From Nick Cohen writing in the Evening Standard (via Norm):
What percentage of Saddam Hussein’s weapons came from Britain and America? I ask
because on the rare occasions the BBC mentions Saddam’s genocidal crimes it
always says he was ‘armed by the West.’I bet you can’t guess the answer.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a mere 0.46
per cent of conventional weapons bought between 1973 and 2002 came from America
and 0.17 per cent came from Britain. The overwhelming majority came from France
and the Soviet Union, while West Germany gave Saddam the plant to make the
poisons he used to gas the Kurds.I bring this up because of the reports that
German spies tipped off the Pentagon about Saddam’s war plans. They may well
have known, as the Germans were in up to their necks in Iraq.
It’s intriguing how more and more of the SWC’s arguments seem to be getting unravelled. They say, “we armed him,” when in fact we didn’t. They say, “Iraqis didn’t want Saddam removed,” when in fact they did.