Posted on 08/10/2008 8:56:42 AM PDT by kronos77
Israel is seeking to play down its defense exports to Georgia, which is battling Russia in a border war.
As fighting intensified over the weekend in Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region, Russian media queried to what extent their foe had benefited from Israeli arms and military training.
Fearing a crisis with Moscow, Jerusalem officials said that Israeli defense ties with Georgia were scaled down months ago.
Israel's annual military dealings with Tbilisi are worth around $200 million a year, a defense source said, adding that this is dwarfed by Georgian purchases from other arms suppliers such as the United States.
While previously Israel sold Georgia some tactical missile system, its more recent sales are exclusively defensive, the source said.
Israel's Defense Ministry also turned down a proposal to sell Georgia tanks.
Tensions over Israel's ties to Tbilisi, and how this might impact relations between Jerusalem and Moscow, come amid international concern over the prospect of Russia selling advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.
Russia is selling arms to Iran and Syria, who give the arms to those who kill Israelis. It seems like turnabout should be fair play to me. And I hope the Georgians plant plenty of IEDs to stop the Russians who've done so much to help put uranium in the hands of the mad mullahs in Iran.
Russia, the rapacious arsenal of terror states, takes exception to Israel selling arms ping.
Things just might be fixin' to get real ugly...
huh. What happened to israeli balls?
>huh. What happened to israeli balls?
They basically disappeared when Olmert came to power.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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That's true, which is likely why they've been supplying arms. At the same time i can understand the concern, even using Georgia as a point with the Russians. It's not like any western power is going to be of help, and Georgia is far beyond Israel's ability to project power. Any agreement with the Russians, I wouldn't trust them for a second, so in reality no informal agreement is worth a thing.
A lot of countries have lost their scrotum. Many people mock nations like France (which is ironically working hard under Sarkozy to regrow their gonads), yet their own nations are not much better (and in some instances worse). For instance, no French sailor would ever let other sailors get bl@@dy kidnapped in the manner through which those British sailors were nabbed by the Iranians! Anyways, the global mosaic has really changed, and a lot of nations have, for lack of a better word, been neutered.
The sad thing is that even though the world looks safer it is not. It is just that for the longest time in world history things have been safer! Even though there have been lots of wars and genocides going on in various hot spots around the globe, the world as a whole has been very safe. Even with threats and intimations of terrorism, the world has been a nice place to live in (your chances as an individual have been the best they have been in a long time).
The ironic thing is that it has actually been more of a protracted lull. The forces that seek to burn the world still exist, and in some ways they are even stronger (during the Cold War only the USSR was a major threat ....today Russia, even with its prodigious arsenal of nuclear weapons, is not even close to the threat posed by an Al Queda cell with a small atomic device that it got from Pakistan, setting up base in a warehouse near Houston after smuggling themselves in via Mexico using coyotes paid with money from one of the various Saudi princes who may not like the US that much. I hear for 10 to 50 grand US I can be GUARANTEED not to be stopped by US border patrols).
At this rate I think the world shall be awakened to the fact that things are still perilous when an attack occurs that will make 9/11 look like child's play. While 9/11 was a horrendous attack, people need to realize that it could have easily been far worse. They also need to realize that out there are people who do not have your best interests at heart. Even with all the years I have been in the US I have never forgotten the fact that outside the US there are some folk who really and truly have bad intent in their hearts.
Yet people are losing their 'nads now!
I really do not know what the Us would have done, and on other threads I have poked fun at the people saying that we should give the Georgians nuclear weapons. However, this was a major test, and the West just failed. Remember that Georgia is no.3 in terms of troop strength in Iraq ....or at least it was since they are pulling all their troops out.
The Russians really gamed the system well ....there is nothing the US appears willing to do, and Israel has all but said to hell with the Georgii on this.
Anyways, this reminds me of a line that was hammered into my head as a kid. Literally hammered, as some prepared for a day when people will realize that as safe as things look, they have never been more dangerous. It is from William Buckley, quoting Belloc:
'We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid.
We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh.
But as we laugh, we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on those faces there is no smile.
Anyone with sense will realize that there is something in those words that appears to have been written for the US and the free nations. They laugh, yet do not realize that a nation like Russia now has more money that it knows what to do with (yet people on FR still talk of rusty ships and mothballs), a nation like China has even more money, and not only is it a wealthy Capitalist nation with a Communist heart, it is also currently being given the largest fete a nation can get, and that terrorist groups now have the ability to cause massive pain even with few numbers and limited financing. When nations like Pakistan are valued allies, and at the same time the major source of terrorism. When the West is increasingly isolated globally, as China gobbles up ever greater sections of Africa and Latin America (while some people on FR mockingly comment that Africa is not worth beetle dung in their rank stupidity).
It could be an hour from now, or a decade hence, but I strongly believe that something will happen that will show the world that the 'large and awful faces from beyond' were working hard while the free world was laughing at them.
The sad thing is that experience is a very expensive teacher.
Best post that I have read in a long time. Salute!
‘We’ll Neutralize S-300 if they’re Sold to Iran’
Jerusalem Post | August 10, 2008
Posted on 08/10/2008 7:53:39 AM PDT by nuconvert
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2059422/posts
It’s a gangster state again.
So this was planned long ago.
Containing some very rich gangsters indeed.
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