Freedom and democracy on the march, I guess. Some VERY damning stuff here.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GE27Aa03.html
May 27, 2005
More arms for US's 'friends'
By Thalif Deen
NEW YORK - The United States has accelerated arms sales to some of the world's most repressive and undemocratic regimes since September 11, 2001, according to a new report from leading arms trade researchers. The report, from the Arms Trade Resource Center at New York-based New School University's World Policy Institute, says the increase in sales and military grants is a payoff to countries that have either joined what the White House calls its "war on terror" or have backed the United States in its military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
A majority of US arms sales to the developing world also go to regimes "defined as undemocratic by our own State Department" or Foreign Ministry, says the study. According to the report, US-supplied arms are involved in a majority of the world's active conflicts, including those in Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Colombia, Pakistan, Israel and the Philippines. The study cites the recent decision by the administration of President George W Bush to provide new F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan, while pledging comparable high-tech military hardware to India - thereby providing US arms to both sides in a long-brewing conflict among two nuclear-armed rivals. Moreover,
the tens of millions of dollars in US arms transfers to Uzbekistan - where many anti-government demonstrators were killed recently - "exemplify the negative consequences of arming repressive regimes", it says. According to the study, countries defined as "undemocratic" in the State Department's annual human-rights report are also major recipients of US military aid or weapons systems. These include: Saudi Arabia (US$1.1 billion in 2003), Egypt ($1 billion), Kuwait ($153 million), the United Arab Emirates ($110 million), and Uzbekistan ($33 million).
"Arming repressive regimes while simultaneously proclaiming a campaign against tyranny undermines the credibility of the United States and makes it harder to hold other nations to high standards of conduct on human rights and other key issues," said Frida Berrigan, co-author of the study, "US Weapons at War 2005: Promoting Freedom or Fueling Conflict?"
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