by James Glaser
June 12, 2002

Yes, we can all be proud of the fact that America has been able to keep that coveted number one spot in "Arms Sales to Developing Nations". Makes one proud huh? From 1993 to 2000 we sold over $101,091,000,000.00 in weapons to nations that really didn't have the technology to make them for themselves. Are we great or what?

Where do I come up with stuff like this you ask? The Congressional Research Service, in other words from the United States Government. You see, we are so proud that we can sell all of these weapons that we put the figures right out on the Internet for the world to see.

Some of you might just think that people living in these countries might feel bad that we sell their government the weapons that are used to oppress them and just maybe these same people could be future terrorists attacking America to stop these weapon sales. Perish the thought, Washington knows that those terrorists can't be that sophisticated, besides we are talking jobs here and what pray tell could be more important than jobs.

Those in Washington are saying, "there he goes again." We bust our butts to get us to the top in arms sales and he finds something to bitch about. He doesn't know what a hard job this is, even Congress stops a sale some times and we are only selling defense weapons, if not the country has to promise that they won't misuse them. So the whole world can see all of Americas sales are on the up and up.

You want to hear what we are selling? Well here it is from 1993 to 2000, 2397 tanks, 3505 armored personal carriers, 583 supersonic combat aircraft, 380 helicopters, 2808 surface to air missiles, 762 anti ship missals and lots and lots of other cool killing stuff.

I want you to remember that these sales are just to developing nations, ones that are trying to feed their people and ones that could use education and medical help. This doesn't include those big sales to more advanced countries nor does it include the weapons that we just give away to our "friends."

You might ask if any of these weapons might come back and "get us?" Well now President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been telling us that there are terrorist all over the globe in just about every country. They go on to tell us that these terrorists have lots of money and we have to stop the flow of this money to them. These developing countries are poor, terrorist money spends just like ours, so what would you think?

Sure America being number one in these sales of weapons employees many Americans and there are many powerful people that are getting rich off of these sales, but is that what you want? I know that Congress is made up of lots of real wimps when it comes to stepping on the toes of the rich and powerful, but would it hurt you and I to at the least e-mail our Congressman and ask that America get out of being as they said in WW1, Merchants of Death.

If you lived in a third world developing nation and wanted a future for your children and nation, who would you see as the one entity in this world that was doing the most harm to you and the rest of mankind?