President Bush Arming Fellow Tyrants Globally

[leftchick]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/12277

"In the last six years, Washington has stepped up its sales and transfers of high-technology weapons, military training, and other military assistance to governments regardless of their respect for human rights, democratic principles, or nonproliferation," according to a report in the current(Jan.-Feb.) "Arms Control Today," published online by the Arms Control Association(ACA). "All that matters is that they have pledged their assistance in the global war on terrorism."

You read it right. The Bush regime has been using 9/11 as an excuse for the reckless sale of weapons around the globe, working $16.9 billion in new arms deals in 2006, 41.9 percent of the world's total. This compares to runners-up Russia, $8.7 billion, and Great Britain, $3.1 billion, writes Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information(CDI), which tracks such data.

Despots once banned from getting U.S. weapons and training are being showered with both. "By providing military assistance with a disregard for human rights(HR) conditions, the U.S. is not only giving up the opportunity to use military assistance as leverage to improve (HR conditions), but is also rewarding abusive governments for their unconscionable actions," Stohl writes.

Noting that U.S. aid is growing "at the same time as human rights conditions are worsening," Stohl cites the example of Ethiopia, "which is carrying out a brutal counterinsurgency campaign within its own borders" and Nepal, whose security forces "opened fire on peaceful strikers and anti-government demonstrations." Bush is also funneling millions into Uzbekistan, where thousands of Muslims have been imprisoned without due process and many tortured to death.

One headline-making scandal, of course, is the $10 billion in taxpayer's money Bush has funneled to the Pakistan military since 9/11, where General Pervez Musharraf has habitually disappeared his political foes, and recently invoked emergency rule, suspended the constitution and jailed thousands. Bush okayed the multi-billion dollar sale to Musharraf of F-16 jet fighters that can pack nuclear warheads, just as he okayed their sale earlier to India, escalating the capability of these long-time antagonists to inflict dreadful atrocities if they go to war.

[C_U_L8R]

1. He's stuffing his treasure boxes

before hightailing it to Paraguay