to those running this site, it would do more good toward our Civilization's defense and security -and the enlightenment of our sleepwalking populace- than the entirety of this ludicrous, crapulous "aid plan".

(And would even make up, somewhat, for the other 19 utterly-wasted billions.)

Posted by: profitsbeard at July 31, 2007 6:21 PM

Having been educated just a little more on this subject, I felt compelled to write my Congressman. Here's what I wrote:

>>Sir,

Thank you for your recent visit to Crawfordsville to discuss the immigration issue. Although I disagree with your position that "illegals" should be allowed to stay, the borders do, indeed, need to permanently closed.

But this is not my issue here. I am writing to express my very sincere concern of my elected representative's position on "aiding and abetting" the enemy, i.e., this supposed $20B+ "package" of military aid to Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, and Egypt.

Sir, I can't tell from the mainstream media or newspapers whether this is "aid" (free or subsidized) or an outright sale (free-market prices?) Either way, I will state in very simple terms that this is "aiding and abetting the enemy!" Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not our friends, sir!

There is a growing fight now growing across the globe to destroy our Republic. This threat is called ISLAM.

Please, for the sake of the Republic, the American way of life (of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness), do not support nor approve of any House resolutions to pass any bill approving of such arms sales to our enemies.

Please, for the sake of the Republic, speak up and denounce, in the Congress, that such a sale is a sell-out to all those defeatists who believe that "America should just play nice with everyone else."

If not, we are all doomed.

Thanks for all you do. I really wish to hear your position on this subject.

From small town Indiana.

End of e-mail

Posted by: boneshack at July 31, 2007 9:13 PM

Most of our policies towards the Nazi regime in Arabia are completely misguided. But I think this one is not.

First, the Saudis are blunderingly incompetant when it comes to using armaments such as these. This will largely amount to a transfer of $20B in capital back into the West (where it belongs) in exchange for a bunch of computerized iron bombs and such. Second, if we can abet and inflame civil wars within Islam by aiding all sides to harm and annihilate each other -- that would mostly be a good thing, wouldn't it? Giving them a chance for democracy hasn't worked out so well -- allowing them to live in the free West hasn't worked out so well -- the currently unviable waging of World War against our Muslim enemies (where we'd find ourselves alone in the world...) is no option, at least not today.

But supplying massive arms and enabling Muslim on Muslim violence and wars whenever and wherever possible strikes me as a viable and good substitute. They are eager to kill. Their vile god requires it of them.

Posted by: jsla at July 31, 2007 9:19 PM

The Bush Administration is comically transparent. It announces in the same breath that "over ten years" Israel will receive "$30 billion in weapons" and that Saudi Arabia will get "$20 billion" in weapons to stave off Iran (over what time period? 10 years, like the Israelis? Or more like a year or two?) and that, furthermore, a country that is in every way hostile to us, Egypt, will receive "$13 billion" in weapons as a gift.

What shall we say about this? Israel is not only a temporary ally but a permanent ally, a permanent part of the West and central to the West's history, at this point, and must be kept alive not only for our own moral sanity, but also because its disappearance, or reduction to dhimmitudinous despair and reliance on Arab Muslim willingness to allow it to survive would whet, not sate, Arab and Muslim appetites. But this weapons transfer, billed as "$15 billion," in fact is misleading. Over ten years that amounts to $3 billion a year in weapons aid, which is only one-quarter over the amount now given, and gratefully received. (And need one point out how many advances, in aerospace technology, and in everything from unmanned aircraft to explosives-resistant vehicles that ought to have been, but were not bought, by the Pentagon for use in Iraq, are developed by the Israelis for their, and of course our, use?)

