Isn’t it a wonderful world? Well it is if you are part of the arms trade. Governments will pay whatever its costs and wait as long as it takes, so being over budget or out of time doesn’t matter. At least that’s until the auditors come along and spoil the fun. That’s in the U.S. but in the UK we have our very own arms scandal and it looks as if BAE are untouchable. They provided a sophisticated defense system to Tanzania even though it cost the country what it could ill afford, and questionable that it was necessary in the first place. The bribery that went into the sale of aircraft to Saudi Arabia is now folklore, but no one has been answerable. The government has bent double to protect the criminals involved. A second article in the same edition of the Washington Post takes a look at weapons from another perspective.

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