SIPRI has a good rep, no? These %'ages for the USG and the arms
manufacturers do not accord with my understanding from skimming such works
as the book by Peter Mantius on Reagan and King George the First re: Iraqi
Ba'athists.
<URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-638446,00.html >
The fiction of the peaceniks is overdue for pulping
Michael Gove
We may not quite have won yet, but three myths are ripe for deconstruction
> ..It is certainly true that most of Saddam’s apparatus of terror was
> supplied by permanent members of the UN Security Council who have abused
> their position to further their own interests, heedless of innocent
> deaths. But the guilty men are not the Americans and the British, but the
> French, Russians and Chinese. According to figures compiled by the
> Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, between 1973 and 2002
> Russia supplied 57 per cent of Saddam’s arms imports, France 13 per cent
> and China 12 per cent. The US supplied at most just 1 per cent and
> Britain significantly less than that. Brazil supplied more weaponry to
> Saddam than the US and Britain combined. No wonder France, Russia and
> China declined to support action to disarm one of their best customers.
> And no wonder they are so keen to have their pet UN run the country now.
> We cannot have any inconvenient invoices falling into the wrong hands
> now, can we?
<SNIP>