Reply #12: The US tax payer supports much of the Middle East economy [View All]

[Lithos]

Hamas gets its money from mostly from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States with some from Egypt. The economies of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are almost completely dependent on money coming from the US both directly (military aid) and indirectly (payment for crude).

The economy of Israel is dwarfed by many of the Gulf states.

Similarly, Jihadniks get a fair amount of their money from Saudi Arabia as well, again supported extensively by the US. Saudi Arabia just spent 70 billion dollars to fund the building of mosques, schools and other infrastructure items to promote extreme Wahabbist beliefs. The amount of monies along which support this type of extremism is not well accounted for, but is estimated between 5 to 16 billion alone. This far exceeds the 2.4 billion spent towards Israel, much of which is nothing more than corporate welfare of US defense companies and which a good portion does not materially benefit Israel.

This 70 billion and most of the other monies comes directly from the money base built from oil revenues derived primarily from the US. The sad truth is that we've also spent probably close to a trillion dollars in direct defense spending along with many thousands of US (and many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, Iranian and Afghani) lives to protect this addiction.

L-