Much has been made of past US support for Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Granted, we were a lot more concerned about Iran at the time (and may yet be in the future) than we were about Iraq. That doesn’t alleviate us of responsibility for what we did, to be sure, but …
… but Iraq wasn’t exactly a US client state, even in the heady days of the Iran-Iraq War. While we provided him with military aid, who else, you might ask, was right alongside there helping us — in fact, elbowing us out of the way in a mad rush to provide geopolitical support (or earn a few piece of silver)?
Between 1973 and 1991, the following countries exported the following value of military armament to Iraq:
| United States | $5,000,000 |
| Britain | $330,000,000 |
| Germany | $995,000,000 |
| China | $5,500,000,000 |
| France | $9,240,000,000 |
| Soviet Union | $31,800,000,000 |
The USSR is not surprising — Iraq was their socialist client state in the region. But seeing who rounds up the list there is more than a bit interesting, don’t you think?
(via Ghost of a Flea)
Yep. That’s very interesting. Thanks for posting those numbers. I had been curious about that myself.
And, of course, there are signs a-plenty that both China and France haven’t let those annoying UN sanctions, post -’91, get in their way.