Weapons Sales to Iraq Move Ahead Despite U.S. Worries

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/world/middleeast/us-military-sales-to-iraq-raise-concerns.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 10:40 AM
Subject: re: Weapons Sales to Iraq Move Ahead Despite U.S. Worries
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   It is natural that domestic arms manufacturers want to sell their wares to Iraq. It is even natural that the U.S. department of State takes an interest in increasing U.S. exports in a year of economic stress. But the U.S. has already done more than enough to stoke Iraq's civil war. We purged Sunnis from the Iraqi army and armed Sunni sectarian militias.

   If al-Maliki is going to be the leader of a strong free Iraq, he needs schoolteachers not tanks. If he is to be a new tyrant oppressing Iraq's minorities we don't need his business.

Barry Haskell Levine