The below is true. What is also true are these figures from SIPRI, http://jeffweintraub.blogspot.com/2003_03_01_jeffweintraub_archive.html The figures below, from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), cover only "conventional" arms and only the period from 1973-1990. But they convey the basic picture clearly enough.
Saddam weapons came overwhelmingly from the Soviet Union & other Soviet Bloc countries (69% during this period), followed by France (13%) and China (12%) and a string of smaller suppliers. (For example, according to a 1984 SIPRI report, "During 1982-83, Iraq accounted for 40% of total French arms exports.") The figure for the US is 1%.
When it comes to Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs, the picture is a little more complex. It seems clear that France was far and away the biggest supplier for the nuclear weapons program. Supplies for Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons (which included dual-use materials also suitable for making agricultural fertilizer, pesticides, medicines, etc.) were bought from a variety of sources, which seem to have been primarily western European or Russian and primarily private rather than governmental. For one discussion of the role played by German firms, for example, in supplying Saddam Hussein's poison-gas and biological-weapons programs, see The leading role of Germany in arming Iraq
Chemical agents? Biological agents? Machine tools and parts and materials for uranium enrichment and missile production? You name them and the Germans delivered them - and not only that: they supplied the plants and know-how for Iraq to make its own "pesticides" ("to protect the date harvest"), "vaccines" ("to eradicate smallpox and other contagious diseases"), and "x-ray machines".
On 11/29/06, boddi satva <lbo.boddi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why?
>
> Because Saddam WAS our business.
<SNIP>
-- Michael Pugliese