Check how much we are giving the Saudis...Gates Holds Talks With Saudi King on Iran Threat, Region Tumult

$60 Billion dollars to buy off or put down a Saudi revolution.

Bloomberg News
By Viola Gienger
Apr 6, 2011 9:20 AM PT

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in the Saudi capital of Riyadh today to meet with King Abdullah on the upheaval in the region, the threat from Iran and a $60 billion U.S. arms package for Saudi Arabia, the Associated Press reported.

It is Gates’s third trip to the region in the past month. The regional turmoil has included troops from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states entering Bahrain to help quell protests in that Persian Gulf nation. The incursion occurred within days of a March visit by Gates to Bahrain’s capital, Manama.

Bahrain’s crackdown and the Saudi military intervention “could turn a mass movement for democratic reform into an armed conflict while regionalizing a genuinely internal political struggle,” according to an analysis published today by the International Crisis Group. The Brussels-based organization advocates for policies to prevent conflicts.

The U.S. defense chief, like other Obama administration officials, has urged Arab governments to respond quickly to peaceful protesters’ demands for reform.

Gates probably won’t raise Saudi Arabia’s own internal political tensions during the visit, the AP reported, citing a U.S. defense official traveling with the secretary. Relations with Saudi Arabia have been strained because the kingdom’s rulers saw the U.S. as abandoning a long-time ally, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, when demonstrators there successfully called for his ouster, the AP said.


Corporate America is making all Americans broke by spending these enormous wastes of tax-payer dollars on arms to protect foreign dictators who supply profits to Corporate America.