US making business out of Mideast wars: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Scott Rickard, a former American intelligence linguist in Orlando, to share his thoughts on the big gains that the US military firms make from the wars in the Middle East.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Mr. Rickard, turning our attention to the war on Yemen, F-15 fighter jets, Lockheed Martin F-16 planes are being used in the aerial bombardment of the innocent civilians in the Saudi-led aggression in Yemen. It seems that the US armament manufacturers are also benefiting from the war.

Rickard: Absolutely. Unfortunately the US military industrial complex, alongside Great Britain and France mostly, has been very successful in the Middle East selling just numerous amount of weaponry.

The F-15s that you spoke about, this is a 40-year-old aircraft design built in early 70s and they are still profiting from these types of items. And one of the key points of that article that you mentioned, was the fact that part of the international sales is to offset Pentagon budget cuts because the economy and these companies depend on customers and sadly that is what we see in the foreign policy that is really driven not by the fact that the Americans are trying to improve the world and basically stop wars.  

They are actually instigating wars like this war in Yemen and creating really a business, a business that needs a war in order to thrive.  

So what we see here, the article also mentions that Saudi Arabia and other Sunni countries are going against “Sunni ISIS terrorists." Well let just be clear here that most of these Sunni individuals that are in “ISIS” which is a mercenary force built by the United States - these particular individuals are actually former Iraqi Sunnis and these Iraqi Sunnis were actually arch-enemies to the Saudis for quite some time and obviously Kuwait, when you look at what Saddam Hussein did when he controlled the Sunni triangle at that time.

One other thing to mention is that in the past the Americans had profited greatly also unfortunately during the Iran-Iraq war that lasted for a decade.

So, this is unfortunately a horrific pattern of United States military industrial complex and unfortunately it is getting incredibly worse. You mentioned the statistics with the actual scenario whereby Qatar is spending that kind of money -23 billion - it is only five percent of their GDP but they are only two million people.

So when you look at it comparatively to even Saudi Arabia, they are almost spending double on their population that Saudi Arabia is spending. So Saudi Arabia is spending ten percent of their GDP on military weaponry now.

It is a big business and unfortunately the wars are what’s driving it and they are not trying to stop wars. They are actually instigating these wars.

AHK/HMV

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