Official claims of Israel’s super-short-range Iron Dome system boasting an 80%+ accuracy level remain in serious doubt, but its reliability in securing gaudy pledges of American aid seems unrivalled.
The Pentagon has announced that it intends to spend $400 million funding the Iron Dome system for Israel in the next two fiscal years, a dramatic increase from the $70 million given to them in 2012, though less than he $680 million from 2013.
Since its foundation the Iron Dome system has been virtually exclusively US-funded, with the Israeli military ruling the thing too expensive to bother with and cancelling it outright, only to see the US Congress step up and fully find it for them.
Since then, every time a handful of rockets hit Israel, officials make much of having shot down large numbers with the system, though experts say these figures are almost certainly a dramatic overstatement intended for PR gain rather than as an accurate expression of the devices’ limited utility.
The Iron Dome is just a fraction of the $3 billion-plus in annual US military aid to Israel, and the Pentagon’s funding request for it usually ends up being only part of what Congress ultimately sends for Iron Dome, with officials liking to announce new rounds of funding for it at more or less regular intervals.
Yeah, it's not like the US is broke. Just keep killing Social Security, Medicare etc. so that Israel can have its toys. After all the US government is for the Israeli people and to hell with Americans.
1.5 billion is enough for American schools to be renovated, for kids to have books, for kids to be immunized for free, for a lesser students where teachers would have more time for kids…, and etc……
$1.5 billion comes to $15,000 per US public school. That's less than enough to hire one new teacher at each school and far less than the cost of any substantial renovation.
And if those vaccinations cost $1.5 billion, they aren't "free."
Whatever you say Mr. TLK. but giving peoples money to bunch of apartheid entity of USA militarism regime is wrong.., no matter how you calculate the costs for schools or other social project that needed in US.
Oh, I agree they shouldn't be given the money.
But if you're going to make the (weak) argument that there are better things that could be done with it, why not either be realistic about what else it would pay for, or else have real fun and go way over the top with it ("we could give EVERYONE ON EARTH a case of Maker's Mark bourbon and a coupon for free ice cream cones for life")?
You are funny Mr. TLK. But don't lose your day job.., especially in bad economic day as now.
'free' vaccinations meant the parents of the kids don't have to pay a fee to make their children safer from disease. But hey, I suppose you like a system instead where only rich kids get vaccinated. And then where the rich aren't even supposed to pay decent levels of taxes to help pay for the society they ripped off to get rich to begin with.
"'free' vaccinations meant the parents of the kids don't have to pay"
Yes, I understand the attempt to corrupt the language
"But hey, I suppose you like a system instead where only rich kids get vaccinated."
By "suppose" I guess you mean "fantasize?"
I prefer that vaccination be cheap and widely available. That doesn't mean that I'm going to pretend that "someone else pays for it" is the same thing as "it's free."
There's no such thing as a "decent level of taxes" any more than there's a "decent level of rape" or a "decent level of murder." And taxation always falls most heavily on the poor, for the benefit of the rich.
The Israelis should get nothing more from the U.S. They should be repaying us. As for Bibi, the only one who is an existential threat to the region, the U.S. should have gotten rid of him a long time ago.
Nothing for the US taxpayer but all for our Zionist masters.
America's pet is being lavished again while the children go hungry.
Your tax dollars at work!
Your tax dollars at work!
They closed schools and hospitals in my area…guess I need a foreign lobbying group like AIPAC to call attention to this.