From: brian@coombs.anu.edu.au (Brian)
Subject: Re: Bush Secretly Aided Saddam Until August 1990
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date: 15 Apr 92 01:44:54 GMT

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

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


>>	By the time Desert Storm began, the Iraqi forces were in fact out
>>numbered by Coalition (some 350,000 Iraqis compared to 450,000 Coalition
>>ground forces).

>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?

>>	Funny, it appeared to me going by reading of what was going on it
>>was in fact the USSR which was attempting to avoid a confrontation with the
>>US "that would destroy the planet."  If you want to go back and examine each
>>of the major "brushfire wars" between 1945 and 1980 (Reagan's assumption to
>>power), and look at how they ended, it was usually the USSR which forced the
>>beligerents to the negotiating table, not the US.

>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. 

>>>					Do you think we went to the Moon
>>>because of some desire to better mankind?  No, it was to prove to the USSR
>>>our missles were so accurate we could hit any spot we wanted.  And guess
>>>what, it worked.  Were still here able to hold this conversation, and the USSR
>>>is gone.  It wasn't pretty, but war, be it hot or cold is never pretty.
>>>And morality just doesn't have much place in war.  (It's humanity that
>>>does, but that's a different issue.)

>It was propaganda pure and simple. There's no problem in getting a missile in
>orbit around the moon. The problem is getting a man there and home again.
>The conflict (the cold war) was an ideological conflict with propaganda (such
>as lunar travel) as one weapon.

>>	Not really.  Both used Iraq for similar purposes.  The difference was
>>that Iraq had to pay in hard, cold cash, to the USSR.  The US gave them 
>>things instead.

>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).


--
Brian Ross__________________________________________________________________
	"If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it
will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people
suppose that it is always wrong."______________________________J.K.Galbraith
Newsgroups: alt.desert-storm