Bush to Sell Weapons to Saudi Regimes

The Washington Post reports today that the Bush administration is hawking WMDs to Saudi Arabia and its surrounding regions, including Israel and Egypt, for a price tag of $20 billion.

The arms deals, which include the sales of a variety of sophisticated weaponry, would be the largest negotiated by this administration. The military assistance agreements would provide $30 billion in new U.S. aid to Israel and $13 billion to Egypt over 10 years, the officials said. Both figures represent significant increases in military support.

U.S. officials said the arms sales to Saudi Arabia are expected to include air-to-air missiles as well as Joint Direct Attack Munitions, which turn standard bombs into "smart" precision-guided bombs. Most, but not all, of the arms sales to the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries -- Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman -- will be defensive, the officials said.

The arrogance of our own regime is astonishing: it went to war with Iraq employing a laundry list of bogus claims in defense of its invasion and occupation of the region (finding WMDs that Saddam Hussein purportedly have being one of them). And now the administration, in a sanctimonious fashion, peddling chemical and biological weapons to Israel, Egypt, and a few other nation-states, all in the name of making allies with the Middle East while getting tough with Iran.

In a nutshell, it wasn't okay for Saddam to have WMDs in his own backyard, even if he were to going to sell them to his own allies in the region (which he had done), but it's fine and dandy for Bush and his collectivistic thugs in Israel and Egypt to do the same.

This is pure hypocrisy at its worst. And for good measure, this is a fine epitome of the old adage, "The enemy of my enemy is my ally."

Pathetic yet predictable.