"I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam"

[Scred]

Originally posted by richlevy


Fortunately, the U.S. got the money up front for all of the equipment we sold Iraq when they were the 'lesser of many evils' in the region in the 70's.

Yea, all of the equipment. What equipment would that be, then? Can you provide an itemized list? And how much did we sell them? How much of it was military hardware, and how much was civilian grade?

And can you tell me what percentage of all the military hardware sold to Iraq was made up of US goods, regardless of their original purpose?

Oh, okay, I'll answer.

Nothing in the 1970s. Zippo.
In the eighties we sold them:
86 civilian helicopters
30 military helicopters.
200 million dollars worth of hardware, totalling less than one percent of what Iraq bought in a 25 year span.

Anybody care how much some other countries sold them from the seventies up until the gulf war? Well, hell, I'll list them anyway.

Russia 25 Billion
France 5.6 Billion
China 5.2 Billion
Czech 2.9 Billion
Poland 1.7 Billion
Brazil 724 million
Egypt 568 millon
Romania 524 million
Denmark 226 million
Libya 200 million
USA (Finally!) 200 million

Maybe Russia China and France are just afraid that Iraq's inability to utilize that 35 billion dollars worth of hardware might be bad for their military industrial complex. Talk about bad press.

I hear Saddam owes Russia 7 billion dollars in back payments on this stuff, too. Wonder how much France is owed...