While This article claims it was all the French, Russians, and Chinese.
We did give satalite images, i know that is not in dispute, and many of the iraqi tanks are Russian. But did the US give more than just satelite photos or not? Due to the war and information overload, i am having a hard time finding information on this particular topic and would appreciate any help given. Thanx!
Simple answer- everybody. Most “first-world” countries export their wares, and we have all sold weapons to Iraq, Iran, and probably every other damn country in the area, at one time or another.
Saddam wasn’t always the enemy, especially when we wanted a strong Iraq to stand against Iran.
It’s possible both those articles are right…that we sold Iraq weapons in 83-84, and that Iraq doesn’t have any now. Remember, that was 20 years ago, and weapon systems become obsolete, or break, or get destroyed during war.
While it’s pretty obvious that the Russians were the prime supplier of special discount hardware to the Iraqis it wasn’t like anyone else seemed shy about it either. What seems more perverse is that no-one seems much bothered about the fact that the US cheerfully sold dual use items like your helicopters under the mind bending morality that exempt them for the consequences of those items being used for bad ends. It’s pretty well acknowledged that those choppers were subsequently used in the gas attacks on Kurdish Northern Iraq.
What is truly astounding is that after this blatant violation of every humanitarian notion on earth the US blithely continued normalized trade relations with Iraq up until the very eve of the 91 war. This after they smothered a bill that was drawn up for the foreign affairs comittee A) condemning the barbarity of the regime and B) levelling the most severe trade and economic sanctions that have ever been proposed in a Bill. The excuse for killing Peter Galbraiths bill? “It wouldn’t change the situation in Iraq and would only hurt American business.”
The degree of Moral bankruptcy simply boggles the mind.
We supported Iraq in their war with Iran, back when Iran was the bag guy of the month. I don’t doubt some US weapons made it over there, but the VAST majority is Soviet in design.
The US actually sold no weapons systems directly to Iraq. That is not to say that none got there. Iraq bought US cluster bombs from Chile, and the US sold them the aforementioned helicopters, as well as some pesticides (that could later become nerve gas) and biological precursors.
The key point that allowed all these sales to be approved (except the cluster bombs, which we did not sell directly) is that everything we sold them had a legitimate civilan purpose.
The same cannot be said of Russia (nearly all of Iraq’s ground weapons) or France (much of their air force, and many weaponized chemical agents)