Quote:
Originally posted by RougeUnderoos@Oct 7 2004, 06:57 PM
*The US was not going to let up on the sanctions so this all falls apart right off the bat. Nobody was going to be "looking away" any time soon.
** Knowing the ruin that country was in, and for some strange reason everyone dropped the sanctions and "looked away" it would have been a hell of a long time before they were operational and pumping out poison. How many years do you think it would be until everyone started ignoring a dictator in the Middle East? I'll guess "lots of years". Then the acquisition and the buildup begins.
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The Washington Post today with an examination of the effectiveness of Saddam's plans to circumvent sanctions, with a quote from the Duelfer report:
Saddam Hussein made $11 billion in illegal income and eroded the world's toughest economic embargo during his final years as Iraq's leader through shrewd schemes to secretly buy off dozens of countries, top foreign officials and major international figures, according to a new report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector released yesterday.
"The success of Hussein's regime in circumventing the U.N. embargo is "grossly obvious," the report says. "It is also grossly obvious how the sanctions perverted not just the [Iraqi] national system of finance and economics, but to some extent the international markets and organizations."
"Despite U.N. sanctions, many countries and companies engaged in prohibited procurement with the Iraqi regime throughout the 1990s, largely because of the profitability of such trade," Duelfer reported. In turn, Hussein sought to make the embargo a "paper tiger," the report says.
Companies in countries closely allied with the United States, including France, Italy, India, Turkey, Jordan and Romania, may have sold Hussein dual-purpose equipment that could be converted for production of unconventional weapons.
Nothing was there but the Bush team will cling to these findings from the same report.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...3-2004Oct6.html
Cowperson