Merchant first, president second
 

The queen of England recently visited Australia. She did the bit with kids and the dissabled, she attended a few functions and cut one or two ribbons as state leaders are expected to do. At no point did she get out the barrow and start hawking British made wares. My question to you all is, Why is it, no matter what the problem /occasion, Obama gets out his sales catalogue?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Ne...sh.aspx/223122
Egypt came out a big winner in the deal for Ilan Grapel: Israel frees 25 prisoners, and the US will sell Cairo the F-16 fighter .
Why on earth would America want to be selling this sort of hardware to an unstable country that hasn't even paid for the last batch yet? What connection could there possibly be between Grapels release and selling aircraft to a defacto moslem brotherhood?
If I ever go to the states and want a MacDonalds bigmac, will I be asked if I want an F-16 with that?
I so much want to like Americans but as soon as I get close they show me how shallow they really are.
Is renewal of presidency based on meeting a sales quota?

Two reasons:

1 Jobs.
2 Obama is an idiot.

I did wonder if Obama intended for the payment of them to come out of the aid we give them now or if it was in addition to. Egypt's economy is in free fall. Currency reserves dropped from about $37 billion at the beginning of the year to about 7 or 8 billion today.

The US on Thursday denied reports that they agreed to sell an F-16 fighter plane to Egypt in connection with the release of Ilan Grapel.

“There is no truth to [these] press reports," a US statement read. "Since 1982, the US government has sold over 220 F16s to Egypt as part of our long standing bilateral defense relationship,” the statement continued. source: http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=243443

However, why does it always have to be weapons to deliver mass destruction? I thought John Deer and CAT were American companies too. I would be pleased to see US aid take the form of something that would help ailing economies not just something to blast their neigbours with. John Deer new $50K, F-16 new $50,000K. I might be off course here but I would have thought that 1000 tractors would be more helpfull than one fighter jet considering Egypts need for job creation and agricultural development..

Those governments don't want tractors or economic development. They want guns to threaten their neighbors and their own people. Egypt imports 50% of its caloric requirements and has done so for a half century. 95% of Egyptians live within a few miles of the Nile just like they did 5,000 years ago. 45% of them are illiterate. And one of the few countries who helped them with irrigation technology was Israel and they hate them and want them all dead.

I overlooked the arab mentality being that they don't actually want to work. They want their neighbours to work and then the power to relieve them of their just rewards. Either that or UN handouts.
Nail on head?

The US Congress is debating whether to give/sell Turkey a slew of more Cobra helicopter gunships to kill more Kurds.

http://www.jpost.com/International/A...aspx?id=243503

We should supply the Kurds with stinger missles so the Turks will be able to buy lots more new Cobra helicopters and help out the American economy!

Libya 'lost' 20,000 shoulder fired missiles.....

Libya's lost missiles:They are likely stockpiled somewhere, awaiting a rainy day, when they can take their frustrations out on the Great Satan and its allies. Then again, they hold a great market value for pro-terrorist and budding-terrorists throughout the world. Personally, I think it is the former… biting the hand that feeds you seems to be inherent within the Arab world. Not that this mind-set is theirs alone on this, often forlorn, planet.

They have a shelf life. It's use them or lose them eventually.

I suspect the will not sit wasting their shelf life away. When this story was first reported, there was shock and awe on the faces of the western leadership and military-intelligence. Why? Surely they are not that naive? A rhetorical question on my part.