Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Best of the Left Podcast.

We have a variety of clips for you today from a variety of sources including on the media,

Rachel Maddow, Ranny Roads, Democracy Now, YouTube, the Mike Moloisho, and Cedar on Sunday.

The Bush Administration announced that they are preparing to ask Congress to approve a huge $20 billion

dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia, including the sale of advanced bombs and weaponry to that country.

Two New York congressmen say they are determined to not let this proposed deal slip under the radar.

Democrats Jerry Nadler and Anthony Weiner appeared outside the Saudi Consulate in New York yesterday to announce

legislation opposing this deal. They say their legislation will be triggered as soon as the White House

officially notifies Congress that the deal is being proposed. For more on this plan, we're pleased to have

join us now live by phone, Representative Jerry Nadler, Democrat of New York.

Congressman, thank you very much for joining us. It's a pleasure. For those of us who don't follow

arms deals all that closely, how big a deal is this proposed arms deal with Saudi Arabia?

Well, it's a major, major deal. It's $20 billion worth of high-tech weaponry to Saudi Arabia.

And they're saying that in order to keep some other countries from thinking that this isn't against them,

we've also increased arms aid to some of these other countries like Israel and Egypt in order to balance it out.

So we're generating an arms race in the Middle East, which is not the most intelligent thing could do.

$20 billion is a lot of money. This is $20 billion over 10 years.

As far as I understand, that's less than the Saudis get in oil revenues in a month.

I'm surprised that they want this deal from us.

Well, this is part of the president's thought or plan that since the invasion of Iraq, I mean, he wouldn't put it this way,

but the invasion of Iraq removed Iraq as the natural balance of power constrained on Iranian power in the Middle East,

which is one of the more stupid things about our invasion of Iraq.

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