{"id":9311,"date":"2012-05-21T15:25:19","date_gmt":"2012-05-21T22:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=9311"},"modified":"2012-05-21T14:25:40","modified_gmt":"2012-05-21T21:25:40","slug":"one-for-the-time-capsule-us-selling-drones-fighter-planes-tanks-personnel-carriers-to-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=9311","title":{"rendered":"One For the Time Capsule: U.S. Selling Drones, Fighter Planes, Tanks, Personnel Carriers to Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/Drone_MiddleEast_Peace.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/world\/story\/2012-05-20\/iraq-oil-drones\/55099590\/1\">From <i>USA Today<\/i>&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">BAGHDAD &#8211; The United States has agreed to sell unarmed surveillance drones to Iraq&#8217;s navy as part of an effort to help protect that nation&#8217;s oil exports amid growing tensions in the Persian Gulf and to strengthen U.S.-Iraqi ties.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nThe sales of drones and other U.S. military equipment are viewed by the United States as a way to maintain deep ties with Iraq after the departure of American troops in December. The sales &#8220;helps facilitate that strategic relationship,&#8221; [Army Lt. Gen. Robert] Caslen said.<\/p>\n<p>Iraq already said it is buying more than $15 billion worth of U.S. military hardware, including 36 F-16 fighter planes, M-1 tanks and armored personnel carriers, insisting the weapons are for defensive purposes.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As we like to say around here: What could <i>possibly<\/i> go wrong?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not as if we&#8217;ve got experience with coming to regret the militarization of various perceived allies in the Middle East in general, or even Iraq, specifically. So, let&#8217;s go ahead and just put this item into our time capsule for review &#8212; and an answer to the question mentioned above &#8212; by, no later than, let&#8217;s say, 2020 or so?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From USA Today&#8230; BAGHDAD &#8211; The United States has agreed to sell unarmed surveillance drones to Iraq&#8217;s navy as part of an effort to help protect that nation&#8217;s oil exports amid growing tensions in the Persian Gulf and to strengthen U.S.-Iraqi ties. &#8230; The sales of drones and other U.S. military equipment are viewed by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,405,272,24],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-bush-legacy","category-dept-of-defense","category-iraq-war"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9311"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=9311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}