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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (47420)	4/8/2006 4:15:47 PM
From: DavesM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

The United States sold 1000 wire guided missiles to the Iranians during the same period of time as the United States sold the Iraqis 50 Bell civilian helicopters. This is not the action of an ally. Writers and educated people claiming that the United States was allied with Iraq are just grinding axes. If you want to claim that during the Iran-Iraq war, that the United States was allied with Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, I'd agree. Since you brought up the Russian-American alliance, look AT the Soviet-U.S. Alliance during the Second World War. The United States supplied thousands of tanks, fighter aircraft, a hundred thousand trucks, and much of the ammunition used by the Red Army - real actual military equipment. Even while the United States was neutral, we supplied real military equipment (warships and military aircraft) to Britain during WWII. If the United States was really allied with Iraq, then we would have sold the Iraqis fighter bombers or apache attack copters instead of civilian helicopters. We would have sold M1 tanks to the Iraqis instead of Caterpillar tractors. If the United States was really an ally of Iraq, Iraq would have won the Iran-Iraq War. Clearly for the Iraqis, it was in Saddam's (and Iraq's) best interest to win the Iran-Iraq War - just as winning was in the best interest of the Iranians. It was not in the United States' best interest in seeing either Iranians or Iraqis win. For the Americans, the best thing that could have happened was a stalemate - with the military capacity of both Iraq and Iran diminished.