(2007-10-17) Us Arms Dealing

The US acting as Arms Dealer to the world doesn't work so well for us. Turkey and the United States signed a $1.78 billion deal for Lockheed Martin's F-16 fighter planes... Right now, the Pentagon is paying Lockheed billions to build a new fleet of F-22 Raptor stealth fighters. The Air Force has justified the program, which has become something of a boondoggle, by pointing to the spread of U.S.-built F-16 and F-18 fighters around the world. Indeed, a few years back, Lockheed was circulating a promotional pamphlet for the F-22, which stressed the need to maintain U.S. "air superiority" by pointing to countries around the world that were either adversaries or potential adversaries. It turned out that most of those countries were worrisome because they had... fleets of U.S.-built F-16s... In 2003, the most recent year for which records were available, the United States sent weapons to 18 of the 25 countries involved in active conflicts around the world... It's not uncommon for us to end up fighting against the same armies we equip. Everyone knows that the Iranian Air Force is basically made up of the same F-14s we sold to the Shah, but did you know that the last seven times the United States sent troops into conflict in substantial numbers (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Somalia, Iraq, and Panama), its adversaries possessed weapons or military technology made in the USA? (Blow Back)