DOD to take greater role in bankrolling foreign militaries

[Clara T]

DOD to take greater role in bankrolling foreign militaries
By Juliana Gittler, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Friday, February 3, 2006

Changes passed in the 2006 Defense Authorization Act allows the Pentagon, rather than the State Department, to take a greater role in foreign military financing, including security assistance programs, training and equipment sales.The change, Pentagon officials said, would ease the flow of money and resources to the places it’s needed most.

Foreign military financing allows the U.S. government to give or loan money to allies for military articles, services and training to help them bolster their defense against mutual threats including terrorism, according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the agency that helps manage the program. In the Pacific and Asia, the largest recipients are the countries with the strongest alliances to the U.S. military, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.

But the program has armed other, less-friendly countries in their fight against terrorism, State Department officials have said, including the Philippines and, since November, Indonesia. In both countries, foreign military financing programs were interrupted for about a decade: reduced in the Philippines following the closure of U.S. bases there, and halted completely in Indonesia after reports of widespread human-rights abuses were reported in the late 1990s.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, and the war on terror, both nations have supported U.S. actions worldwide. The improvement in relations has evolved into the resumption of military financing. In the Philippines, for example, in addition to Pentagon- and Pacific Command-sponsored training such as the annual exercise Balikatan, the U.S. State Department has helped rebuild the country’s military by funding a series of counterterrorism training modules led by U.S. forces, officials at the embassy in Manila have said.

http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=34765

[Selatius]

1. We will be responsible for another East Timor-style atrocity

In the 1970s Indonesia under the dictatorship of Suharto invaded the far smaller nation of East Timor and brutally slaughtered and subjugated the inhabitants using US firepower sold to them throughout the 1970s. The US turned a blind eye to the invasion pointing to the fact the US does large volumes of business with the nation. Thousands of innocents died as a result.

This is just one ugly chapter of US history.

[Clara T]

4. East Timor

per capita the largest mass slaughter of any peoples in the 20th Century if I am not mistaken.

[joemurphy]

2. Oh good, lets give Rumsfeld authority to direct foreign aid.

He's handled our dollars so well in Iraq, maybe he can do equally well in the rest of the world.

[shance]

3. Wake up America. These military forces could be used on our soil.

Why does our military continues to be further crippled and weakened by this Administration?

Why is Halliburton building "Detention" camps?

Why have they steamrolled over our Constitution with articles like the Patriot Act?

Add them up.