Editorial
Reviews
From Library Journal
During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, a number of
countries, including the United States and Britain, increasingly tilted
toward Iraq. While many Western countries declared their neutrality in
this bloody conflict, several funneled arms and ammunition to Saddam
Hussein's government in the hope of defeating Islamic Iran. Phythian
(politics, Univ. of Wolverhampton, England) details both the motives of
the United States and Britain in bolstering Hussein's regime and the
mechanisms they employed. Using a variety of sources, he details the
various schemes the United States and British governments hatched to
turn Iraq into a regional threat to its neighbors. The strength of
Phythian's book lies in its extensive coverage of Britain's covert role
in what is arguably one of the most disastrous foreign policy ventures
of the West in the past 50 years. The author's description and analysis
of the Scott Inquiry's verdict on British complicity in the shipment of
weaponry and dual-use technology to Iraq is especially fascinating. For
both informed lay readers and scholars in the field of foreign
policy.?Nader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, Ala.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A chilling report on how Western vendors, with the
covert connivance of their governments, helped oil-rich Iraq to acquire
a state-of-the-art arsenal. Focusing on the role played by United
Kingdom suppliers in the lucrative arms trade with Baghdad, Phythian (a
faculty member at England's Wolverhampton University) first reviews why
London and Washington (determined that Iraq should not lose the war it
had started with Iran in 1981) allowed the despotic, expansion-minded
Hussein regime to procure from domestic sources under their control not
only advanced weaponry but also the means to build nuclear bombs.
According to his authoritative account, most such business was done by
legitimate enterprises tacitly encouraged to evade or ignore official
embargoes. Further, because of application ambiguities (e.g., certain
agricultural chemicals may be employed in either fertilizers or poison
gases), dealers could plausibly deny any illegal intent in their
wide-ranging export efforts. With jobs, profits, and the balance of
power in a volatile region at stake, moreover, first-world capitals
turned a blind eye to contraband traffic and risky transfers of dual-use
technologies. The technology and weapons the West had so blithely
supplied to Iraq were, of course, used against UN coalition forces
during the battle for Kuwait. In the wake of Desert Storm, the UK and US
launched investigations that eventually disclosed that the governments
of both countries had played a duplicitous game, acting in ways at
considerable variance with stated positions. The drawn- out inquiries
also revealed that intelligence services routinely recruited the
executives of defense contractors (including several the British Crown
attempted to prosecute) to furnish information on their sales trips to
Iraq. A timely, convincingly documented reminder that, even in
democratic societies, actions taken in the name of national security may
not be in the national interest. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus
Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
U.S. Representative Henry B.
Gonzalez, 20th District, Texas
"The arming of Iraq is one of the most incredible
chapters in recent foreign policy. Not only were foreign aid programs
and international financial systems abused, but our military men and
women were sent to fight the very war-machine we'd helped create. . . .
Mark Phythian's thorough and incisive study helps bring this into full
public view."
Peter Mantius, author of Shell
Game
"Arming Iraq raises highly relevant public policy
questions about the administration of arms exports, the role of
intelligence services, and the extent to which governments are obligated
to deal in good faith with the people they are sworn to serve." Shell
Game
Book Description
During the Gulf War, U.S. and U.N. troops found
themselves facing Western-made weapons, the result of the U.S. and
Britain's dramatically failed covert policy to supply Iraq with arms in
its 1980s war with Iran. This detailed case study discloses the full
scope of that concealed policy, and untangles the complex web of major
players who implemented and then covered it up.
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