Quote:
Originally posted by SLM3
Maybe I'm reading your link wrong, but after 1990, no state sold weapons to Iraq. Atleast not according to that SIPRI link.
When it was legal you did, when it was illegal you didn't? Illegal according to who? the US? You only refer to this US created rogue states list. Again, why should such a list have any bearing at all in the international system?
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I don't think that's what he's saying. What he's saying is that the overwhelming majority of arms sold to Iraq are non-American. If we assume that nobody (including the US, France, Germany, whatever) sold arms to Iraq after 1990, the point still remains that Iraq was not, in a realistic sense, armed by the United States.
The list is important because there is apparently a belief that the United States, and the United States alone, armed Iraq and that makes us culpable in supporting Saddam. Thus we cannot remove him from power because we were once his friend. Or something like that, it is not particularly good logic to begin with, especially considering anyone could plainly see on the television that the Iraqi equipment was clearly not American.
But with this list, we see that this is not the case. Therefore, with a few facts we can put the above notion to rest. However, I doubt it will convince one who wholly believes that logic. After all, it is impossible to reason a fool out of a notion that he did not reason himself into in the first place (Jonathan Swift).
-- Alvin