In article ,
Scott MacEachern wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 16:30:40 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

In article ,
"tw" wrote:

You know, people keep claiming that "supported him for so long" bit,
when all that happened was a short-term information trade during the war
with Iran, along with some sales of a few small helicopters (cancelled
after they started using them for non-civilian purposes)

Forty Bell 214STs and approximately 85 Hughes 300s and 500s were
delivered to Iraq,

For civilian use. Exactly. And then they supposedly stuck weapons on
them and used them for killing people (although nobody's managed to find
any of these armed 214s, and only a few MD-500s), and we stopped selling
things to them.

Pretty trivial when you compare to the thousands of tanks, fighter jets,
artillery pieces, *combat* helicopters, and other armaments sold to Iraq
for direct military purposes by pretty much everyone else.

Here's a little sample of Russian copter sales:

37 Mi-17/Hip-H
40 Mi-24D/Mi-25/Hind-D
12 Mi-24D/Mi-25/Hind-D
15 Mi-6T/Hook-A
90 Mi-8T/Hip-C
30 Mi-8TV/Hip-F

Then, of course, the French not only sold Iraq copters, but also sold
them the weapons systems to use *with* those copters.

and were in service just before GW1. That's hardly
'a few small helicopters'.

Compared to the rest of the stuff everyone else sold, it's damned near
invisible.

the reconnaissance data that America provided to Iraq was being
provided at the time that Iraq was using chemical weapons against
_Iran_.

....and you might note that the use of chemical weapons was part of the
reason we stopped dealing with Iraq in the late 1980s. Our total
involvement with Hussein lasted just four years, as opposed to 30+ for
many of our "allies."

You might note as well that Mark Pythian, in his book _Arming Iraq_

You mean "Arming Iraq : How the US and Britain Secretly Built Saddam's
War Machine," which is really funny, since the US accounts for less than
1% of arms sales to Iraq over the last 30 years... it should be "How the
Soviet Union and Russia armed Iraq."

says that a number of the 214s were used in the gassing of the
Kurdish town of Halabja.

Funny... everyone else says that Halabja was gassed by bombs dropped
from planes. Several hours of regular artillery the day before, some
rockets that morning, and finished off with mustard and nerve gas.

No copters in the attack. And that's from multiple sources, including
Human Rights Watch.

Now, *some* people are claiming that copters were used, but the
eyewitness accounts only mention one copter flying on low to take photos
after the attacks, and they might have been describing the Iranian Huey
that flew some journalists in to cover the story.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.