Still Confused?

Raytheon Presents The Gulf War Brought to You By Lockheed-Martin (c) is still on a sort of hold while the UN debates the bits and pieces of Iraq disarming.  Its a sort of hold, as the US is still loading troops into the neighbourhood along with the tons of materiel needed to do what needs to be done.

At the same time, Iraq has been a little more forthcoming in running a front end loader over the Al-Samoud II missiles that are in direct breach of the 1991 UN deal, which is a good thing.  Trashing the tools of war is always a good step in convincing others that you are at least giving lip service to the rules.  Is Iraq going slow?  Of course they are.  If you think that Saddam Hussein woke up one day last week and figured out he was in big trouble, then I need the same medicine you take.  That punk knows the score and he saw that he was essentially out-gunned, out-manned and out-technologized by the US.  OK, we’ll run the lawn tractor over the really big ones that we wanted to lob at Israel.

Today, the UN is being blocked by France and Russia at the Security Council.  The reasons for this are two-fold.  One, nobody wants war.  A proper altruistic reason to vote against a UN action. 

The second is a little more sinister.  It is widely, but quietly, reported that much of the rebuilt infrastructure in Iraq for poison gas, military gear and other support services have “Made in France” “Made in Germany” and “Made in Russia” stamped on the hardware.  There was a worldwide embargo on shipping this kind of stuff to Iraq since Version 1.0 of the Gulf War.  Many companies gave that one a wink and a nod while billing millions of dollars, usually paid promptly, by the Government of Iraq for the bits and pieces sold to Saddam.

If the US does take over the sandbox, it would be, shall we say, discomforting, for it to be made widely known that many of the United States’ friends were saying Saddam was a bad guy, while selling him fertilizer plants, oil production tools and technology to support all of the destroyed infrastructure from Version 1.0.

This is not as contradictory as it seems.  Certain countries have an uncanny ability to speak out of three sides of their mouth at once.  At the multinational level, morality and ethics are sometimes just words that show up in the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary and have nothing to do with corporate performance. 

One classic example should suffice.  During the Falklands War, the Argentinians fired off a bunch of Exocet anti-ship missiles at the British Navy, sinking a major battleship and killing hundreds of sailors.  The Exocets were sold by France to Argentina.  But Britain and France are UN members and generally, good buddies.  Except there were dollars on the table and France went for the deal.  In a perfect world, France, Germany, Russia and the US would sell arms to both sides in a regional conflict, then offer to rebuild the rubble of the winner and loser. 

Oh, you’re concerned about the thousands killed, maimed and emotionally ravaged by those actions?  I’m sorry, that’s not our responsibility….