Posted on 02/01/2011 6:22:03 PM PST by khnyny
The protests in Egypt have prompted renewed questions about the U.S.'s aid to the country -- an issue that the U.S. government has also pledged to reconsider. We've taken a step back and tried to answer some basic questions, such as how as much the U.S. has given, who has benefited, and who gets to decide how its all spent.
How much does the U.S. spend on Egypt?
Egypt gets the most U.S. foreign aid of any country except for Israel. (This doesn't include the money spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.) The amount varies each year and there are many different funding streams, but U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt has averaged just over $2 billion every year since 1979, when Egypt struck a peace treaty with Israel following the Camp David Peace Accords, according to a Congressional Research Service report from 2009.
That average includes both military and economic assistance, though the latter has been in decline since 1998, according to CRS.
What about military aid -- how much is it, and what does it buy?
According to the State Department, U.S. military aid to Egypt totals over $1.3 billion annually in a stream of funding known as Foreign Military Financing.
U.S. officials have long argued that the funding promotes strong ties between the two countries' militaries, which in turn has all sorts of benefits. For example, U.S. Navy warships get "expedited processing" through the Suez Canal.
Here's a 2009 U.S. embassy cable recently released by WikiLeaks that makes essentially the same point
President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the USD 1.3 billion in annual FMF as "untouchable compensation" for making and maintaining peace with Israel...
(Excerpt) Read more at tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com ...
“It would be interesting to know Egypt’s military equipment inventory (bought with US aid) that will soon fall into enemy hands.... “
Yea. And you can bet if the radicals take over the amount of U.S. aid will skyrocket. The administration will just say it is for social and economic reform. But we know where the money will go. The poor will be more poor. The hungry will be more so. Anyone who is not an islamic fundamentalist should probably make rapid plans for get out now.
It would appear they at least have some M-1 Abrams tanks and F-16s. Thankfully the Israelis are better trained than the Egyptians-!
I would not be surprised if some of it ends up in the hands of US officials on the take.
Same place as the money sent to Haiti. Check those offshore accounts in Switzerland, the Carribean, Vatican, and South America. Try not to disturb the US politicians accounts.
Don’t know about Egypt, but “aid to the Palestinians” mostly went to Yassar Arafat’s personal bank account.
Foreign aid is the best scheme ever invented for taking the money from the pocket of a poor person in one country and putting it in the pocked of a rich person in another country.
Foreign aid is the best scheme ever invented for taking the money from the pocket of a poor person in one country and putting it in the pocked of a rich person in another country.
That’s easy.
The money ends up in Mubarak’s bank account as well as the bank accounts of his generals.
Mubarak is 82 frickin years old, I can see how the people are like “enough already - retire to the South of France”. I just wish there was a better option than the Muslim Brotherhood to rule the country (shudder).
I’d still like to follow the US aid money trail, though...
If you go to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s website, you can scroll through to see the items other countries are buying (or trying to buy). The FMF is basically corporate welfare, since it has to be used to purchase US equipment. It isn’t given to a country in cash, but credit.
FMF funds remain in the USG bank in Denver.
When Egypt buys FMS, the money is paid between the USG and the US company that sells the kit. It doesn't leave the country and is paid directly from the government to the company (upon delivery of the item -- DD-250 signed.)
The source-selection process under FMS is run by the USG, not Egypt.
Egypt does its needs analysis, does its Letter of Request (LOR) for gear that it needs and the USG Embassy in Cairo reviews the requests and validates them and send the LOR to the US military department that will be responsible for contracting for the gear.
For F-16’s it is SAF/IA, for M-1 tanks, that would be the Army (USASAC). The military department then runs the competition and makes the source selection, not the Egyptians.
The USG pays the US company, not the Egyptians.
The FMS funding is US dollars to be spent on US gear, and the money doesn't leave the US.
The FMS process is done for three reasons: Access, Influence and Infrastructure.
Selling US gear to an ally ensures physical and political access. You have to have physical access to train, maintain and deliver the items. You also have access to political and military leadership as you help shape the delivery, training and exercising of the gear, as well as have leverage regarding how much of the budget may be spent at any given time. You act out of line and the deliveries and logistics support stops (Pakistan F-16’s for example).
Access means you have influence.
You can influence things because the US now controls the logistics, support, training and supply train. If they act out of line, like I said, deliveries are suspended/ended.
For most military equipment, extensive logistics and support is required to maintain the gear in any sort of working order.
Finally, infrastructure. Infrastructure means the military manufacturing industrial base in the US.
The USG is not buying enough gear to ensure viability of the industry. Therefore, FMS ensures the factory doors remain open, that we have trained and experienced workers, that vital research and development necessary to remain at the leading edge of technology is maintained, and of course, the cost of this R&D is paid for through foreign military sales, either DCS (company to country) or FMS (country to USG to company). Most FMS is not FMF.
FMS st is a bit more complicated and with a heck of a lot of oversight. More than most people realize.
Hollywood and their depictions of “gunrunning” is all wrong. I know, shocking that some people think Hollywood movies are a fair representation of reality.
