In message , Jim Watt
writes
On 5 Oct 2003 13:02:45 -0700, (Michael
Petukhov) wrote:
France said it stopped producing any type of Roland missile in 1993.

``There can be no 2003 missiles since these missiles have not been
made for 15 years, " - Chirac

2003 - 15 = 1988
2003 - 1993 = 10

Surely there must be some mystake

Roland 2 left production in 1988 and that _seems_ to be what was found
(hard to be sure since the evidence has been conveniently destroyed)

France was cheerfully selling arms to Iraq up to then (including a lot
of Exocet ASMs that got fired at Iranian tankers - Iraq accounts for
about 50% of the anti-ship missile use since 1945) but then at that
point Hussein was _our_ ******* and helpfully keeping Iran contained,
and his horrible human rights record and fondness for gassing Kurds was
tolerated.

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk