What Kind of Person Sells Terrorists Surface-to-Air Missiles?

[Octafish]

37. They also armed Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

My source is Congressman Henry Gonzalez (D Puro-Texas):

Iraqgate--A Case Study of a Big Story With Little Impact

By David Shaw,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, October 27, 1992

Eight months ago, the Los Angeles Times published the first in a continuing series of articles charging that the Bush Administration had secretly funneled several billion dollars worth of loan guarantees and military technology to Saddam Hussein from 1986 to 1990. Directly and indirectly, the stories said, this money and materiel gave Hussein the very weapons he later used against American and allied forces in the Persian Gulf War..

The Times stories--many based on previously secret papers prepared by the Bush Administration--also alleged that the Administration tried to cover up what it had done by altering documents it supplied to Congress and by attempting to obstruct official investigations of aid to Iraq.

The Times has now published more than 100 stories, totaling more than 90,000 words, on the scandal known as Iraqgate. Almost half these stories have appeared on Page 1. Although The Times "got a good chunk of the story first," as William Safire wrote in a New York Times column, many other news organizations--print and broadcast--have also pursued it. But even though 1992 is an election year and President Bush has proven vulnerable on other grounds, Iraqgate has had negligible impact on the national political scene.

Shortly after The Times stories began running, Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.), chairman of the House Banking Committee, cited them in calling for congressional hearings on Iraqgate. Gonzalez, who had been investigating the role in Iraqgate of the Atlanta branch of the Italian government-owned Banca Nazionale del Lavoro for more than a year, also read dozens of classified documents on Iraqgate into the Congressional Record.

But the House was often near-empty when Gonzalez was reading, and Gonzalez was dismissed by many as "an amiable blowhard, a colorful character, and not as a serious exposer of wrongdoing, which is what he is," Safire says.

There was no public outcry over Iraqgate similar to that which triggered the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations. When U.S. Atty. Gen. William P. Barr announced in August that he would not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether any laws were broken, the reaction, especially outside Washington, was barely perceptible. Only in recent weeks has the story spurred appreciable political activity, and even now, it does not seem to have had substantial impact on the general public.

Why not?

CONTINUED...

http://www.latimes.com/food/la-me-shaw27oct27-story.html#page=1

For some durn reason, Corporat McPravda did not see fit to print or broadcast this story. Musta got in the way of "Money trumps peace" work.