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MickityMike

Re: who armed Iraq?

The US "armed" Iraq? Sure it did, if one is willing throw all reason out the window and consider 0.0005% of total Iraqi arms purchases as "arming."

Believe it or not, this is the kind of thing I love to see. Why? Because it confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are in fact NOT becoming a fascist police state. Fascists generally don't allow people to say such things...

Individual cities have held elections for relatively benign things as city councils and the like. To my knowledge, not one extremist has won election. Those advocating liberal reform and human rights have usually done remarkably well. But to be honest, I don't think this has happened since last summer so this may not still be relevant...

Really, is there anyone here who hasn't had these kinda thoughts?

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I'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons. - Glenn Reynolds

 

Hiz Highness

Is that counting the cluster bombs we sold Iraq through the CIA or not? How about all the money we gave Iraq so they could buy weapons from suppliers we made sure they had? Or all those military helicopters we sold them as 'commerical' helicopters? We tried really hard to make it look like the equipment we were selling Iraq looked like legitimate non-war related equipment, but let's not be so silly as to think that our government honestly didn't know what war-torn Iraq was going to do with those purchases.

You know America is a dirty arms-dealing, war-profiteering nation. Quit trying to cover for us. If we don't own up to our actions we'll never modify our behavior.

-HH

MickityMike

Sure, let's assume that all of what you say is exactly what you say it is, and that there was some nefarious war-profiteering intent. If we accept the postulate that America is not alone in the world in her behavior, then it's safe to say that other countries did the same. Therefore, we can reasonably conclude that such activities most likely did not change the overall percentage (0.0005%) of US involvement as the Soviets and French were probably doing the same.

I stand by my position, CN.

Hiz Highness

Where does your number come from? The .0005%? Is it legit, or is it off somwhere like www.right_wingers_wish_it_was_true_blog.com?

-HH

MickityMike

Public records, dude. Like that quote said, the arms sales were all very public - Hussein didn't mind letting his neighbors know he was stocking up. In fact, you can get on GAO's website and look up all kindsa crap we gave or sold Iraq, a lot of it "dual-use." (Like anthrax. Believe it or not, but anthrax ****s up some cattle, yo. Being the nice/greedy guys we are, we routinely provide or provided samples of it for vaccines. It takes a lot of work and know-how to weaponize the stuff. Oops.) But the same can be said for at least France, as their records are a bit more easily accessible than the Soviets were.

And I realize that there are many cases in the world where we were the major arms suppliers - I'm not wearing my naive hat and saying that we don't do such things... Because we do. However, in the case of Iraq, we actually weren't the major supplier. At best, we were an extremely minor hook-up.

 

goldberry

Extremely Minor?

$1.5 billion in dual use items between 85-90 (and I'll let you take a wild guess on whether Saddam chose to use them for civilian or military purposes) on top of $48 million of military items.

http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao9498.htm

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"Is our children learning?" George W. Bush

HappyMan

$48 million of military items is like 1 jet or 5 tanks, or a dozen APCs........not very much compared to the many billions of $$$ given to Iraq bu Kuwait and Saudia Arabia.

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goldberry

eh did you miss the $1.5 billion part?

HappyMan

nope, I just responded poorly.

But, Kuwait and Suadi Arabi did give several billion more than the U.S.'s 1.5 billion. They made the largest contributions to Iraq's war effort by a significant mulitple.

Hiz Highness

. . . and the Green River killer murdered significantly more people then Jeffrey Dahmer. I'm not sure that being a lesser evil-doer (to use a Bush phrase) absolves you of your evil-doer status.

-HH