1 Not being a major supplier of arms to Iraq doesn't mean that the U.S. didn't back Iraq in the 1980s. If that's what you think, it's being pretty narrow-minded. A backer would be one who supported the regime of Saddam Hussein, be it with weapons, financial aid, or other material help. As such, evidence like the $1 billion given to Iraq in 1989 (used to precipitate the arms buildup that led to the first Gulf war), the $500 million guaranteed by Federal Import-Export Bank in 1984 (used to build pipelines), Agriculture Department loan guarantees in 1988 of $1.1 billion - all of these are pretty convincing that the U.S considered Iraq an ally worthy enough to help where it could. This is just some of the support Iraq received from the U.S. (though let's forget about the fact that it's been widely documented that a fair bit of the aid the U.S. gave Iraq was used to buy weapons - from other countries). Again, you don't HAVE to give a country weapons to be supportive. By the way, all of this is pretty available to the public, so it's not like it's a big secret or anything. Don't get me wrong, Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator and once everything is settled in Iraq, they'll probably be better off for having him gone. But, let's look at ALL the facts when making a point, not just those which seem to fit a theory.

2 Also there is the fact that the $200M you are listing is FMS (Foreign Military Sales), the hardware we gave Saddam from the stacks of weapons and equipment being decommisioned from our arsenal and sold for scrap weight or given for free isnt included in that number.

3 Saddam unquestionably murdered considerable numbers of people, including many potential secessionists, such as these Kurds. However, there is nothing to indicate the number is 300 to 400,000, as we were told. Your story is "hundreds", most of the other sites are much smaller again. And killing secessionists or opponents in a Civil War (eg Saddam in 1991) is entirely acceptable to the rogue nation - their Civil War cost twice as many dead, 650,000, and the perpetrator is a national hero. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1263901,00.html PM admits graves claim 'untrue' Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor Sunday July 18, 2004 The Observer Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered. ...... It comes amid inflation from an estimate by Human Rights Watch in May 2003 of 290,000 'missing' to the latest claims by the Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, that one million are missing. ...... While some sites have contained hundreds of bodies - including a series around the town of Hilla and another near the Saudi border - others have contained no more than a dozen.