The Obama administration is approving the delivery of 20 American F-16's and 200 tanks to Egypt.
Irony. The administration doesn't trust American citizens even with fake assault rifles and more-than-ten-round magazines, but it gives highly lethal warplanes and tanks to violent Islamist anti-Semite 9-11 truthers who sponsor terrorists.
Makes ya' wonder...
Egypt has been the second largest recipient of the US military aid since 1979. I haven't heard you complain about Reagan's military supplies to Mubarak.
ReplyDeleteHoo
Reagan is dead, I think. In any case, I don't believe he's actively involved in foreign policy at this time.
DeleteMaybe you should try and keep up with [ahem] current affairs. :-)
There are some pretty good arguments against giving military aid to Egypt in the Mubarak/Sadat era. They're actually the same arguments that can be raised against any foreign aid.
DeleteBut there was a reason for it, and that reason has vanished. The reason, of course, was the Cold Peace. Egypt was a long-standing enemy of Israel and probably the most militarily powerful of the bunch. In 1979, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel that sent shockwaves through the Arab World. To Islamic hardliners it was an act of treason to make peace with the infidels. Israel inspires an unparallelled degree of hate in that corner of the world, and to make peace with such a nation was unforgivable. The US wanted to reward Egypt's new dovish policy so we decided that we would pick up the tab for their military, assuming that it would never be used for aggression against Israel.
But the Muslim Brotherhood never sleeps and they never gave up trying to overthrow the supposedly traitorous regime that signed the Cold Peace. Two years ago we saw the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Obama Administration assured us was just an optical illusion. Those were supposedly pro-democracy protests, remember? Ha! Maybe some of them were but they were dupes.
I think the new Egyptian government has made it clear that the Cold Peace is over. Unfortunately they've still got all the tanks, planes, and bombs we've given them over the years so we're looking like a monkey's uncle. Our foreign policy is backfiring on us again. It's pretty clear that providing weapons in the past was a mistake, but for crying out loud there's no reason we should be providing more!
You can't really defend this either so you go straight for the hypocrisy argument--I dind't hear you complainin' when Reagan...blah blah blah. It wasn't Reagan's policy to begin with, he simply continued it, which was a matter of fulfilling commitments. If you want someone to blame, blame Carter.
JQ
...because NONE of your allies could have used these planes, right? None of them could have afforded to pay SOMETHING for that kind of useful surplus, right? No, better to send them to a regional hotspot run by fanatics.
ReplyDeleteHave any of you folks seen the bid for 7000 fully automatic rifles for the DHS for the purposes of 'internal use' (ie domestic)?
A billion and a half rounds of hollow point (NATO banned) ammunition, and now 7000 more brand new rifles for the alphabet soup crowd.
On the other hand we see checkpoints everywhere, warrant-less tapping, indefinite detention, a growing 'terror list' and severe firearm restrictions restrictions for the populace.
Anyone see a pattern yet?
How about plans to devalue the dollar? Coincidence?
No. Can't be!
Must be just those 'conspiracy theorists' just kicking up dust again. Just keep your head down and obey. They wont bother you if you have not done anything wrong.
Once again you’ve got it backwards Crusader. As a Canadian military officer you have nothing to fear from the black helicopters because you’ll be riding in one. It’s all our civilian AR-15 that you need to be afraid of.
DeleteI sure hope the Canadian military provides comprehensive mental health screenings because you need one.
-KW
The points crus raises are quite real. What does the DHS need with 1.5 billion bullets?
DeleteAgain, fair questions with no (innocent) answers.
Not only 1.5B rounds, but 1.5B rounds of .40 cal hollow-point handgun ammunition. Bozo Napolitano claimed it was for "practice", but nobody uses hollow-point ammunition for practice. The whole point of expansive bullets is the terminal ballistics; you get a much larger wound channel and better kinetic energy transfer if there's no exit point.
DeleteHollow-point rounds are for killing, and .40 cal handgun hollow-points are for killing people.
Personally, I blame Bush. And Reagan.
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DeleteKW,
DeleteI have had plenty of mental screening in my day, thanks very much. They are standard for people in my position. In fact, I order/arrange the tests for subordinates when necessary.
But thanks for calling me crazy. I really mean that.
Coming from you that is a ringing endorsement of my sanity.