Saudi Arabia, per contra, is our enemy. A permanent enemy, because it is a country whose people are suffused with the most uncompromising, violent, and malevolent -- for Infidels -- version of Islam, for in Saudi Arabia they take their Islam very, very seriously. Saudi Arabia is not worried about an invasion by Iran; such fears are phony, and the whole hysteria, coordinated with Egypt and Jordan, about the "Shia crescent" is merely designed to get the Americans to focus only on Iran (and its current accomplice, Syria) and to ignore the much larger threat, outside the loca business in Iraq, that Sunni Islam poses to Infidels, and above all other states, that Saudi Arabia as the world's Muslims chief financier, paying for mosques, madrasas, propaganda, campaigns of Da'wa, and the buying up of Western hirelings who in the capitals of the West -- and certainly in Washington -- work to do the Saudi bidding andprevent intelligent understanding of the menace of Jihad and of Islam to our legal and political institutions and to our physical security.

It is absurd to think that the Saudis will master this equipment but not absurd to think that such weaponry could fall into the hands of Arabs and other Muslims who can master some of it. In any case, the mere possession of such weapons would have to be taken into account by Israeli military planners, and will make their own task even more hellishly difficult, and they don't deserve to have that outcome. When the United States protested about a sale of aerospace technology, developed by the Israelis, to China, Israel, at great cost to its own fledgling aerospace dreams, promptly cancelled the sale, thereby angering China and permanently damaging any hope of future sales to such a market. But Israel listened and heeded our desires. We, however, or at least this and other American administrations, have not ever heeded Israel's pleas on the same score.

And what is also bad is the signal to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia should be read the riot act. Saudi Arabia should be told it is not "our ally" and if it wishes to be defended, it will obviously have to rely, in the end, on us, not on weapoons that could fall into hands even more malevolent than the Al-Saud (just as the weapons we sold the Shah, that "pillar of stability" in the Persian Gulf, fell into the clutches of the Islamic Republic of Iran), so that if these weapons are delivered we would have to be ready to intervene in order to make sure those weapons were not seized, or transferred, to others. Saudi Arabia was a loyal supporter of the Taliban (and one of only two countries to recognize the Taliban government, besides Pakistan). Saudi Arabia must be forced to stop funding mosques and madrasas, stop funding the hate literature against Infidels that have been found in those mosques and those madrasas, stop funding those campaigns of Da'wa that target prisoners, that target all the psychically and economically marginal. The Saudis do not now, and never have, done the United States any favors. We buy their oil at the market price. They have fooled successive American policymakers, who wanted to be fooled, and who helped along in being fooled by so many of those who, directly or indirectly, at the time or soon after, have been paid off by the Saudis, the government, or its institutions, or rich individuals.

The way to "protect" the Al-Saud and the oilfields is quite different. It is to sell Saudi Arabia an insurance policy. We will guarantee the safety of the rulers and of the oil. It will cost: let's say $50-100 billion annually. Too much, you say? Well, since Saudi Arabia takes in about one billion dollars a day, and since the rich Saudis have invested a lot overseas, have perhaps a trillion or more socked away, they can certainly afford $50-$100 billion. Okay, how about a little souk-haggling, in that case? Let's give them a deal - $75 billion a year. How's that? As long as you agree with the concept, we can at a later date decide just how much we intend to recoup, for the Iraq calamity and squandering of $880 billion, from the fabulous rich Saudis.

And what about Egypt? Can it seriously be maintained that Egypt needs those weopons because the army of Shi'a Iran may march right across northern Iraq, and Jordan, and Israel, and march right into Egypt? Really? Or is it possible that Egypt needs those weapons because Iranian troops will be coming up from the Sudan? Or that somehow the Sunnis of Egypt, who are deeply distrustful and intensely dislike the Iranian Shia, for being non-Arbs and for being Shi'a would somehow be converted by Sh'a missionaries? And if that were the case, why would giving Egypt the most advanced weaponry help in stopping those missionary efforts?

Egypt has fought four major wars with Israel, and has been responsible for nearly 20,000 separat fedayin attacks in the period 1949-1956 on Israel. It has been, and remains, the most dangerous neighbor Israel has. Egypt does not go to war not because its people have reconciled themselves to Israel's existence -- if anything, they have become since the Sinai handover even more virulent in their officially-sanctioned and officially-promoted hatred of Israel and Zionists and "Jews." Yet the Administration thinks that giving Egypt, a country whose poor will not benefit one whit from the airplanes and missiles Egypt will receive, will somehow be accepted by the American people and by Congress, that we will all be unable to see right through this.

