Selling arms to thugs

Remember, kids, we're fighting to spread democracy. No matter what those pinheads say:

The United States has accelerated arms sales to some of the world's most repressive and undemocratic regimes since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, according to a new report from leading arms trade researchers.

The report, from the Arms Trade Resource Center at New York-based New School University's World Policy Institute, says the increase in sales and military grants is a payoff to countries that have either joined what the White House calls its "war on terror" or have backed the United States in its military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A majority of U.S. arms sales to the developing world also go to regimes "defined as undemocratic by our own State Department" or foreign ministry, says the study.