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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.