Officials: Bush Agrees to Sell F-16s to Pakistan

[Crazy Cooter]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050325/pl_nm/southasia_fighters_dc
"The prime minister expressed India's great disappointment at the decision which could have negative consequences for India's security environment," Sanjaya Baru, spokesman for the prime minister's office, told Reuters.

Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors, who have fought three wars and were on the brink of another in 2002, have eased since they began talks last year aimed at ending half a century of enmity.

India has strongly opposed the sale of F-16s to Pakistan after the Pentagon (news - web sites) cleared arms sales worth $1.2 billion to Pakistan last year. New Delhi says the planes could only be used against it in a conflict.

Islamabad in turn has said that any move by the United States to sell Patriot anti-missile systems to India would trigger a new arms race in the region, after a U.S. defense team made a presentation last month in New Delhi.

The F-16 sale represents a major policy shift for the United States and a final step toward tacit acceptance of Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons.

That's great, supply both sides weapons... go economy!  I thought the whole point of all this was to stabilize the region, not act as an arms dealer.

[ChadTower]

Personally, I don't understand why we sell any arms to anyone.

[Grasshopper]

It's utter madness. Haven't they learnt anything from supplying weapons to Saddam.

It wouldn't surprise me if Musharraf ends up being the next Saddam.

They say history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

Mind you it's equally stupid of Europe to want to sell arms to China.

[ChadTower]

Maybe the Pakistanis will use them to bomb all of the places in India that our jobs keep being moved to.

[shmokes]

ChadTower is a glass-is-half-full guy.

[Dartful Dodger]

Maybe the Pakistanis will use them to bomb all of the places in India that our jobs keep being moved to.

That made me laugh.

Since I work in an open office you've ruined my illusion of doing actual work.

There probably going to outsource my job to India.

[DrewKaree]

I'm a "glass is too big" kinda guy

[ChadTower]

I'm a glass is half full bottle next to it is 3/4 full guy.

[mr.Curmudgeon]

I'm a "pisses in Chad's, Drew's, and Dartful's glass" kinda' guy...   

I'm just kidding, I love you guys.
mrC

[Crazy Cooter]

I guess it's ok.  Britian is selling to Iran to even the score.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7295706/
- from page 2 -
American officials in Vienna and Washington refused to comment on the procurements beyond saying the Bush administration is opposed to all efforts by Iran to buy weapons and any other militarily useful equipment.

What's more likely, Iran needing weapons to combat Afgan drug smugglers (90% of the worlds opium comes from there), or Pakistan needing F-16 fighters to protect itself from India?

Why don't we ALL just stop selling the stuff to ANYONE for a little while and let stuff settle down a bit?  Talk about throwing gas on a fire... idiots.  That whole place is going to go up in flames.

[Dartful Dodger]

Why don't we ALL just stop selling the stuff to ANYONE for a little while and let stuff settle down a bit?

We need to offset the deficit Clinton started.
If they get out of control we can always go in and take them back.

We've already proven how easily we can do that.

[Grasshopper]

Why don't we ALL just stop selling the stuff to ANYONE for a little while and let stuff settle down a bit?

We need to offset the deficit Clinton started.
If they get out of control we can always go in and take them back.

We've already proven how easily we can do that.

OK putting aside how morally bankrupt your position is, the cost of 'taking them back' is going to be far more than the profit made by selling them in the first place.

Just found an interesting statistic on the cost of the Iraq war.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-08-26-iraq-war-clock_x.htm

Starting unnecessary wars is not the best way to clear a deficit IMHO.

[ChadTower]

Starting unnecessary wars is not the best way to clear a deficit IMHO.

It was before we found it 'necessary' to start rebuilding the damn place to be 5x better than it was before we got there.

[Crazy Cooter]

Until Pakistan invades it...

[shmokes]

It was before we found it 'necessary' to start rebuilding the damn place to be 5x better than it was before we got there.

...if we owed that country a bunch of money, I suppose.

[paigeoliver]

I am of the opinion that we should sell an unlimited amount of weapons to other countries, but all of them should be swords.

Matter of fact, I would LOVE to see a massive global stigma against the use of ranged weapons. I would like to see the stigma be so terrible that any country having ranged weapons would be invaded by 10,000 troops (armed with swords), along with 1,000s of sword tanks (tanks with HUGE swords on them).

It will never happen, but if we could somehow socially engineer a stigma against ranged weapons than wars would pretty much cease.

[jbox]

It will never happen, but if we could somehow socially engineer a stigma against ranged weapons than wars would pretty much cease.

Ever read the "Prince In Waiting" trilogy? It is initially set as a medieval story, but you quickly find out that it is in fact a post-apocalyptic story. The word has regressed back into simple hand-warfaring city-states, with a deal amongst each other than anyone who tries to develop any of the evil "Technology" stuff that destroyed their world gets dealt with harshly... 

But based on my limited understanding of the Cold War I'm pretty sure the primary reason companies sell weapons to people is to make money. But the other reason companies sell weapons to people is that they can then get funding to build better weapons so that they can "stay ahead of the other guys weapons". 

And while we're on the topic - sorry about Australia. I mean, there's no point complaining about whether or not it is safe to build nuclear reactors if we just keep selling the damn stuff to everyone anyway. (sigh) 

[Crazy Cooter]

You forgot the third reason for selling weapons: Testing.  Sell them and see how well they perform in combat without going into combat yourself.

[ChadTower]

That only applies if you also train their pilots, which we're not doing.

[Crazy Cooter]

You don't buy multiple F-16's if you don't know how to fly them.

[Zero_Hour]

We need to offset the deficit Clinton started.

Please explain. I was not aware that the deficit did not exist prior to the Clinton administration.

[ChadTower]

You would think so, yes, but it's not always true.

You can only test high performance equipment with people who push its capabilities.  The only way we would get MORE data from Pakistan using these jets would be if their pilots are better than ours.  We have used them extensively and they are not a new technology.