John Ward Anthony Cordesman, Gordon Brown, US sells arms to arabs, Vladimir Putin

US-ARAB ARMS DEAL: rationalisation of the century.


It’s finger on the trigger time for economic recovery.

Not since Gordon Brown sold gold “as part of a planned diversification of Britain’s investment strategy” have the media been treated to quite such a whopper as today’s Washington rationale for it’s latest garage-sale of weapons.

Keen as ever to broker peace in the Middle East, the US yesterday announced a $123 billion arms sale to Arab countries. You could bail out a couple of Californias with that kind of walking-around money. But money had nothing to do with it: perish the thought. This is what the FT ran today as the Washington take on selling missiles to blokes who fire guns in the air for fun:

‘Anthony Cordesman, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the US was aiming to achieve a “new post-Iraq war security structure that can secure the flow of energy exports to the global economy”. The arms sales would “reinforce the level of regional deterrence and help reduce the size of forces the US must deploy in the region”’.

And make us all a shitload of moneeeeeeeeeeeeee.

It’s the sort of bollocks so damned hog sloppy, it’s tailor-made for Slog copy, ba-boom. And what with gullibility futures on the up these days, we should prepare for more of the same.

‘Asked today why he kept showing his six-pack, rolling in snow and hunting from jet-skis, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said, “I am trying to achieve a new post-Medvedev security structure that can advance sales of Russian fitness equipment, jet-skis and snow, and thus broaden our economic output from its core strength of getting billion-ruble loans on Moscow flats that are purely notional”.’