Made in 2002

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Dreadsox

ONE love, blood, life
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It seems that somehow many French products are turning up in Iraq that are not supposed to be there. Newsweek will be running this article this week.

The French: I?m Shocked, Shocked!

Conservatives on Capitol Hill are already fuming at new evidence of possible French perfidy


NEWSWEEK

April 21 issue ? The French government insists that it has strictly enforced a tight embargo imposed on Saddam Hussein?s regime by the United Nations in 1990. But Saddam never lost his taste for French weapons or luxury goods. And evidence found by U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq suggests that?despite U.N. sanctions?the dictator continued to receive an abundant supply of both until very recently.

LT. GREG HOLMES, a tactical intelligence officer with the Third Infantry Division, told NEWSWEEK that U.S. forces discovered 51 Roland-2 missiles, made by a partnership of French and German arms manufacturers, in two military compounds at Baghdad International Airport. One of the missiles he examined was labeled 05-11 KND 2002, which he took to mean that the missile was manufactured last year. The charred remains of a more modern Roland-3 launcher was found just down the road from the arms cache. According to a mortar specialist with the same unit, radios used by many Iraqi military trucks brandished MADE IN FRANCE labels and looked brand new. RPG night sights stamped with the number 2002 and French labels also turned up. And a new Nissan pickup truck driven by a surrendering Iraqi officer was manufactured in France as well.


http://www.msnbc.com/news/899533.asp
 
Just because something has a Made in France sticker doesn't mean the French government manufactured it and sent it directly to them. And if the French government was aware of the sales, it may not have been a direct sale to Iraq. What about Syria, Jordan and sympathizers in Saudi Arabia?
 
That scenario is presented in the whole article. However, it is still evidence that Resolutions and sanctions.....were not working.

It is also interesting that the materials found have come from France. Maybe the Gov't did not know. It does show however, that there are problems with Francemonitoring it's own stuff.

I am sure there are ID #'s on the materials, that should make things easy enough to track.

PEace
 
Dreadsox:

We agree that it didn't work, that dosn't mean that sanctions can't work. Lots of the weapons were illegally imported over Turkey and the Kurdish teritory.

Sanctions could have worked if they were organized and controlled in a different way.
in Iraq sanctions were abused for personal profit :(

Klaus

p.s. the reason that you can't find much american weapons isn't that they are verry efficient controlled (hey you can buy weapons in Kmart!) The reason is that most US weapons are too expensive compared to their competitors from France or Russia.
Why to buy a M16 if you can have a Kalashnikov

I don't want to start a debate over weapon quality, i just wanted to show that we must be careful with reading statistics

Klaus
 
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