Posted on 05/26/2015 10:39:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Of 20 nations that donated to the Foundation, 17 had more robust weapons transactions in the three fiscal years that State was led by Hillary than in the last three years of the previous administration. How do you convince a president who got elected in 2008 on an anti-war platform repudiating warmongering cowboy George W. Bush to ramp up arms deals to unsavory regimes in the Middle East? Slipping a fat envelope into the Clinton slush fund’s collection box couldn’t hurt. And evidently didn’t.
Personally, I’m pretty excited to have every foreign-policy transaction the United States engages in through 2020, at a minimum, scrutinized after the fact to see just how much the president and her husband personally benefited from our partner’s largesse.
Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure — derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) — represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.
The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House.
American defense contractors also donated to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and in some cases made personal payments to Bill Clinton for speaking engagements. Such firms and their subsidiaries were listed as contractors in $163 billion worth of Pentagon-negotiated deals that were authorized by the Clinton State Department between 2009 and 2012…
In all, governments and corporations involved in the arms deals approved by Clinton’s State Department have delivered between $54 million and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to the Clinton family, according to foundation and State Department records. The Clinton Foundation publishes only a rough range of individual contributors’ donations, making a more precise accounting impossible.
You can guess the coming spin from Team Hillary: U.S. military exports have been booming under Obama for years, and not just to Clinton Foundation donors. “There’s an Obama arms bazaar going on,” said one arms-control expert back in 2011. The next year, Obama set a record for weapons shipments to the Middle East. The year after that, after Hillary had left State, he relaxed military export controls further by shifting some of State’s duties to approve weapons deals over to the Commerce Department, which could be more “flexible” in approving sales to nations with dubious human-rights records. “After adjusting for inflation,” wrote arms-control wonk William Hartung last month, “the volume of major deals concluded by the Obama administration in its first five years exceeds the amount approved by the Bush administration in its full eight years in office by nearly $30 billion. That also means that the Obama administration has approved more arms sales than any U.S. administration since World War II.” And you can understand why, given the parameters of Hopenchange foreign policy: As we’re seeing right now in Iraq, Obama’s a fan of equipping foreign powers to defend U.S. interests, whether they’re truly able to do so or not, because it spares him from having to deploy U.S. military assets. Better that ISIS set up a terror state in the heart of Iraq and Syria than any combat units be sent in by a guy who got elected running against the Iraq war. It may seem counterintuitive but ramping up military exports makes sense for a White House that leans heavily on diplomacy (sometimes to a fault, a la Iran), strongly favors military disengagement, and needed a way to goose the economy in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Demand for weapons among Middle Eastern regimes was higher too during O’s first term thanks to jitters from the Arab Spring.
But none of that proves or disproves that donations made to the Clinton Foundation and the weapons that followed were matters of correlation, not causation. On the contrary, foreign regimes arguably would have had more reason to slip Bill and Hillary an envelope if they had reason to believe Obama was planning to turn on the arms spigot during his first term. They might have gotten more weapons whether they donated or not, but that’s true of many bribes; they’re insurance that a course of action will be taken even if independent motives to take that action exist. And of course, however Team Hillary spins this, the sober fact remains for the left that their next nominee will have presided over an unprecedented spree of weapons dealing, including to brutal authoritarian regimes, which complicates the tried-and-true Democratic narrative that Republicans are the party of warmongers.
In fact, expect some of the sharper GOP candidates this time around to rebut that by wondering if one not-so-hidden reason why military exports ballooned under Obama is because the world became much less safe under his foreign policy. Of course Middle Eastern autocrats need weapons after Obama encouraged the Arab Spring by turning his back on Hosni Mubarak; of course the Saudis are frantic for the Pentagon to sell them massive amounts of arms while Obama’s new friends in Tehran terrorize Sunni populations in four different countries, the latest in the Kingdom’s backyard. That Hillary got paid from the aftermath just makes the stench that much more obnoxious.
There is so much There ...There
I hope I live long enough to see her Perp Walk!!
“Halliburton! Cheney! Blackwater! Halliburton! Cheney! Cheney! Cheney!”
~ Tinfoil Hat Wearing Leftists Everywhere
The Idiot's Guide to Chinagate [flashback Bill Clinton]
richardpoe.com via newsmax.com | May 26, 2003 | Richard Poe
"'We like your president. We want to see him reelected', former Chinese intelligence chief General Ji Shengde told Chinagate bagman Johnny Chung. Indeed, Chinese intelligence organized a massive covert operation aimed at tilting the 1996 election Clinton’s way."
The Idiot's Guide to Chinagate
By Richard Poe
May 26, 2003
CHINA WILL LIKELY replace the USA as world leader, said Bill Clinton in a recent Washington Post interview. It is just a matter of time. Clinton should know. He has personally done more to build China’s military strength than any man on earth.
