Pentagon intends to sell $2.7b arms to Iraq

The United States Department of Defense has proposed the Congress $2.7 billion in new arms sales to Iraq for air defense, communications systems and maintenance. The latest contracts would raise to nearly $5 billion the value of arms sales proposals to Iraq sent to Congress over the past two weeks. The Congress has 30 days to act to block the contracts, but otherwise the arms sales would enjoy a tacit approval. The biggest contract, which involves the sale of 681 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and 40 truck-mounted launchers among other advanced equipment, is worth an estimated $2.4 billion. The Pentagon also requested congressional permission for the sale of 19 mobile radio systems and 10 microwave radio systems worth $339 million. A $750 million contract would also cover maintenance of American-made vehicles already in use in Iraq for the last decade. “It was clear from the very beginning of the invasion of Iraq that they [the US] had plans to rebuild and restock the military supplies of the Iraqi army,” said Vietnam War veteran Darnell Stephen Summers. “This is the nature of what they do, to come in and invade a country, to destroy it and then have Halliburton or some other of its cohorts begin the process of ‘rebuilding’.” Summers said that making money is always “an end game in the process” of deaths and destruction launched by the US military industrial complex. Iraq previously ordered 36 F-16 fighter aircraft at the end of 2011. Iraq has seen a surge in violence since the beginning of this year. Some 671 people have been killed in the holy month of Ramadan alone which ended on Friday. More than 4,000 people have died in terrorist attacks in Iraq so far in 2013, with Baghdad province being the worst hit. The US invaded Iraq in 2003, claiming the removal of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, but there were no sign of such weapons in Iraq and the war left thousands dead and millions affected by the surge of insurgency in the war-torn nation.