The Bush Administration has announced the planned sale of approximately 24 American-made fighter jets to Pakistan. The fighters are F-16s, which any TKID's Blog reader will remember from the 1986 movie thriller "Iron Eagle" which featured a teenage pilot in his heroic quest to steal an F-16 to rescue his daddy from baddies in some Arab country. Of course, Pakistan's F-16s will be far better guarded than was the plane in that movie.
The deal with Pakistan is payback for the country's hard work in helping the U.S. in its war on terror, including Pakistan's successful work in catching Bin Laden on their own soil. (Correction: TKID's Blog editor and company mystic David LoPan informs me that Bin Laden has NOT actually been caught. I regret the error.) In any case, it's clear that Pakistan deserves something in return for all its labors. Cheers! India might be pissed that we sold advanced fighter/bombers to its hostile neighbor, but hopefully the Indians will calm down when, as reported, we ink "a very large" deal to sell that country a similar load of fighter planes. Nothing beats making a buck on both sides of a brawl.
However, weak-kneed liberals are sure to whine about the fact that in shipping over the 24 fighters, the U.S. is violating its own sanctions (in place since 1990) against Pakistan for its continued development of a nuclear weapons program - a WMD-toting and mushroom-cloud sporting affair if we've ever seen one. This rather obvious contradiction is made worse by the recent Washington Post report that the U.S. lied about North Korea's sale of nuclear material to Libya, one of the main reasons that freak Kim "Erika" Jong Il pulled North Korea out of multi-party negotiations. As it turns out, the nuclear material was actually sold to Libya by PAKISTAN. Oops. Fortunately for us, this well-intentioned whopper was lost in a sea of other, far-more important national affairs, such as the feeding tube saga. And when it comes to lying about who sells nukes, who cares? You've got to break a few eggs to make an omelet. And besides, we all know who the Axis of Evil is, and it doesn't include Pakistan.
