Money, Weapons, Money, Weapons

Our foreign policy and tax dollars at work: a package to sell Persian Gulf nations billions of dollars worth of fancy weapons, to gain leverage against our current arch-nemesis, the allegedly nuke hungry, fanatical, evil, evil, evil Iran.

Possibly, the Bush administration is throwing weapons at Gulf nations because everyone knows our future involvement in Iraq is uncertain, at best.

Traditionally, here we follow the tried method of feeding states our advanced weaponry, with the intention of leaving the more complicated problems to...you know...them. This needs to stop. It didn't work during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan--those days, after all, the CIA did indirectly fund the militias that later became the Taliban and Al-Qaeda--and I'm inclined to believe that it won't work now.

American college scholarships are being rehashed and slashed while these countries arm themselves with some of the highest quality weaponry money can buy. I seem to remember the last Pell Grant boost was about $100 over the next five years. Here we have a ten-year, twenty-billion-dollar deal for Arab states and $30 billion for Israel. Is this misguided policy, or what?