Re: [OT] Peace is not off topic
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On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Anders Prisak wrote:
[...]
> I tried really, really hard to stay out of this but this one is just too big
> to let by. Yes, France has sold weapons to Irak. It has done so along with
> the US, britain and germany. That was during the Iran-Iraq war in the 80's.
> Iran was supported by theURSS so naturally the US got involved when it
Of course. On the other hand, I don't remember exactly but I suppose Iraq
had Russian tanks too. Not very good ones and they served as a shooting
exercise for Apaches.
God, I am really offtopic more than ever now. How could I be sucked into
this.
[...]
> time. After GW1 there is no way any western country could have sold weapons
> to Irak in a profitable manner. Do you really think the US would have
> allowed that?
I am very cynical when it comes to talking about law obedience. I don't
know what US can/cannot allow but this may be different set of things than
the set advertised in the news. I don't want to tell you what I think
about these two sets. Besides, what they want to allow is the one thing
and what they can force is the other. Currently, they cannot locate Saddam
to get rid of him. So how could they know what is going through the
borders. Yes, sure, satelites and intelligence. But I'm not convinced -
they both work part-time. Ten years is a lot of time and if you wanted,
you could have transported a number of Eiffel towers (but this not a
suggestion).
The only way such a sanction can be forced is probably to lock the
sources, not the sink.
> Now the only interest France and Russia may have in Irak is
> oil (and frankly not enough to compensate for economic sanctions from the
I think this is only a matter of money. If some goods become rare, their
price winds up. Then, your benefits wind up too (because your production
cost is const).
For anybody wanting to sell into Iraq, sanctions mean only that there is
going to be a really big sale in the future. Who will profit depends on
how sanctions get lift off. That's a market, especially if you consider
estimations of Iraq's oil resources. For example, Saudis got their own
AWACS if I recall well (what for I don't know, perhaps to show off).
> US) but that is true for the US too (Most of the government comes from the
> oil industri). Now I don't think Germany has any economic interests in Iraq.
Afaik Germany sells weapons to Turkey and Iraq is about one good
stone-throw away. They can start feeding tanks to them almost immediately,
I believe.
> So I'm sorry to disappoint you but it is most probably the most impartial
> country in the security counsil on this matter.
I wouldn't worry about Germans. They still have good economy (despite
newspaper articles) and their weakened position in councils may not matter
much when they have labs, fabs and money. This is what really matters.
I think that if you want to answer we'd better take it to private. I don't
want to enrage debian people against me and I suppose this is totally
offtopic and nobody (excluding us both) wants to pay attention to sh*t
like this. Actually I don't pay either. I just connected few dots while
sitting in the water-closet.
bye
T.
- --
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com **
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