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Quote:

Originally posted by svandamme
all i want, is that you guys admit mistakes and act responsible

eg , learn to be less pedantic and self righteous as a nation
admitting mistakes is the first step to learning from those mistakes
and start improving things .

if Afghanistan would have been done right, and Iraq left alone, the US, and the world would have been better off... Iran would have been more mellow, as it would not have a foreign invasion force next door. and invasion force by the nation that used to back their opressive dictator, and did back their warmongering neighbour-dictator...

Iraq would still not have had WMD's and still would be so monitored that it would be unable to mount any threat to its neighbours...just like it had been for since the first Gulf War (or second one if you count iraq-iran )

you boys are so selfcentered, and unable to even acknowledge valid critisism... critisism is not always a personal attack.

You are so friggin right svandamme! You are painfully right.

But there is this endemic self-righteousness that reigns in the US of A that makes it extremely difficult for American folks to even begin to perceive how they are viewed by the rest of the world. It's like they are lost in this very deep fog.

But they mean well. They always mean well.

Quote:

Originally posted by Dottore
A very silly statistic.

German weapons companies are almost all much, much smaller than their American counterparts. Just because Germany had 80 lemonade stands competing with 24 US multinational softdrink companies - doesn't mean that Germany sold more softdrinks to Iraq than America.

Your scepticism is sound, but your implied conclusion isn't even close. Another genius who presents their intuition, rather than facts. It doesn't even pass a first order analysis. During Gulf War I, the Iraqis fought with Soviet tanks and jets, launched SCUD missles, etc. To declare that the Americans (and West Germans) were anything other than minor suppliers of Iraqi arms is asinine.

Here's a chart, showing arms transfers to Iraq (1973-1990), in percent by dollar volume.

http://mattcrandall.com/blog/archive...eaponSales.jpg

Rearden you are way off the mark.

The point of your previous post (to which I replied) was to state that the Germans were the largest arms suppliers to Iraq - bigger than the US. I questioned this. Then you disagree with me and post a statistic which confirms my point.

What exactly are you smoking?

The two data sets use different date ranges. My earlier post was meant to show Stijn that Germany was involved in chemical weapons tech transfer and that Belgium was not an innocent bystander. The second data set reflects the realities of the Cold War. Soviets and their clients (and France, of course, who sell weapons to anybody) supplied the Iraqis, the US and its allies supplied the Shah's Iran.

The bottom line is that the US was never a significant player in arming Iraq.

Quote:

Originally posted by Rearden
The two data sets use different date ranges. My earlier post was meant to show Stijn that Germany was involved in chemical weapons tech transfer and that Belgium was not an innocent bystander.

no need to convince me on Belgium's guilt
and other then Iraq, the FN herstal factory has done plenty exports to warlords and dictators and other hotspots Afrika and in the world

why , because the french part of belgium , the politicians there have stuck together to get those thing approved in the governement... FN is based in french part of Belgium(Wallonie), and Flemish politicians have and still are idiots when it comes to dealing with the Walloons, to devided, so the Walloons constantly get things through because they unite their strategy...
and their strategy is to protect the jobs in the FN factory at all cost...even if it means exporting death to those who will use that death very casually....
and not saying i'm sure that all Flemish are innocent now, one of the most famous international arms smuggler is a Flemish dude...
who was one of the dudes who inspired that Nicolas Cage movie...