Reply #218: Fair points. Now: a more responsive response for you

[calm_blue_ocean]

I am not equipped to get to the bottom of the financial doings between the US and Israel. I don't think you are equipped either. I think that your assertions that the bulk of the military aid to Israel has come back as loan repayments, interst repayments or profits to arms-makers (not that I am particularly sympathetic to redistribution of US tax money into arms-maker profit, in any case).

However, you could never collect the documents and testimony to prove your opinion, and I could never collect the documents and testimony to prove your opinion wrong. This stuff is too: (1) voluminous; (2) finacially complex; (3) procedurally complex; (4) secret; and (5) hard-to-access.

So why do I, without complete evidence, believe that there has been a *lot* of outright military aid to Israel?

(1) if the US help was paid for itself, then Israel could get it from someone else -- and my suggestions to cut off military aid would not cause any alarm. My suggestions do which suggests to me that the US payments aren't simple investments with fair returns.

(2) all money transfers involving the military and arms seem to involve a high ratio of waste and pocketlining (eg, that recent Moyers show with the retired Pentagon guy).

(3) the numbers are just so huge (the point of my posting statistics, which only go up to 1997 btw) -- if Israel were really paying all that money back, then we could disband the IRS and re-allocate those employees to make sure that Israel just kept up its loan payments -- there would be plenty of money then to solve the US deficit problems and even add some new social programs. It would be nice to think that that enormous chunk of money cited in the quoted stats was a US investment with a meaningful financial return, but it ain't raining money here, which suggests to me that that money was, in effect, overwhelmingly a grant.

(4) Your voice denial that the US really spends a lot of (net) money on the Israeli military seems like kind of an unusual position. As you know, I am not automatically against unusual political positions. However, if the US weren't giving a lot of US military aid to Israel, it seems to me like there are plenty of pro-Israel voices here in the US who would make sure that everybody understood how little the US is really giving Israel in terms of military aid. That really doesn't seem to be the approach of most US, pro-Israel folks. If you were correct, I don't think you would seem so isolated on this military funding sub-issue.


Based on this incomplete evidence, of limited probativeness, I have to work with, I strongly suspect and believe that the US has given Israel lots of military aid over the years and continues to do so, even the 1997 statistics.

ps: until Dean is elected, of course