OLD JOE SEALS F-35 DEAL WITH TURKEY

"Follow the money."
~ Hal Holbrook.

I need to interrupt our regularly scheduled program, here, to bring you a news flash . . .

Turkey has decided to purchase 100 new F-35 JSF aircraft from Lockheed Martin, from F-16.net:

Turkey's Air Force has selected the F-35 Lightning II, over Europe's Eurofighter Typhoon for the NATO nation's 15-year, $10 billion program to buy about 100 new-generation fighter aircraft, Turkish procurement and military officials said.

The decision is not final yet as the Air Force is not the sole authority for a final decision. However, since its position is dominant and backed by the powerful General Staff, we can consider this move as a fact.

In the past few months, the selection process had been narrowed down to a choice between buying all F-35s and a mixed buy of the F-35s and Typhoons.

But the Air Force, whose fighter fleet is exclusively of U.S. design and which follows a strong American tradition, has apparently opted for an all-F-35 Lightning II solution now.

Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul and procurement chief Murad Bayar are due to meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Gordon England, deputy defense secretary, and other top U.S. defense officials in Washington Oct. 30. They will then visit the Lockheed Martin F-35 plant in Fort Worth, Texas, the officials said.

The Turkish team and their U.S. counterparts are expected to discuss final details for the planned deal.

A formal announcement on the fighter selection is expected in December.

The new-generation fighter program, Turkey's largest defense procurement project, is designed to replace the Air Force's aging F-16 and F-4E aircraft starting beginning in the mid-2010s.

WOW! Old Joe Ralston really swung that deal when he was in Ankara last week. Sounds to me like he was doing more to counter the Eurofighter than the big, bad PKK. Who says that conflict-of-interest doesn't work?

Let's add it up: $3 billion deal last week, $10 billion deal this week, for a grand total of $13 billion in a couple of weeks' time. Not bad for Old Joe's other business, The Cohen Group. No wonder Lockheed Martin's third quarter earnings are flying sky-high. It also looks like Turkey's on schedule for some Harpoon missile system upgrades too, but I guess those won't be much use in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. Better save them for those pesky Cypriots and Greeks, eh? Way to go Boeing!

Thanks to a heval for the heads' up on that.

If you've been following this, you should remember that Lockheed Martin paid The Cohen Group (TCG) something on the order of $500,000 last year, for TCG's schmoozing services. Anyone want to speculate on how much TCG's vice-chairman, Old Joe, is going to rake in for countering the Eurofighter? I guess it really doesn't matter; given Lockheed's recent earnings, it's bound to be peanuts anyway.

But it makes me wonder if Old Joe has been raking in anything from the ATC for his services in all this dirty business? Like maybe some of the Turkish drug money the ATC's been loading up Congressman Dennis "There-was-no-Armenian-Genocide" Hastert with?

That last link is from Lukery's blog, Wot Is It Good 4, and if you want to keep up with the Deep State in America, you need to check in over there for the latest.

It also looks like the information on the conflict of interest that Joe Ralston represents is getting around in non-Kurdish media. Take a look at this new article by one of Sibel Edmonds' chroniclers, John Stanton, carried on Cryptome.org. You'll find a reference to Desmond Fernandes' own work, that is being presented on Rastî, as well as a reference to the F-16 article by someone who posts here quite often. Thanks to Lukery for sending me the Cryptome.org link.

I now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.