Further, if you think my men or I would deploy into your country to disarm your citizens in order to protect cowards like you and your masters - you're in for a VERY rude wake up call.
I won't repeat the facts that Adm. G Boggs has posted. He is quite correct. These are not rounds that could be used for law enforcement - they are designed to kill, not disable.
Saying they are for target practice is a blatant lie.
Our armed forces are BANNED from using these rounds by convention.
We do not use them on our enemy in the field. But, your DHS wants them for domestic use.
Bad for the enemy, but good for disgruntled Americans?
I guess that is okay by you, KW.
Bloody pronoid fool.
Perhaps the DHS is making preparations in case of the Zombie Apocalypse?
DeleteWell, perhaps (actually definitely) not.
I don't know why the DHS needs hollow-tipped bullets. Perhaps they're less dangerous in commercial airliners at altitude, and are less likely to punch through the airframe. Perhaps they're less likely to go through a person and kill an innocent bystander behind a miscreant. Perhaps they'll take out a miscreant more quickly than with ordinary bullets.
Perhaps the reason the DHS needs 1.5 billion bullets is similar to that with benzyl penicillin in healthcare. Benzyl penicillin is useless against most infections. But it's very useful in meningococcal meningitis. If you have an outbreak of meningococcal disease, you will need a lot of benzyl penicillin quickly, and won't be able to get it from the manufacturer or elsewhere in the country fast enough. So you'll need to have stockpiles in a lot of places throughout the country, despite most of them never needing to be used.
Perhaps the DHS is making preparations for possible albeit very unlikely events. A mass terrorist attack. Or even an armed insurrection.
Bach,
ReplyDeleteThere are two problems with all but one of your 'perhaps' scenarios.
First is the sheer volume of the bullets.
The second is the nature of the rounds.
The volume is the most problematic. The amount of rounds exceeds the total number of rounds deployed to open conflicts by several orders. It dwarfs military requirements.
The second is the nature of the bullets.
They are killers banned by convention.
In the case of airlines/air marshals your logic would require a hit. A miss would be extremely dangerous in a pressurized cabin full of civilians. Even if it were the case, such preparations on such a scale would be literally insane. Does each air marshal require tens of thousands of LETHAL rounds per week?
The air marshals do not require more and more lethal ammunition than the ground forces in Afghanistan.
Stockpiling ammunition would be in the order of hundreds of thousands of rounds for any conventional force. Perhaps a few million for a very large force such as the US Army.
For a federal police force? Even millions would be suspect - but HUNDREDS of millions of HOLLOW POINTS and .40 rounds?
Sorry, it just does not add up.
That leaves two obvious options. One is that DHS is preparing for some sort of ground invasion (ie your zombie apocalypse) in which they have received covert orders to take no prisoners (or very little). This would be an order the military is not privy to... a little strange, don't you think?
The second would be that they are indeed for 'internal use' and are to be used, as you say, to KILL Americans in some sort of predicted uprising - kind of like buying an insurance policy at a very high premium for a known upcoming/reoccurring (ie flood) event. But, if this is the case why would the military not be informed, and why would the public not be told to get into a state of preparedness - instead of a movement to disarm them.
The sheer number of rounds, again, would indicate they intend to kill a LOT of people and take very little in the way of prisoners. A lot of their OWN people.... This would be unthinkable except for the fact that the order has been placed.
There is a third, less obvious, option that could have to do with supplying these rounds to criminal/rogue elements in order to track them (ie Fast and Furious), but again the sheer amount makes this very unlikely. Who would be the target of the sting? The Chinese Army?
Then there is the final option I see as even less likely. These folks are justifying funding for projects they do not want known about, and are masking it as an ammunition purchase. A paper shuffle. In short: A lie to cover something expensive and unpopular. Why do I see this as less likely? Because this purchase draws attention. There are a lot better ways to mask a purchase/expense than this.
It would be like trying to hide that you bought a motorcycle from your wife, by showing her a bill for the purchase of a pornographic film company. Does not hold up to reason.
In any case, there is something going on that would alarm me if I were an American citizen and taxpayer, or a representative of said people in politics, the courts, or the military.
Historically speaking, the disarmament of a population is a very odious sign of things to come. Of the United States, of all nations, this situation taken as a whole is a big red flag.
Any citizen of the civilized world should be concerned about this very weird behaviour. A stable America is a very important part of keeping the peace for all of us.