Bahrain dictatorship in bed with Lockheed Martin and Washington Times

This video says about itself:

Sibel Edmonds on why the Military Industrial Complex supports oppressive regimes

13 January 2012

In November of last year, The Washington Times published an opinion piece entitled, “Bahrain, a vital US ally. Backing protesters would betray a friend and harm American security.” The article was written by Vice-Admiral Charles Moore, who is now a regional president for Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin has done millions of dollars of business with Bahrain. Bahrain has been criticized for abusing its own citizens. Sibel Edmonds with the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, joins us to discuss why Bahrain is interested in lobbying in America.

From POLITICO.com in the USA:

Bahrain lobbied for Washington Times op-ed

1/4/12 1:35 PM EST

Salon’s Justin Elliott reports on some international media-lobbying intrigue involving Bahrain, a Lockheed Martin executive and the Washington Times:

“A top executive at Lockheed Martin recently worked with lobbyists for Bahrain to place an op-ed defending the nation’s embattled regime in the Washington Times — but the newspaper did not reveal the role of the regime’s lobbyists to its readers. Hence, they did not know that the pro-Bahrain opinion column they were reading was published at the behest of … Bahrain, an oil-rich kingdom of 1.2 million people that has been rocked by popular protests since early 2011.

The episode is a glimpse into the usually hidden world of how Washington’s op-ed pages, which are prized real estate for those with interests before the U.S. government, are shaped. It also shows how Lockheed gave an assist to a major client — Bahrain has bought hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons from the company over the years —as it faces widespread criticism for human rights abuses against pro-democracy protesters.”

The Times‘s deputy editorial page editor, David Matio, argues that readers were sufficiently informed of the op-ed author’s connections to Bahrain but claimed no further knowledge of the relationship between the author, David Moore, and Bahrain’s “strategic communications” firm, Sanitas International.

A good read, if you’re into that sort of thing.