Clinton not only rubber-stamped major weapon deals with 20 countries that donated to her and her husband's philanthropic arm, the Clinton Foundation, but also approved nearly double the amount of arms sales to those same 20 countries as the State Department of George W. Bush

Look at this headline closely. "20 countries made donations...those same 20 countries had increased arm sales." That is actually not true. 17 of those 20 saw increase, while 3 saw a decrease. So, that's the first problem with this story. It's misrepresenting the original reporting.

Do you know what a venn diagram is? There is something else we don't know. How many countries have donated to the Clinton Foundation and not received arms deals? How many countries received arms deals that did not donate to Clinton Foundation? Unfortunately that is not easy data to quickly obtain, but it's something we need to know we don't know. That concerns me.

But, there is something else we should look at. Go to that Mother Jones link and sort the table at the bottom by the second column, the donation minimum. The countries with the biggest increase are in the $1million camp, while Ireland who is in the $5million camp saw a decrease. That's weird.

But there is something even weirder. Do you know what a lie of omission is? Where is the column for FY2009, the year between Bush's administration and Clinton's time at State? Unfortunately I don't have an easy chart of that data, but here is a New York Times article from 2012:

The American weapons sales total was an “extraordinary increase” over the $21.4 billion in deals for 2010, the study found, and was the largest single-year sales total in the history of United States arms exports. The previous high was in fiscal year 2009, when American weapons sales overseas totaled nearly $31 billion.

This would seem to indicate that the amount of foreign sales of weapons was already increasing before Clinton become head of State. Here is the report. And here is an interesting chart from that report. Look at 2008 from before Clinton at State. That increase was huge.

And none of this even gets at actual geo-politics or the further destabilization happening in the region which should also be accounted for as reasons for increased arms sales, along with the Obama administrations consistent policy throughout his Presidency.

So no, I am sorry, but there is not enough here to call for an investigation when you take the full context into play.

/r/politics Thread Parent Link - huffingtonpost.com