This thread is inspired from the following post lifted from a thread on the French position :
Quote:
Originally posted by Charean:
Just a side note - Australia, France, Russia and Germany all have arms deals or some other trade with Iraq.
Only Australia is supporting the use of force to disarm the country. Seems to me even though they would lose trade, they have integrity.
The others are hardly objective observers. They stand to lose a great deal of trade/money over a conflict with Iraq.
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Always nice to hear that someone thinks my country has integrity [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] , but this is the first time I have heard that we (Australia) have arms deals with Iraq - does anyone have any information on what we sell them? I am honestly curious, because I have to admit that the only things I thought we sold them were wheat and sheep (and possibly sugar and medicines and the like).
I am just curious if anyone has an information source because I have honestly never seen this stated or implied before. The other curious thing is "what the hell do we make that could be sold on the arms trade?". I am pretty sure if our Army or Airforce wants new guns, flak jackets, helicopters, bazookas, explosives etc - we buy them off the countries that make them (and we mostly buy US). The only thing that I can immediately think of that we make on our own are locally produced patrol boats and corvettes for our very small Navy. Some of those tiny ships of ours have regularly been rotated on station in the gulf to enforce UN trade embargoes on weapons etc to Iraq since the Kuwaiti Affair.
I know we have one (yes, only one) rather small explosives factory in the country, but I hardly expect that produces enough to satisfy our farmers demands to help them obliterate obstructive tree trunks from their paddocks.
Hmm, I guess the problem could be one of secondary processing, and perhaps I am not looking laterally enough. Maybe our wheat is being further processed to make deadly "flour bombs" and I guess they could be strapping explosives to our "suicide sheep".
Personally, I will be mildly disappointed if someone produces proof of an Aussie arms trade. I don't support unilateral action outside UN mandates, but I would not want to see us doing anything that props up a dictator that I would like to see removed.