Frida Berrigan: All Related Content

The United States, which entered into over $23 billion in Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements in fiscal year (FY) 2007 and $32 billion in FY 2008 (see table 1), is the world's largest arms supplier. U.S. exports range from combat aircraft to Pakistan, Morocco, Greece, Romania, and Chile to small arms and light weapons to the Philippines, Egypt, and Georgia. In 2006 and 2007, the United States sold weapons to over 174 states and territories, a significant increase from the beginning of the Bush administration when the number of U.S. arms clients stood at 123.[1] While many of these sales were relatively small deals licensed commercially by the State Department, a number of important new states were added or restored to the U.S. client list, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, East Timor, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan.

Can Obama Take on the Pentagon?

Even saddled with a two-front, budget-busting war and a collapsing economy, President Barack Obama may be able to accomplish a lot.

With a friendly Congress and a relieved world, he could make short work of some of the most egregious overreaches of the Bush White House -- from Guantanamo to those Presidential signing statements. For all the rolling up of sleeves and "everything is going to change" exuberance, however, taking on the Pentagon, with its mega-budget and its mega-power, may be the hardest task he faces.

The CEO of a weapons manufacturer has plenty of chances to rub elbows with deputy secretaries of defense, officials from Homeland Security, retired military personnel, and the best and brightest of the defense establishment almost any week of the year.

Few Americans had ever heard of a SOFA until earlier this year, when the Internet lit up with a revelation many observers of US foreign policy had long predicted. Despite repeated claims to the contrary, US officials were pressing the Iraqi government to accept an indefinite US military presence, including--and here was the shocker--up to 58 American bases on Iraqi turf.

As the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approaches, the world continues to face a litany of nuclear concerns. There is the failure to safeguard all the nuclear material lying loose around the globe. And proponents of nuclear power have gained ground as a result of the current energy crisis.

But the radioactive rhetoric printed on newspaper opinion pages and proclaimed from would-be presidential podiums puts Iran at the top of the nuclear list.

The Pentagon is in crisis: The war in Iraq is entering its fifth hot summer. And while U.S. troop casualties are down, the light at the end of the occupation tunnel is no closer and no brighter.

A full-fledged cottage industry is already focused on those who eagerly await the end of the Bush administration, offering calendars, magnets, and t-shirts for sale as well as counters and graphics to download onto blogs and websites. But when the countdown ends and George W. Bush vacates the Oval Office, he will leave a legacy to contend with.

The big news of President George W. Bush’s trip to Europe last week was not the multiple agendas that he juggled or the feathers he ruffled. It was the news he left behind. President Bush tried to set the domestic agenda for the week, with a pre-dawn press conference on his way to the airport last Monday. The sleepy First Couple stood side-by-side, as Bush told Congress they had “a lot of work” while he was gone.

This article also appears in The Baltimore Sun. 

For many Americans, nuclear weapons bring up old memories and forgotten associations -- the duck and cover drills of the 1950s, President Reagan's exhortations against the "evil empire," and the plot lines of countless straight-to-video political thrillers. It may then come as a surprise that in 2008 the United States is considering a huge new investment in nuclear weapons.