Trump bypasses Congress on Saudi arms sales, citing Iran threat

Fox News.com ^ | May 24, 2019 | Alex Pappas

[Kaslin]

The Trump administration on Friday informed Congress the president will invoke his emergency authority to bypass lawmakers' approval of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, citing the threat to the United States from Iran.

The move comes as Trump announced plans Friday to send about 1,600 troops to the Middle East amid rising tensions with Iran.

"Iran’s malign activity poses a fundamental threat to the stability of the Middle East and to Americans at home and abroad. We took this step of prudent diplomatic deterrence to augment our partners’ long-term capacity for self-defense and threat mitigation," a senior State Department official told Fox News.

The official added, "Congress won’t act, but we will. "

The administration is using an emergency loophole in the Arms Export Control Act to move ahead with sales of $7 billion in precision-guided munitions, other bombs, ammo and aircraft maintenance support to Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, without lawmakers' approval.

The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Republican Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, said he was "reviewing and analyzing the legal justification for this action and the associated implications."

[Zhang Fei]

[They drove out the Hashemites when they conquered Mecca and imposed Wahabbism.]

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I don’t think many Freepers know what Hashemite means, so I’ll explain here. A Hashemite is a direct descendant of Muhammad’s clan. Now, if Muslims won’t obey a member of Muhammad’s clan with respect to their interpretation of the Koran, which is why the Hashemites lost in what became Saudi Arabia (which is named after the Saudi royals), it’s pretty clear that they’re marching to the beat of their own drummer, not the edicts of any given man. The Saudi royals allied with the Wahhabis, but also fought elements of the Wahhabis on one significant occasion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikhwan_revolt

[CrimsonTidegirl]

Spot on. Both nations are plotting our destruction; Iran is just more honest about it.

A pox on both of their houses.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Look for a game-changer in Yemen. The Houthis might just be driven back into the mountains, if not tactically obliterated on the battlefield.

You either want the Saudis to win, or by losing, a default victory to the Houthis’ master, Iran. Then there would go the Arabian Sea, Red Sea, and the Suez Canal. (I don’t have a map in front of me so I may have the wrong name for the right place between Somalia/Puntland and Yemen.

Remember Al Shabaab is still running pirate attacks on boats there, and could close the Straits/Seas in conjunction with the Houthis in Yemen.

[BeadCounter]

Almost seems like a shadow government decision but I don’t know, this is doing an end run around congress. I hope Trump and Obama before him, have privy to information that makes this decision make sense.

It’s kind of like when Libya got bombed, Obama didn’t really have his heart in that decision. They just decided to do it like someone is pulling the strings.

I’m no Obama fan but I’m also not a wild eyed conspiracy theorist.

[bert]

You have correctly stated the false dogma

[Shadow44]

It’s as false as suggesting that Sinn Fein and the IRA are the same group of people.

[dp0622]

VERY FEW Texams would make a fortune. The rest would suffer with the rest of the country.

Ig you think that in an emergency like that the fed Gov would give a #### about what TX wanted or even that some IMAGINARY company is so Texas patriotic that they’ll sell gas there for 3 when they can get 6 elsewhere, well...you’re just plain wrong :)

[jeffc]

"If there’s anything to be learned by this, is that these interventions are doing nothing but bankrupting and weakening us."

This statement doesn't hold water. Apply it to Iran, NK, China - it doesn't seem to bother them. Sooner or later, we will have to take the fight to them (sooner is better). A lesson we should have learned from WW2...

[Shadow44]

Iran is only in this position because of the Iraq War. It broke them out of containment and gave then unprecedented influence in the region. And all Iraq and the overthrow of Gaddafi proved to North Korea is that Washington cannot be trusted and to rush development of nukes as fast as possible. American hegemony is cracking and nobody wants the wars your advocating for.

Nobody respects America because they see it as an Empire on the brink of collapse.

[Bishop_Malachi]

woah woah, the administration has declared an emergency, an EMERGENCY damn it!

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Yeah...this crap is an “emergency”, but the border isn’t enough of an emergency to do anything ultimately effective about it.

[Bishop_Malachi]

This statement doesn’t hold water. Apply it to Iran, NK, China - it doesn’t seem to bother them. Sooner or later, we will have to take the fight to them (sooner is better). A lesson we should have learned from WW2...

_____________________________________________________

The only lesson the interventionists seem to have learned from WW2 is that the whole world must be occupied by the US in order to “make Americans safe”. It’s really just code for imperialism.