Elias Murr propaganda in As-Safir

This report by As-Safir's correspondent in Washington, DC reads like a press release for Elias Murr and for the Pentagon. It is about the so-called "planes"--if that is what you want to call them--that the US is ostensibly ready to supply Lebanon with in...2013. I asked one of the my two keen military advisers to comment. One of them wrote this (I cite with his permission): "The analysis of the fellow at the Center for International and Strategic Studies is laughable. It was probably meant for Export Only - unless it was provided by a creative scribe at the US Embassy in Beirut. The plane was a military trainer before being converted to domestic counter-insurgency aircraft. The keyword here is DOMESTIC. The US National Guard views it as such and even the Iraqi puppet Government Air Force is considering purchasing a few. I am amazed that the Lebanese Air Force would actually need them, but baffled by their question as to whether it can carry 'Smart Bombs.' This may be well be a fabrication, too, given that a 'glider pilot' would know that the payload of these aircraft is so limited. The cost mentioned in the article is simply untrue. It is closer to $4 million rather than the $243. One recalls that the cost of an F16 Falcon is around $50 million - a frontline jet fighter. This and other lesser exaggerations (in Al-Safeer?) coupled with a brave references to the M60 tanks, suggest that the entire story is a plant meant to: 1. A stopgap arrangement by the US. It is not a fighter aircraft. An aspirin for those who are upset 'Mother America' is not helping us. 2. The aircraft will keep Israel very happy. It is meant for settling score with 'internal' enemies. Given that such enemies (presumably Hizbullah, which at least for the moment is on the Lebanese Army's radar!) can get their kids to shoot them down with a نقيفة, the whole story moves from the absurd to the ridiculous. From the US side, the AT-6 is a typical Galbraith weapon... after the late John Kenneth. A US arms manufacturer, Lockheed Martin in association with Hunter Beechcraft, revamps an aging Air Force trainer into a counter-insurgency machine, then turns round and ask the Pentagon to buy it and go and sell it to US puppets. While one is confused about what the Lebanese Army wants to do, one is concerned that Al-Safeer should lend its pages to the US Embassy press releases... But then, I do not know Al-Safeer all that well."