Robert Seeberger wrote:
Where the peace movement should focus a large share of its attention is upon the weapons manufacturers in their own nations and in creating weapons embargoes on countries like NK.Funny you should mention it. In a documentary a couple of days ago something was mentioned about how the US might have been instrumental in keeping Saddam in power. It was speculated that perhaps the US needed a big middle east boogy man in order to sell billions worth of weapons to Iraq's scared neighbours. Although utterly unprovable it did make for a pretty believable case.
How about a push for a moratorium on the export of artillery and tanks and the like? Ammunition? Land mines?
This stuff isn't manufactured onsite, these are export items.
A lot could be done to insure a future peace by pushing the UN and working within our own countries. The US is not so much the worlds Sheriff as it is the worlds Janitor
Seeing this, it just occured to me that if Bush set out to rectify this policy it could make him a real hero. Then again he would have to admit that a number of his predecessors did something very greedy and utterly stupid like selling large amounts of weapons into an on purpose destabelized region.
Sonja GCU: Naaaaah... or did they?
There are two different things to look at. Did the US at some point keep him in power? Maybe. Did they do it to sell other countries weapons? No.
In the early Eighties, Iran was a bigger threat. It was okay for Iraq to attack Iran because neither of them would become the big dog of the region. From what I've read, the US was only interested in having both countries fight, neither of them gaining the upper hand. This does not mean the US encouraged Iraq to attack or supplied either side with weapons. Saddam's brand of Islam is a minority in his country, the Ayatollah's type of Islam in Iran is the majority in Iraq. That's what made what happened after 1991 so bad. We left, but gave strong hints to the Shiete's (sp, and maybe the wrong type) that we'd sure be happy if they overthrew Saddam. Then we turned our backs on them because of all the flack we got of the eighties fiascoes like Nicaragua.
Anyway, other than Isreal, and planes for Saudi Arabia, we haven't been selling other countries in the mid east billions of munitions because of Saddam. I mean, let's say we were arming other countries, Saddam still had the biggest force in the region, right?
Kevin T. - VRWC Gotta work
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