The Dirty World of Weapons Export

Hans Blix doesn’t want to make the names of weapons suppliers public, according to the NY Times:

Mr. Blix, the chairman of the United Nations chemical and biological weapons team, explained that he would, at least initially, remove the suppliers’ names from the document that will be made public because inspectors found in the past that suppliers could provide vital information about what Baghdad was buying and where.

If the inspectors “were to give the names publicly, then they would never get another foreign supplier to give them any information,” he said after the Council session.

Diplomats have indicated that disclosing the suppliers could be embarrassing to several nations, even perhaps the United States, which provided arms to Iraq during its long war with Iran in the 1980’s.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there were US (and French and Russian and …) companies who supplied weapons-related equipment or technology even after the Gulf war. The world of weapons (obviously including equipment and technology) suppliers is very capitalistic. It is sort of like Milo in Catch 22. Everyone does business with everyone else, including with enemies of their own country. Some of this trade is open and legal. And the rest is covert or illegal. Sometimes a company does business directly and at other times it is through intermediaries.