As the Republican Party’s blockade of aid to Ukraine drags into its fourth month, the U.S. government under Pres. Joe Biden has found a clever new way to give Ukraine’s forces the weapons and ammunition they need to defend their country.
It is, in essence, an American version of Germany’s circular weapons trade—the so-called Ringtausch. The United States is gifting older surplus weapons to Greece with the understanding that Greece donates to Ukraine some of its own surplus weapons.
Greek media broke the news last week. According to the newspaper Kathimerini and other media, the Biden administration offered the Greek government three 87-foot Protector-class patrol boats, two Lockheed Martin C-130H airlifters, 10 Allison T56 turboprop engines for Lockheed P-3 patrol planes plus 60 M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and a consignment of transport trucks.
All this hardware is U.S. military surplus—and is available to Greece, free of charge, under a U.S. legal authority called “excess defense articles.” Federal law allows an American president to declare military systems surplus to need, assign them a value—potentially zero dollars—and give them away on the condition that the recipient transport them.
Reagan did it through bad regimes - at least Biden is doing through democratic governments. AND they are weapons we’d have to decommission anyway. BIG DIFFERENCE between this and Reagan. Stop being disingenuous.
I’m not being disingenuous, I’m complaining about the method and not the result.
They are not necessarily weapons we HAVE to decommission, the president decides that in addition to the sale price so legally it could be anything.
I get what you mean but the block in Congress is based on bad faith. Sometimes you gotta get pragmatic.
Yeah no one here agrees with your argument except the pro Putin crowd. I can only assume that’s what you want.
Somehow I doubt the pro Putin crowd is on board for helping Ukraine and I can’t imagine the 8D chess mind games it would take for them to decide Executive vs Legislative division of powers minutia is the game plan for taking down Biden.