The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
Saddam and the Merchants of Death
by James Dunnigan
April 12, 2003
Despite their opposition to the removal
of Saddam Hussein's government, France, Germany, Russia and China will be back
in Iraq as soon as the shooting dies down. The reason is money. Even when Saddam
had little more than a few billion dollars a year in oil for food money, these
four countries were eager to make sales. And for good reason, Russia, France and
China supplied most of Saddam's weapons (nearly $100 billion worth) between 1972
and 1990). Germany supplied huge quantities of industrial equipment, some of it
essential to the production of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. These
nations have also sold Iraq lots of non-military material over the last three
decades, most of it legally, some of it not. In the last year of Saddam's rule,
each of these nations sold at least a billion dollars worth of goods and
services to Iraq, plus snagging large contracts to upgrade and develop Iraqi oil
facilities and untapped oil fields once the UN sanctions are lifted. Three of
these nations (Russia, France and China) are still owed billions of dollars for
weapons delivered, but not paid for. This explains two things. First, all four
of these countries see Saddam as a good customer, and realize that if he his
replaced, his successors will not be well disposed towards nations that
supported Saddam. The reason for this has always been quite clear; Saddam was a
brutal dictator and anyone who did business with him will be seen as supporting
the mass murder and brutality. Not that these countries won't be able to do
business with future Iraqi governments. They will probably have to pay larger
bribes and offer better terms to overcome their questionable past. More painful
will be attempts to collect on those debts for weapons. The amount of Iraq's
debts are not known accurately, yet. But they are thought to total some $300
billion. About two thirds of this is for damages and reparations resulting from
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Some $55 billion is loans from other Gulf
nations (mainly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait), taken out by Iraq during the 1980s was
with Iran (started when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980). The way these things work,
when a nation changes governments and goes work out deals on paying off it
debts, the debts for weapons are less likely to be paid off at all.. When Saddam
was alive, the arms debts were somewhat more likely to be paid in full. Iraq
will ultimately pay only a fraction of the money owed. But international banks
will get closer to a hundred percent, while the Merchants of Death will get a
lot less. To cap it all off, these four nations (and many others) accused the
United States for going after Saddam "for the oil." The reasoning seems to be
that if we are vile, scum sucking merchants of death, you must be as well. This
is not always true.
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