Print

U.S. Taxpayers Pay A Quarter Million For Obama To Visit New Dictator King For Four Hours
By Steve Watson
Global Research, January 27, 2015
Infowars
Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-taxpayers-pay-a-quarter-million-for-obama-to-visit-new-dictator-king-for-four-hours/5427598

President Obama will today stop in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for just four hours to meet the country’s new King and pay his respects to the widely perceived ‘butcher’ King Abdullah, who died on Friday – and it will cost US taxpayers a quarter of a million dollars.

Collating figures from the government’s official spending website, USA Spending.gov, The Washington Free Beacon notes that the President’s trip to shake hands with the newly crowned monarch King Salman, will cost thousands in hotel bills and SUV rentals, despite it only being a fleeting stay.

The White House schedule, released to the press, states that the Obamas will touchdown in Riyadh at 3:25pm, attend an introduction and a bilateral meeting, then have dinner the King’s opulent palace, before getting back on the plane to Washington at 7.30pm.

Despite the fact that the trip doesn’t even involve an overnight stay, the State Department has doled out$25,920 for hotel rooms at the Marriott, $64,320 for rooms at the Radisson Blu, and $32,000 for rooms at the Ritz-Carlton. The rooms will be occupied briefly by the President’s vast entourage.

A further spending declaration also indicates that three additional hotel bills covering the visit total a remarkable $106,667.

The State Department has also allocated a whopping $18,187 for “Internet services” at the Ritz-Carlton, perhaps the biggest ever wi-fi charge on record.

Vehicle hire charges for Obama and his party amount to $20,693, bringing the entire bill to a stonking $267,787 before the cost of the flights has even been factored in.

The New York Times also notes that the costs will cover the entourages of Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as two of his predecessors in that role, James A. Baker III and Condoleezza Rice.

The contracts for the costs state that “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees” will collect the bills.

The visit comes in the wake of the first state sanctioned beheading under the new King – a brutal practice that was carried out unabated under the reign of Abdullah, for crimes including ‘political dissent’.

While Obama and Kerry make nice with a regime which has a disgusting human rights record, they areskipping the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, to be attended by almost all European heads of state.

That’s your tax dollars in action.

Steve Watson is a London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article.