A letter in today’s Times quoting Air Forces Monthly sets out a list of the countries which supplied arms to Iraq and the relative proportion of weapons supplied by each between 1980 and 1990.
For those without access to the Times I reproduce the findings below
Between 1980 and 1990 Iraq imported $28.9 billion of weapons (Air Forces Monthly, January 2003). France supplied 19 per cent, the Soviet Union, East Germany and Czechoslovakia 57 per cent and China 8 per cent. Others listed as supplying more than 2 per cent did not include the US.
I have no desire to be labelled a vulgar reductionist and so will avoid attempting to explain France’s recent conduct over Iraq by way of economics. I’ll also let you make your own mind up what other consequences might logically flow from the fact that France supplied at least ten times the amount of weapons to Iraq that the US did.
