MIDDLE EAST—The United States has long been buying weapons for both sides of various conflicts in the Middle East. But now, with multiple financial crises going on at home, the U.S. is looking for ways to reduce the cost of these conflicts. Finally, they landed on a solution: they'll cut out the middleman -- defense contractors -- and just have the countries lob giant sacks of American tax dollars at each other directly. "Instead of going through the whole rigamarole of buying weapons for them, or letting them buy weapons from us at a discount, or supplying insurgent groups with...