U.S. plans $7 billion missile-defense sale to UAEWASHINGTON, Sept 8 - The Bush administration is planning to sell the
United Arab Emirates an advanced U.S. missile defense system valued at
up to $7 billion that could be used to defend against Iran, people who
have attended briefings on the matter said on Monday.The Pentagon is set to notify the U.S. Congress of the proposed sale, which would be the first of the so-called Terminal High Altitude Area
Defense, or THAAD, several people familiar with the matter said.THAAD is built by Lockheed Martin Corp. Raytheon Co supplies the system's radar.
Once notified of such a proposed arms sale by the administration, Congress has 30 days to review it but almost never blocks.
In any case, deployment of the THAAD weapons system is "at least months away" and could take more than a year, said a congressional staff
member familiar with the matter.Kenneth Katzman, an expert on the Gulf at the Congressional Research Service, said the UAE has been eager for a "sophisticated antidote" to Iran's missile capabilities.
"The UAE has been concerned for many years about possible retaliation
against it for U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities," he said.
As they well should be. UAE has at least attempted, nearly alone, to be something other than an oil pumping Sharia land. They are not different yet. But there are a few there who want OTHER. Not many. That's plenty to make them the prime enemies of Qom-ville
For Iran, Katzman added, UAE could be an attractive target because of its billions of dollars of infrastructure investments.
Craig Vanbebber, a Lockheed Martin spokesman, said several countries had shown interest in buying the THAAD system, "with its significant coverage area and tremendous success in recent testing."
THAAD is the first missile defense system designed to defend against short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles both inside and outside the Earth's atmosphere.
The potential $7 billion sale would include anti-missile interceptors, firing units, associated radar sites and training, among other things, a congressional staff member said.
3 comments:
Repeat post:
Fitzgerald over at Jihadwatch.org has frequently noted an article by J. B. Kelly printed June of 1979 in the now out-of-print "Encounter" magazine, titled "Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies".
From which I quote:
Western powers that be, have believed now (for generations) that to secure favorable oil contracts in the ME, the West would sell themselves out.. . .in
the guise of "recycling", a magical process by which the vast sums paid out for oil would be recovered both by the sale of equally vast quantitites of industrial goods and arms and by luring the Arabs into investing their financial surpluses in the West.
What few paused to consider, or if they did, resignedly rejected as impracticable, was whether it would not be wiser to press for a reduction of oil prices. After all, if for any reason the contracts for arms and other Western manufactures were to be cancelled, the West would still be compelled to pay excessive prices foroil without being able to offset them by the sale of Chieftain Tanks and F-16's.
That 30 year old article as well as the books written by J. B. Kelly are must read material if one wants to understand the Arab dynamic and have a desire not to repeat such failed policies.
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The dollars that burn out of my tank to appear in Venezuela (which is where ours are prob going) are useless to me in any form, even if General Dynamics got some of them back, but in this case...it's Sukhoi, Milkhoyan, and whoever makes their Kilo subs in Archangelsk.
AS far as selling them defensinve missiles,....right now anything which frustrates Iran is good. We have GOT (PRIORITY ONE) to stop them from getting a nuke.
Just consider the day after a middle east regional nuclear war.
Oil
Death
Disease
Food
Medicine
Population shifts
A superpower should not rely on temporary questionable alliances whose ultimate allegiances lie not within national/sectarian/tribal boundaries - rather to the wider ideological boundaries of Islam.
A lesson STATE & the defense industry refuses to comprehended since aiding Afghan rebels against the USSR. US should learn from past short sightedness and not act as mid-wives birthing al-qaeda 2.0.
From J.B. Kelly's book "Arabia, the Gulf & the West" 1980:
To a large extent the Wahhabis' successive occupations of Buraimi were made possible by their ability to exploit the numerous fueds, factional rialries and sectarian differences that divided the tribes of northern Oman and the adjacent coast of the Gulf.
and compare to H. Fitzgerald:
Quotes like that would have me google one of Hugh's familiar comments:
But we Infidels, even if we find this or that Muslim charmer charming, should not ever again make the mistake of confusing our interests -- which is to constrain Islam’s supremacist impulse, constrain its power, constrain or undo its instruments of Jihad (the money weapon, Da’wa, demographic conquest). The best means to do this is to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islamic Jihad, not through the baseless notion, promoted by some, that “moderate Muslims are the solution” (those who at this point keep up this mantra will find themselves cutting off the limb they have climbed out on, though no doubt the government and foundation grant money, and lecture fees, will still flow in), but by exploiting the fissures, ethnic, sectarian, and economic, that are there, waiting to be exploited, if only they can be recognized and appreciated.
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