The lumped announcemet of the one legitimate arms delivery planned -- that to our ally and friend Israel -- at the same time, in the same breath, with the announcement of the gift of advanced weaonry to Israel's constant threat Egypt, and the sale of advanced weaponry to the funder of the world-wide Jihad, Saudi Arabia -- shows an Administration that is terminally exhausted, that cannot think straight about Islam, cannot begin to start to think straight about the dangers it is creating for an ally, and for the larger Infidel world, can't begin to get a grip and think in terms of the Camp of Infidels and the Camp of Islam, and how to do whatever it takes to weaken the latter and strengthen the former.

Instead, it has swallowed the Sunni Arab line about the need for countering the Shia threat (as if there were not, for Infidels, a greater Sunni threat), which means the threat to the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and to Bahrain, and among the Shi'a agitating in Lebanon, or those Shi'a minorities in Yemen and Kuwait. And of course they also mean the threat in Iraq, if the Shi'a are permitted to keep their new gains, and the Sunnis to be forced to accept the new order -- which is why, just as the Shi'a exiles were the ones who helped inveigle the Bush Administration to go into Iraq, it is now the turn of the Sunnis, to inveigle us -- against our own best interests -- to stay.

The Administration keeps amazing us with its ignorance and inability to see the whole picture.

And in its list of recipients of the arms, the Bush Administration puts one in mind of the scene in a Woody Allen film, in which he is in at a kiosk in New York telling the newsdealer that "I'd like a copy of The Times Literary Supplement, and The New York Review Books, and The Hudson Review and also Partisan Review and, oh, could you just throw in a copy of Slut."

Posted by: Hugh at July 31, 2007 9:56 PM

>>The lumped announcemet of the one legitimate arms delivery planned -- that to our ally and friend Israel -- at the same time, in the same breath, with the announcement of the gift of advanced weaonry to Israel's constant threat Egypt, and the sale of advanced weaponry to the funder of the world-wide Jihad, Saudi Arabia -- shows an Administration that is terminally exhausted, that cannot think straight about Islam, cannot begin to start to think straight about the dangers it is creating for an ally, and for the larger Infidel world, can't begin to get a grip and think in terms of the Camp of Infidels and the Camp of Islam, and how to do whatever it takes to weaken the latter and strengthen the former.

Hugh,

Thank you for very concise and perfect explanation of what I really wanted to tell my Congressman.

Had I waited just an hour, I would of sent him that text instead.

But, we have to remember, than when dealing with our elected reps, we have to apply the KISS principle. They don't understand big words.

I would hope my Rep (Steve Buyer, R-IN,4th) understands this.

Wishful thinking?

Posted by: boneshack at July 31, 2007 10:28 PM

Oh, yeah, at the same time, as Hugh suggested, let's charge a "protection" fee.

Say, minimum $200B a year? A fantastic idea!

Which President-wanta-be has the intelligenced (or balls/tits) to start this great program?

Posted by: boneshack at July 31, 2007 10:47 PM

Oh, yeah, at the same time, as Hugh suggested, let's charge a "protection" fee.

Say, minimum $200B a year? A fantastic idea!

Which President-wanna-be has the intelligence (or balls/tits) to start this great program?

Posted by: boneshack at July 31, 2007 10:50 PM

Marisol,

"pretending to like us while we're useful"

lol That about sums it up.

Posted by: mrockroll1969 at July 31, 2007 10:58 PM

Questions:

Where will these weapons end up?

Who benefits from all these new weapons flooding the region? Bush's corporate buddies?

What about all the Jihadists in the militaries of these Arab countries?

Does this mean Bush plans to do nothing about the Iranian nukes, but is sending a signal he wants the Arabs to handle the Iranians?

This is another huge mistake in the offing.

Posted by: Rahman bin Rahman at August 1, 2007 8:35 AM