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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (200239)	8/30/2006 12:59:30 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Direct sales by the US to Iraq are one thing, allowing or encouraging third party sales has essentially the same result but doesn't cause as much embarrassment to the US government. You think the USSR/Russia, or China, or France, or even countries like Brazil, needed our encouragement or permission to sell arms to Saddam before the invasion of Kuwait? Even corporate media reported that US troops found US armaments in Iraq after the invasion. I never denied that we sold arms to Iraq. I just question the significance of the 1% of Iraq's weapon imports that we provided. In the same vein, allowing sales to go through with a wink and a nod What sales did we allow through with a wink and a nod? Russia, China, Libya etc. didn't need or care much about our winks and nods. Or perhaps your talking about things like e coli samples sold by US companies? They didn't even get a wink and a nod. They would be under the radar of the people who set American policy. Maybe that's changed with all the concerns about weapons sales to Saddam that emerged after the Gulf War, and with 9/11, but I'm not sure. In any case in 1985 or at any other time before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait such sales where considered fairly routine and received little scrutiny.