The DSCA website also should list the criteria for selling the gear and the statement/objectives the president must make/satisfy when submitting a 36b notification. Please see my above post for explanation on why we do FMS. While many people think FMS is simply unregulated and wild "gunrunning," it is not.
The DSCA website also should list the criteria for selling the gear and the statement/objectives the president must make/satisfy when submitting a 36b notification. Please see my above post for explanation on why we do FMS. While many people think FMS is simply unregulated and wild "gunrunning," it is not.
SS is going broke and US taxpayers are struggling as we are extorted for trillions pouring into these Mideast hellholes. Some deadheads have opined that the notion of a "(laugh out loud) destabilized" Mideast led by Egypt," is going to make the $2 Billion foreign aid (to Egypt alone) look like chicken feed. Furthermore, the soft-headed thinking goes, when the Saudis are hit, US taxpayers will pay $7-8 dollar a gallon gas and grocery store shelves will empty as US shipping systems fail due to fuel prices.
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TIMEOUT---LET'S LOOK AT THE FACTS The game was OVER years ago when the US was duped into thinking there was this thing called "peace in the Middle East." The US was conned into appeasing this "voracious peace monster" by pouring trillions of US dollars into "the region"...... and duped into invading Mideast countries with rivers of young blood, which only served to make 100 million Muslims seethe with hatred for the US.
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The BIGGEST CON perpetrated on the US-----in the beginning-----is that all the Arabs "think alike" and had the "same" goals and aspirations. Yeah, sure. As Ron Paul brilliantly opined: a free people like the the US cannot ever begin to understand the Mideast mind. Arabs are beset with centuries-old simmering sectarian differences.
REMEMBER THAT THE US GETS MOST OF ITS OIL FROM OTHER COUNTRIES---NOT THE SAUDIS The Saudis with all that oil are certainly different from the rest of the region. US business dealt amicably for many years with the Saudis.......when gas was 25 cents a gallon. That should have been cultivated.
And now-----in the ensuing years, with all the self-serving finagling with our foreign policy----- pan-Arabia DOES share the same aspirations---they ALL hate the US and want us destroyed.
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WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN If the US looked after its own interests and simply negotiated with the Saudis, we would have trillions of dollars in the US Treasury, and oil to spare.
Instead the US was conned-----duped by con artists who are too stupid to govern themselves unless the US taxpayer props them up with trillions of tax dollars.
It'll never end------the US government will be conned again, we will throw billions of hard earned tax dollars into this disaster................even if it sends the US into economic oblivion.
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DATELINE AFGHANISTAN: HERE WE GO AGAIN Karzai's bags of cash | By Melissa Bell, Washington Post | October 25, 2010
EXCERPT Bags of money seem to be floating around Afghanistan............They have been a huge thorn in the efforts to curb corruption in Kabul. The Post's Greg Miller wrote in September: "After nearly nine years of nation-building in Afghanistan, experts said, the U.S. government faces mounting evidence that it has helped to assemble one of the most corrupt governments in the world. One of the biggest problems concerns the bags of cash. An estimated $1 billion a year leaves the country in bags carried out of the Kabul airport."
Miller wrote in August: " In April, officials encountered a courier for a financial transfer firm who reported that he was carrying $700,000 on a flight to Dubai, but when customs officials inspected the courier's luggage, they found an additional $600,000. However, in his dismissal of the news, Karzai said cash transactions are quite normal and then-President George W. Bush was aware of the Iranian donations. The United States supposedly gives him bags of cash as well."
THIS'LL MAKE YOU FEEL ALL WARM AND COZY INSIDE The article also notes bags of cash coming into Afghanistan from Iran. Ron Paul was s-o-o-o-o right.
Except 'Arabia' including all those other little sand counties that are sitting on top of oil. That oil is OURS. We discovered all of it. And when those little hell holes 'nationalized' those US Oil Co's we should have sent in the Marines and some B-52's to kick ass and take OUR property, and OIL, back.
Other than that, when the Soviets fell we should have left. We no longer had to worry about 'Russian Influence' in the region.
Now, going to war against the Taliban was justified, and there was a legit reason to go to war against Iraq, Saddam Violated UN Resolution 1441. However I don't recall the USA being the UN's Police Force.
Hmm.. I guess I'm also saying that Israel should be on its own too. No more soup for them, or BILLIONS of our hard earned TAX Dollars. Or our technology - they just sell it to China and North Korea anyway.
Before I channel more of Pat Buchanan, I think that's about it for now :-)
And I still blame the UK and France for ALL the problems in that region. Every crappy place where's there's fighting was once part of their 'empires' or 'mandates'. IMO France's motto should be: 'France. Screwing up the world since 1871.'
PART OF THE PUKES LONG TERM PLANS Pukeneos musta whispered that in GWB's good ear (/snix).
And thanks for the excellent deconstruction---nice inspiration via Pat.
I’m well aware - I was a ‘gunrunner’ in a previous life.
USASAC, SAF/IA, Navy IPO?
Just curious (I was SAF/IA).
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