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Posted on 09/29/2002 6:56:53 PM PDT by Pokey78
WASHINGTON
They never learn.
Remember, a couple of years ago, the scandals about the way corporate giants like Hughes Electronics and Loral Space, led by big Democratic contributors, sold secret U.S. satellite technology to Chinese aerospace companies and semiconductor manufacturers?
Remember how right-wingers like me got all worked up about our shortsighted government and venal executives placing the interests of international trade over the needs of national defense?
I am ashamed to report that the Bush administration is getting ready to let our ever-hungry multinationals do the same thing. This time, however, it would all be legalized. If current legislation (Senate 149, the Export Administration Act) being urged by the White House passed, American executives would be encouraged to sell the fruits of their most advanced research to foreign nationals who may not wish us well.
The arguments used by the merchants of American defense technology: (1) selling technology overseas that is "mass marketed" here helps bring down our unit cost at home, as well as benefits business; (2) we're only selling it for good uses, even though its "dual use" could help them penetrate our defenses; (3) "foreign availability" — they could always buy something almost as good from the Germans or French.
What's more, say the sell-anybody-anything advocates in the Clinton-Bush Commerce Department, because we have an embargo on sales to Iraq, relaxed export rules won't help Saddam.
Last things first: Iraq buys dual-use nuclear components through cutouts who could easily buy them from us. Take high-strength aluminum tubes, for example, which can be used in bicycles — but a thousand of them in easily hidden gas centrifuges can produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear bomb every year. Under the proposed law, a country like Russia or Jordan could buy ours and re-sell them to Saddam with no weapons inspectors the wiser.
You like the composite glass fibers in your tennis racquet? A sinister use is to form the rotors of those centrifuges, and their export has been controlled for 20 years. No more, if those who would sell our technology to multifarious middlemen have their way.
Nor would our embargo on shipments to Iraq stop our leakage of secrets. China's Huawei Technologies, which could not have been built for a decade without exported American technology, violated the U.N. embargo by selling fiber optic products to Saddam. He now uses them in his air defense system to jeopardize U.S. pilots.
We should not fall for the "dual use" dodge. Germany's Siemens, reported Gary Milhollin of the watchdog Wisconsin Project, legally sold Saddam krytron electronic switches, which doctors now use to destroy kidney stones. When Iraq then sought 120 more as "spare parts," it dawned on Siemens that the switches are also used in setting off the chain reaction in nuclear weapons.
Bush can say that in his 2000 campaign he promised business leaders to lift export controls. But that was before Sept. 11. Now those controls — which worked well for decades against the Soviets — need strengthening, not weakening. Perhaps our National Security Council has been getting pressure from India and Pakistan, each of which wants our missile technology. By accommodating these nuclear powers, we might gain two allies but would make the world more dangerous.
America does not need this dirty business. It amounts to only a few billion dollars in sales, and its military misuse — through copycat "reverse engineering," a Chinese specialty — costs American taxpayers far more than that to defend against.
A handful of hard-line senators (Jon Kyl, Jesse Helms, Richard Shelby, John McCain and Fred Thompson) wrote Bush this month to stop pushing this bill this year. They urged instead that he create a new bill "that strikes the right balance between national security and trade" lest it cause "public divisions among strong supporters of your administration at a time when cohesiveness is an absolute necessity."
Some old hands remember the predations of yesteryear. Newcomers have to be reminded.
Remember how right-wingers like me got all worked up
I think the quote would more correctly be....
Remember how right-wingers like FREEPERS got all worked up.....
So, where are they? Shall we call them and ask?
I left a message on their machine. They are down
at the FIVE Cent Store giving each other high FIVES.
Makes cents for the multi-nationals but not much sense for us.
One question...Where do we go when the smallpox and nukes hit?
Don't worry. Your government will be safely hidden
under a mountain so there will be continuity of
the three branches. Oh, you mean, where do
you go? What difference does that make?
Hilarious. Saddam does not have the ability
to hit us right now either. Say, do you do
matinees?
Wonderful. How about putting decision making back in the
hands of the Defense department where it belongs and was
before the Clinton-China Pact moved it to Commerce?
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