Most Americans have heard of the so-called "Chinagate " scandal. Few understand its deadly import, however. Web sites such as "Chinagate for Dummies" and its companion "More Chinagate for Dummies" offer some assistance. Unfortunately, with a combined total of nearly 8,000 words, these two sites – like so many others of the genre – offer more detail than most of us "dummies" can absorb.
For that reason, in the 600 words left in this column, I will try to craft my own "Idiot’s Guide to Chinagate," dedicated to all those busy folks like you and me whose attention span tends to peter out after about 750 words. Here goes.
When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, China presented little threat to the United States. Chinese missiles "couldn’t hit the side of a barn," notes Timothy W. Maier of Insight magazine. Few could reach North America and those that made it would likely miss their targets.
Thanks to Bill Clinton, China can now hit any city in the USA, using state-of-the-art, solid-fueled missiles with dead-accurate, computerized guidance systems and multiple warheads.
China probably has suitcase nukes as well. These enable China to strike by proxy – equipping nuclear-armed terrorists to do their dirty work, while the Chinese play innocent. Some intelligence sources claim that China maintains secret stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons on U.S. soil, for just such contingencies.
In 1997, Clinton allowed China to take over the Panama Canal. The Chinese company Hutchison Whampoa leased the ports of Cristobal and Balboa, on the east and west openings of the canal respectively, thus controlling access both ways. A public outcry stopped Clinton in 1998 from leasing California’s Long Beach Naval Yard to the Chinese firm COSCO. Even so, China can now strike U.S. targets easily from their bases in Panama, Vancouver and the Bahamas.
How did China catch up so fast? Easy. We sold them all the technology they needed – or handed it over for free. Neither neglect nor carelessness are to blame. Bill Clinton did it on purpose.
As a globalist, Clinton promotes "multipolarity" – the doctrine that no country (such as the USA) should be allowed to gain decisive advantage over others.
To this end, Clinton appointed anti-nuclear activist Hazel O’Leary to head the Department of Energy. O’Leary set to work "leveling the playing field," as she put it, by giving away our nuclear secrets. She declassified 11 million pages of data on U.S. nuclear weapons and loosened up security at weapons labs.
Federal investigators [Cox Report] later concluded that China made off with the "crown jewels" of our nuclear weapons research under Clinton’s open-door policy – probably including design specifications for suitcase nukes. Meanwhile, Clinton and his corporate cronies raked in millions.
In his book The China Threat, Washington Times correspondent Bill Gertz describes how the system worked. Defense contractors eager to sell technology to China poured millions of dollars into Clinton’s campaign. In return, Clinton called off the dogs.
Janet Reno and other counterintelligence officials stood down while Lockheed Martin, Hughes Electronics, Loral Space & Communications and other U.S. companies helped China modernize its nuclear strike force.
"We like your president. We want to see him reelected," former Chinese intelligence chief General Ji Shengde told Chinagate bagman Johnny Chung. Indeed, Chinese intelligence organized a massive covert operation aimed at tilting the 1996 election Clinton’s way.
Clinton’s top campaign contributors for 1992 were Chinese agents; his top donors in 1996 were U.S. defense contractors selling missile technology to China.
Clinton recieved funding directly from known or suspected Chinese intelligence agents, among them James and Mochtar Riady who own the Indonesian Lippo Group; John Huang; Charlie Trie; Ted Sioeng; Maria Hsia; Wang Jun and others.
Commerce Secretary Ron Brown served as Clinton’s front man in many Chinagate deals. When investigators began probing Brown’s Lippo Group and Chinagate connections, Brown died suddenly in a suspicious April 1996 plane crash.
Needless to say, China does not share Clinton’s enthusiasm for globalism or multipolarity. The Chinese look out for Number One.
"War [with the United States] is inevitable; we cannot avoid it," said Chinese Defense Minister General Chi Haotian in 2000. "The issue is that the Chinese armed forces must control the initiative in this war." Bill Clinton has given them a good start.
The Idiot's Guide to Chinagate:
http://www.richardpoe.com/column.cgi?story=125
or,
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/5/26/214938.shtml
(this version hasn't the necessary hyperlinks, but the above doesn't seem to be available any longer)
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Related Stories
Richard Poe, "Chinagate: The Third-Way Scandal" (June 3, 1999)
Christopher Ruddy, "Russia and China Prepare for War: Parts I - VIII," NewsMax.com (March 9 -18, 1999)
This is the same regime that wants to take weapons away from YOU.
Hillary is he picture of American Greed.
..used to be, something like this, someone went to jail
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