Saddam was given millions BY the USA in aid...medical etc...during his reign. He built 50...yes 50...palaces with it.
—”Saddam was given millions BY the USA “
Biden and Yellen pushed to give Russia $17 billion while troops gathered on Ukraine’s border.
As Mr. Putin prepared to invade a sovereign democracy, the Biden administration continued pushing for more than $17 billion in International Monetary Fund allocations for Moscow.
To further put that $17 billion in perspective, Mr. Biden asked Congress for only $10 billion in Ukraine aid after Russia’s violent invasion began leading every newscast.
...In this case, there were no sanctions to evade because the Biden administration simply handed Vladimir Putin, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Xi Jinping the money.
Treasury can’t claim it had no other options. The IMF could have avoided spending the bulk of the $650 billion general allocation on dictators and countries that didn’t need the aid by making the special allocation for the poorest nations. Again, these pages pointed out that Mr. Biden’s objection to a tailored approach was that it would require him to submit to Congress—which he seems generally reluctant to do.
If ordinary folks sent money to terrorists, the gov would be al. Over them, but the gov sends billions and billions and billions of American’s hard earned money to overseas terrorists routinely.
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union; hence, he had lots of Soviet tanks and MIGs.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the U.S. gave both countries intelligence so neither could win, and so both would agree to a cease fire. We definitely didn’t want Iran to win, but we didn’t want Iraq to win either. We wanted, and we got a stalemate.
Much of what has been called “aid” to Iraq was the sale of agricultural goods and dual use technologies. No, I don’t think we should have sold stuff to Saddam, especially since these sales were financed by the Export-Import Bank. On the Corruption scale, if we use Putin as 100, the Export-Import Bank rates maybe 25. These guys try to measure corruption as objectively as possible:
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021
As for bringing up Saddam Hussein to deflect attention from Putin: this is a strategy the left employs all the time, and perhaps some on the right. You’re imperfect in some way, so you can’t criticize Putin.