US "heroes" kill 9 children

In article ,
Scott MacEachern wrote:

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 05:52:52 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

Which, oddly enough, seems to have been quoted without attribution from
that same Mark Phythian guy who keeps selling books based on the idea
that the US and Britain armed Iraq (while ignoring everyone else, who
*really* sold them the weapons, and are still trying to collect on the
bills).

Pythian's book quotes those same sources, IIRC. And the book never
denies that the bulk of Saddam's weapons came from other countries: he
was addressing the widespread, comfortable belief in Britain and the
USA that neither of those countries had anything to do with it.

Well, he's addressing his own contention, but since nobody ever really
denied it, and since he took that nice controversial title, the rest of
his claims are, let's say, less reliable.

"Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain Secretly Built Saddam's War
Machine" pretty much says it all. Not "sold a tiny amount of weapons,"
not "let everyone else in the world sell them a hundred times as much."

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 17:26:09 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

Well, he's addressing his own contention, but since nobody ever really
denied it, and since he took that nice controversial title, the rest of
his claims are, let's say, less reliable.

? There seems to have been quite a bit of denial of it. And I'm not
sure that coming up with a controversial title for a book necessarily
indicates that the contents are invalid.. more likely thatthe author
and publisher want to see a lot of copies. I certainly don't think
that adding "sold a tiny amount of weapons" would've made it more
accurate.

Scott

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 17:21:20 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

I dunno. Copters in the desert for 20 years? Very maintenance
intensive.

It's likely that if they could keep fighters flying (as they did
occasionally) they could do the same with helicopters. As for spares
availability, who knows? We don't know what parts inventories were
bought with the helicopters, nor how successful at cannabilisng they
were.

Scott