"Between 1995 and 2002, according to Michael T. Klare's Blood and Oil (2004), eight Persian Gulf nations (Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) accounted for more than $87 billion in arms purchases, more than 60 percent of it from non-US sources."
"Lobbyists did not force members of Congress to give the Likud heavyweight Benjamin Netanyahu a five-minute standing ovation when he addressed a joint session in 1996. When Ariel Sharon told William Safire a couple of months after 9/11, "You in America are in a war against terror. We in Israel are in a war against terror. It's the same war," no one forced members of Congress to nod like so many bobble-heads in agreement, as Hillary Clinton did a few months later when, just as Israeli troops were invading Nablus and Jenin in the West Bank, she declared, "We are one with the Israelis. Those who have supported Israel in the past have even more of a reason to do so now." And they did so because they wanted to, because they thought the voters wanted them to or because they worried that they would be deemed unreliable if they did not. The problem is not that America is too democratic but that democratic debate about the Middle East has all but collapsed, which is the sole reason the militarists have been able to flourish."