From: eriks@lin.foa.se (Erik Svensson FOA2)
Subject: Re: Bush Secretly Aided Saddam Until August 1990
Organization: FOA, Linkoping, Sweden
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 07:10:40 GMT

brian@coombs.anu.edu.au (Brian) writes:

>eriks@lin.foa.se (Erik Svensson FOA2) writes:

(stuff deleted)
>>This might very well be true. However, you should keep in mind that it's 
>>(relatively) easy to count formations (divisions and such) while it's hard
>>to count people. Saddam sent home some of his soldiers but kept the formations
>>in the field under strength. So, at full strength the Iraqies had just about
>>as much as the  Coalition said they had. 

>	They had six months to study the strengths of the Iraqi units stationed
>in Kuwait and out in the Iraqi desert on the Saudi border.  Are you going
>to suggest that in that time they wouldn't have been aware that a large
>number of those units weren't understrength?

In one word, yes.
An iraqi division weighs in at around 15 000 men. If the actual strength is 
just 12000 that will be very hard to detect. The only way I can see, short of
sending in your own people to do a body count, is if somebody reported on radio
that they were understrength. 
Also, after the air war began a lot of iraqies used their private initiative to
go home (or tried to at any rate).


>>This is true in a way. It was a political strategy to influence the voters in
>>the West to accede to USSR demands by giving an image of impending WW III.
>>It's far easier to understand the Soviets actions if you view them as a kind
>>of Burkina-Faso with nuclear weapons and paranoia. They most likely knew that
>>their equipment was (is) crap and had to use other means to reach their goals.
>	That is if you believe their goal was world wide domination.  I don't.
>Remember, Stalin was more interested in fortress communism than attempting
>to foment world wide revolution.  All the successive Soviet leaders kept
>that policy and were terrified of some out of control revolutionary movement
>which was independent of anything but nominal control (despite what Washington
>always liked to believe) provoking a (from their viewpoint) extremely 
>belligerent US government into pushing the button and destroying the only
>"real" refuge of the revolution: the USSR. 

They wanted world domination under Soviet rule. Of course they disliked 
independent communists. If we (Sweden) would have been invaded, the ones
sent to labor camps or shot would have been the "wrong" (e.g. non-soviet)
communists (and some other people as well, of course).
Stalin was indeed trying to forment rebellion in diverse countries. For 
example the USSR continued to infiltrate the british labor parties and unions
and organize wild cat strikes even _after_ the german attack on USSR, when 
the UK and USSR were allies. They stopped when the UK asked them to, but
started again when the war ended.


>>What do you mean with things?
>>The US never delivered any arms to Iraq, mainly because most of the Iraqi 
>>equipment is of French or Soviet origin and can't use US equipment.

>	The US supplied the Iraqis with large quantities of agricultural
>products either on credit or at subsidised prices.  As a consquence, this
>freed the money which would have been spent on food, and allowed its
>diversion to weapons and military equipment instead.  Thereby, the US
>was effectively, and knowingly (the US White House and State Department
>over-ruled US Dept.of Agriculture protests that Iraq was in no position to
>repay the credits or even the bills for the grain) subsidising the purchase
>of Iraqi weapons from other sources.

>	Supplying support to places like Iraq, isn't just about supplying
>weapons.  Its about supplying the wherewithall with which the weapons can
>be purchased.  Something the US appears to have only too willing to do,
>despite the protests that its hands were clean and that it had not supplied
>any weapons to Iraq (directly).

Ok, didn't know that. Of course you are correct. (Incidently, there some people
here who apply the same argument on foreign aid to India. If India can afford 
to build nuclear weapons and develop ballistic missile, then they don't need
ourt foreign aid.).
Probably domestic politics had something to do with it as well, since the 
farmers in the US is a vocal lot.

>--
>Brian Ross__________________________________________________________________
--
Erik Svensson			Research Officer
Guided Weapons Division		National Defense Research Establishment (FOA)
Stockholm			Sweden

net.address: 	eriks@fenix.lin.foa.se

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