[dennisw]

 

Israel only gets you figure this out dumbass billions per year while $50 billion is spent by us on Gulf security and security for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We have troops stationed in those two nations. Bin Ladin wants the US out and so does Saddam Hussein

 

http://www.brook.edu/Views/Op-ed/Korb/19960918.HTM

Holding The Bag In the Gulf

The New York Times, September 18, 1996

By Lawrence J. Korb, Director, Center for Public Policy Education, and Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies

After the gulf war, the Navy created the Fifth Fleet, stationed permanently in the gulf. It consists of 21 ships manned by 15,000 sailors and marines, along with 12 more ships with equipment for ground forces and about 250 planes to protect the fleet and enforce the no-flight zones over Iraq. In addition, there are 10,000 people on the ground in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, along with enough equipment for another Army brigade.

On various occasions since the gulf war, including this month, the United States has augmented this standing force by sending a second aircraft carrier, a squadron of stealth fighters and additional air defense groups and bombers.

According to Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, the total cost of maintaining the United States force in the gulf is at least $50 billion per year.

The purpose of spending all this money is to insure that neither Iran nor Iraq threatens the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. But the United States currently imports only about 10 percent of it's oil from the Persian Gulf — some $10 billion to $15 billion worth, depending upon world prices.

MORE>>
http://www.brook.edu/Views/Op-ed/Korb/19960918.HTM

 

[traditionalist]

Israel only gets you figure this out dumbass billions per year while $50 billion is spent by us on Gulf security and security for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We have troops stationed in those two nations. Bin Ladin wants the US out and so does Saddam Hussein

Big difference. We have a strategic interest, or so it is claimed, in keeping the Gulf states from being taken over because of all the oil supplies there. We have ZERO strategic interest in defending Israel. Our support of Israel is about as irrational as foriegn policy gets.