Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Arms Dealers and Lobbyists Get Rich as Yemen Burns

In 2018 alone, the United States made $4.5 billion worth of arms deals to Saudi Arabia and $1.2 billion to the United Arab Emirates, a report by William Hartung and Christina Arabia found.

"The last time I saw the numbers, the arms industry had nearly 1,000 registered lobbyists. They're not on the Hill lobbying Congress about how many schools we should open next year. They're lobbying for defense contractors. The past 18 years of endless wars have been incredibly lucrative for the arms industry, and they have a vested industry in seeing these wars continue, and not curtailing the cash cow thathas been for them."

Much of this work has been focused on ensuring that sales of U.S. arms to Saudi Arabia continue unabated and blocking congressional actions that would end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

Over a dozen lobbying firms employed by defense contractors have also been working on behalf of the Saudi or Emiratis, efficiently lobbying for both the arms buyers and sellers in one fell swoop.

In 2018, the McKeon Group took $1,697,000 from 10 defense contractors "To, among other objectives, continue the flow of arms to Saudi Arabia," reports National Memo.

Freeman details multiple examples where lobbyists working on behalf of the Saudis met with a senator's staff and then made a substantial contribution to that senator's campaign within days of a key vote to keep the United States in the Yemen war.

In addition to the overt influence exercised by lobbyists for the defense industry, many former arms industry executives are embedded in influential posts throughout the Trump administration: from former Airbus, Huntington Ingalls, and Raytheon lobbyist Charles Faulkner at the State Department, who pushed Mike Pompeo to support arms sales in the Yemen war; to former Boeing executive and erstwhile head of the Department of Defense Patrick Shanahan; to his interim replacement Mark Esper, secretary of the Army and another former lobbyist for Raytheon.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/arms-dealers-and-lobbyists-get-rich-as-yemen-burns/

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