Monday, September 07, 2009 WASHINGTON: The United States expanded its role as the world's leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, a US newspaper reported late Sunday. Citing a new congressional study, the newspaper said the United States signed weapons agreements valued at 37.8 billion dollars last year, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar. The figure marked a significant increase from US arms sales of 25.4 billion dollars the year before, the paper noted. Italy was a distant second, with 3.7 billion dollars in worldwide weapons sales in 2008, while Russia was third with 3.5 billion dollars in arms sales last year down considerably from the 10.8 billion in weapons deals signed by Moscow in 2007, the report pointed out.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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