Monday, May 22, 2017

Medea Benjamin: Congress Should Halt Trump's $110B Arms Deal over Saudi Atrocities in Yemen & Region


In his first foreign trip abroad as president, Donald Trump traveled this weekend to Saudi Arabia, where he signed an arms deals totaling $110 billion. This comes in addition to more than $115 billion offered in arms deals to Saudi Arabia by President Obama during his time in office. The deal also includes precision-guided munitions, which the Obama administration had stopped selling Saudi Arabia out of fear they would be used to bomb civilians amid the ongoing Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen. Since 2015, 10,000 people have been killed in the ongoing fighting, which has also decimated the country’s health, water, sewage and sanitation systems. Over 10,000 civilians have died since the Saudi invasion began in 2015. The arms deal includes tanks, artillery, ships, helicopters, a missile defense system and cybersecurity technology. We speak to Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink and author of the book "Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection."