SUBSIDIZING A CURIOUS DEFINITION OF “NATIONAL SECURITY”
American-made wire-guided anti-tank, anti-bunker missiles (a.k.a. “TOW” missiles) are being used by Syrian rebels in their fight against the regime of president Bashar al-Assad, a recent USA Today report revealed.
Wait … what? American taxpayers are subsidizing forces in the Syrian civil war?
Of course … we have been for months, actually, thanks to the warmongering/ fear-mongering tactics of interventionist “Republican” politicians like U.S. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
“We are committed to do our part to support the moderate opposition in its efforts to provide a legitimate voice to the aspirations and hopes of the Syrian people,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said last week.
Due respect to Kerry (a close buddy of Graham’s) but the last time we checked providing a “voice to the aspirations and hopes of the Syrian people” was the Syrian people’s problem … not the problem of the U.S taxpayers.
Let’s not forget some of the forces fighting al-Assad are terrorists. And even if they weren’t, the U.S. military still couldn’t afford to fight them. Seriously … America isn’t just flat broke, it’s $17.5 trillion in the red. How on earth do our “leaders” rationalize this expense? Seriously … whose definition of “national security” does this ridiculousness fall under?
Military officials say they are arming the Syrian rebels as part of a new “pilot program” – one which aims to keep the weapons out of the hands of al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist groups fighting against al-Assad.
Yeah. Remember that when one of these missiles is used in a terrorist attack …
20 comments
Is this why Ambassador Chris Stevens and 3 other Americans were killed in Benghazi, Libya at the CIA “consulate”? Organizing the shipment of weapons to Syria?
Too bad those Tow missles are so expensive. GT should be on the recieving end.
Tube launched, Optically tracked, Wire guided – TOW.
Thank you for your great assement, GT is a Tank !
Who wants to arm an insurgent force? Honorable military experts making the world safer? Or are they bloodthirsty chickenhawks who don’t care they’re mortgaging the country’s future?
We managed to destroy the USSR’s treasury in part by arming the insurgents in Afghanistan. North Vietnam did the same thing with the Viet Cong. Insurgencies can be incredibly effective if you can keep them from blowing up in your face.
Afghanistan, case in point.
Sell or gift them the old weapons so you can use the new ones on them. Brilliant foreign policy our fearless leaders devised, followed diligently by both reps and dems. Can we break this habit before we go bankrupt?
We don’t even get to play with nifty weapons – that’s 99% of the coolness of war…
In terms of coolness, the Javelin is far cooler and possibly more effective. You sight your target, lock it in, squeeze and watch the target disappear. The down side is the sorter range, the upside is the cost, roughly half that of the TOW.
It’s been a while, but I enjoyed firing the LAW.
Ah the ubiquitous M72A2 LAW. You are dating yourself though believe it or not, you’ll still see Grunts and SpecOps types carrying them in Afghanistan. Our answer to the RPG, it wasn’t as useful or as effective but against thin skinned vehicles, light bunkers or caves, they’re handy if only for the psychological effect. The AT4 has greater range and a far more effective warhead but both must be volley fired to kill any kind of modern armor.
I saw a tank turret fly up in the air from a direct hit…. maybe 4 feet.
Ignite the ammo rack and that’ll happen… mostly HEAT just punches a small hole (72mm) and then throws the melted metal around the inside killing the squishy things inside and igniting anything flammable or explosive.
A retired tank was on the practice field – it had no explosives in it or ammo.
Never seen a LAW do that but under the right circumstances anything’s possible. We always volley fired LAWs as they wouldn’t do anything but piss off the crew of anything better than a T72 and they only have a range of 200 meters. I’m a big fan of the AT4, 300 meters, huge warhead, multiple variants for other uses…
The range sure sucks balls… if you got that close to one of ours, you’d already be dead…. I think where we are at odds here isn’t about what you said… it does cut through depleted uranium with two charges – and that releases a lot of energy…cutting through the base of an old army tank turret wouldn’t be a “little hole spraying molten metal” it would be a gaseous fireball following an impressive explosion.
I found a video of a car shot by one – not pretty.
In thin skin vehicles,a LAW is basically just a bomb on a stick, the gas jet doesn’t form and the warhead just explodes
Yeah, that’s what it looked like.
The LAW ain’t sh!t…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbCqwl2geQg
http://vimeo.com/70294355