Be America's bitch? Care to explain?

It's a US expression, roughly meaning "to cleave to a perceivedly more powerful other, to the detriment of one's own safety, in the hope that the other's favours may make up for the loss of independence and dignity".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2815869.stm if you missed the whole story.

Peter

Edit: The $20B figure was from the Plastic writeup; the numbers in that BBC report aren't as large.