Note what kind of weapons the US-SUPPLIED Iraqi Army uses - you remember, the weapons, many of which could not be accounted for?
They are Kalashnikovs, not American or European assault rifles. It's no accident that Soviet-bloc (or former Soviet-bloc) weapons are the mainstay of almost every force in the developing world. They are cheaper to buy and maintain.
What really matters is where the money came from.
I refer you to this page:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Please note the identity of the man with whom Saddam Hussein is shaking hands.
On 11/29/06, Michael Pugliese <michael.098762001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
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>