Emails Show HRC Celebrating F-15 Sales to Saudi Arabia, After Donations

[amborin]

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/22/saudi-christmas-present/

The shockingly brutal Saudi air campaign in Yemen has been led by American-made F-15 jet fighters.

The indiscriminate bombing of civilians and rescuers from the air has prompted human rights organizations to claim that some Saudi-led strikes on Yemen may amount to war crimes. At least 2,800 civilians have been killed in the conflict so far, according to the United Nations — mostly by airstrikes. The strikes have killed journalists and ambulance drivers.

The planes, made by Boeing, have been implicated in the bombing of three facilities supported by Doctors Without Borders (Médicins Sans Frontières). ........

Bombs dropped by fighter jets are pulverizing Yemen’s architectural history, possibly in violation of international humanitarian law.

A few years earlier, as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton made weapons transfer to the Saudi government a “top priority,” according to her closest military aide.

And now, newly released emails show that her aides kept her well-informed of the approval process for a $29.4 billion sale in 2011 of up to 84 advanced F-15SA fighters, manufactured by Boeing, along with upgrades to the pre-existing Saudi fleet of 70 F-15 aircraft and munitions, spare parts, training, maintenance, and logistics.

The deal was finalized on Christmas Eve 2011. Afterward, Jake Sullivan, then Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and now a senior policy adviser on her presidential campaign, sent her a celebratory email string topped with the chipper message: “FYI — good news.”

The email string was part of a new batch of emails from Clinton’s private server, made public on Friday evening as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

snip

“Not a bad Christmas present,” he added.

Another official, whose name is also redacted, confirmed that a Saudi general who had been working with U.S. officials was “pleased, as are all of us,” and said he would soon contact executives at Boeing.

The congratulatory tone continues through the email chain with other officials, also with redacted names, calling the weapons deal “Great news!”

On December 26, Jeremy Bash, then-chief of staff at the Pentagon, sent the email string, titled “F-15SA Christmas Present,” to Sullivan, who sent it to Clinton with his own note at the top.

David Sirota and Andrew Perez have previously reported for the International Business Times that Clinton’s State Department was heavily involved in approving weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. As weapons transfers were being approved, both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Boeing made donations to the Clinton Foundation.

The Washington Post revealed that a Boeing lobbyist helped with fundraising in the early stages of Hillary Clinton’s current presidential campaign.

[choie]

1. Anybody who saw Frontline's

Program on Saudi Arabia this week realized how despicable their regime is and how despicable our propping them up is.

[Roland99]

3. DVRd it to watch later

[Roland99]

2. maintaining the status quo

nothing will change w/her at the helm. not a damn thing.

[choie]

4. Even when the status quo

Is so deadly.

[Roland99]

14. I don't understand why so many don't understand that.

There's this huge disconnect between stances and thoughts and ideas people had during the Bush/Cheney years that are being silenced from within solely because it's "their" candidate now.

Whatever happened to solidly standing one's ground? Integrity? etc.


*sigh*

[Scuba]

5. "Great news, we sold weapons of mass destruction to a brutal, totallitarian regime!"

[synergie]

6. So I guess anything done by an f35 will be Bernie's fault, right? Especially if he celebrated

a holiday, afterwards? What it if were Lockheed Martin? Oh dear, when your candidate is a MIC loving, hawk when it comes to lucrative deals that benefit him, I guess you don't much care, right?

These posts are getting ever more desperate and ever more silly. But you just keep flinging poo, and perhaps it will stop splattering back on your own candidate sometime.

[choie]

7. What part of being involved

In selling weapons to a dictatorship don't you understand?

[beam me up scottie]

9. Link to Bernie celebrating sales of F-35's?

And how much money has Lockheed Martin given Bernie?

[HooptieWagon]

11. Clinton got millions in bribes...

What does a few thousand Yemeni civilian deaths matter, right?

[Roland99]

15. So, supporting an EXISTING fighter jet program moving to his state is the same as....

supporting selling fighters to a nation-state that foster terrorism, puts women under the thumb of its patriarchal society and government, beheads citizens over slights against the state religion, etc etc

Give

Me

A

Fucking

Break

[beam me up scottie]

16. And doing it for donations.

[Octafish]

8. Celebration Time

Don't forget who helped fund the Father of the Pakistani bomb, A.Q. Khan. Like Sid Blumenthal writes:

The Saudis invested in Pakistan's nuclear weaponry partly for this eventuality; that's their bomb in reserve.

SOURCE: WikiLeaks (Praise the Hoove!): https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/481

[DanTex]

10. Doesn't Bernie want Saudi Arabia to fight ISIS for us? Does he want them to do it without

being able to purchase weapons?

[99th_Monkey]

17. Weapons aside, it's Clinton's "Pay-to-Play" self-enrichment & bribery by a foreign Gov't that sucks

Abusing her SoS position in this way is despicable

[DanTex]

18. As usual, the allegations are evidence-free. If selling arms to Saudi Arabia is a horrible thing,

someone needs to tell Bernie.

[99th_Monkey]

19. As weapons deals were approved, both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia & Boeing made donations to Clintons

Foundation. The evidence is undeniable, it's all in public records.

"Clinton’s State Department was heavily involved in approving weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. As weapons transfers were being approved, both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Boeing made donations to the Clinton Foundation."

[Attorney in Texas]

13. People who wonder why Hillary (and Bush-Cheney and lots of Republican governors) get private email

servers should see this email (and a dozen like it now floating around) as an answer to that question.

Hillary (and Republicans, too, she is not the only guilty one) get private email servers so they don't have to conduct their official business on government email servers (which are out of their control when it comes to FIOA) because she never wanted these emails getting out because they make her look bad (and in some instances, show her saying things privately that contradict what she said and did publicly).

Specifically, the trend toward government officials setting up private email servers (mainly a Republican thing; Hillary is the only prominent Democrat I have heard of getting on this Republican trend, but this is not a Hillary only problem) is a scam intended to frustrate FOIA requests. This is something politicians do to avoid being accountable to the people and to avoid transparency.

This is not (in my view) treason or an impeachable offense. It is however (in my view again) a telling indication of a candidate's values. There are civil penalties for such direct violations of federal law, and I am pretty sure that Hillary is going to have been found in deliberate and repeated violation of such laws (but the remedy will likely be civil penalties rather than a DoJ indictment).

[AzDar]

20. #ShadyLady

No Mas