Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Pierce T . Wetter III]

On Jul 20, 2004, at 2:31 PM, Robin Green wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 12:50:50PM -0700, Pierce T. Wetter III wrote:
> >  <sigh> I dealt with this earlier. Iraq was a soviet client state, 
> > there
> > was no way we would sell him hi-tech weapons.
>
> The reality:
>
> http://www.sundayherald.com/27572
> "How did Iraq get its weapons? We sold them"
>
> http://www.lizmichael.com/weapons.htm
> "List of US businesses that sold weapons to Saddam Hussein"
>
> And
>
> http://www.progressive.org/0901/anth0498.html
> "Anthrax for Export"
>
> "Most Americans listening to the President did not know that the 
> United States supplied Iraq with much of the raw material for
> creating a chemical and biological warfare program. Nor did the media 
> report that U.S. companies sold Iraq more than $1 billion
> worth of the components needed to build nuclear weapons and diverse 
> types of missiles, including the infamous Scud.
>
> "When Iraq engaged in chemical and biological warfare in the 1980s, 
> barely a peep of moral outrage could be heard from Washington,
> as it kept supplying Saddam with the materials he needed to build 
> weapons."

 Thank you for digging up this information, and taking time to respond. 
These are all very good links.

So reading through these, it seems to confirm what I've read elsewhere 
that the US
provided a lot of "dual-use" items, but no actual weapons. Two 
especially damning quotes:

Other corporations recognized the military potential of their goods but 
considered it the government's job to worry about it. "Every once in a 
while you kind of wonder when you sell something to a certain country," 
said Robert Finney, president of Electronic Associates, Inc., which 
supplied Saad 16 with a powerful computer that could be used for 
missile testing and development. "But it's not up to us to make foreign 
policy,"

"If an item was in dispute, my attitude was if they were readily 
available from other markets, I didn't see why we should deprive 
American markets,"

 Which just reeks of incompetence.

 So you probably read these as a very strong indication of the US 
creating our own
problem. I'd have to agree that's very true for as far as these 
articles go, and I won't bother to quibble with you on dual-use items 
vs. actual weapons. I think that's where we have to agree to disagree.

 But do you think then that countries who sold actual weapons, even 
more components, and did other things for Iraq during this period 
should bear some of the blame for Saddam? Or is the US uniquely 
responsible?

> This continues the usual pattern. At the height of the Indonesian 
> genocide
> in East Timor in the late 1970s, the US stepped up arms sales to 
> Indonesia.

 Yep. I really don't know that we were thinking of in Indonesia. 
Perhaps we
just weren't thinking. It seems to be a little bit too easy to get an 
export
license...

 Pierce