{"id":183894,"date":"2012-10-21T18:49:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-21T23:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/10\/21\/first-no-real-democracy-then-they-are-allied-with-iran-and-now\/"},"modified":"2012-10-21T18:49:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-21T23:49:00","slug":"first-no-real-democracy-then-they-are-allied-with-iran-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/10\/21\/first-no-real-democracy-then-they-are-allied-with-iran-and-now\/","title":{"rendered":"First, No Real Democracy, Then They are Allied with Iran, and Now\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Iraq is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-19881858\">planning significant purchases of Russian weapons<\/a>, including the possible purchase of a large number of MiG-29s:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Iraq has signed contracts to buy Russian arms worth $4.2bn (\u00a32.6bn; 3.2bn euros) this year, Russian news agencies report.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Moscow, the main supplier of arms to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, thus becomes the country&#8217;s second-biggest arms supplier after the US.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The new contracts were announced after talks between the two countries&#8217; prime ministers near Moscow on Tuesday.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Reports suggest attack helicopters and missiles are included in them.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Iraq has been rebuilding its armed forces since the end of US-led combat operations against insurgents.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Thirty Mi-28 attack helicopters and 42 Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile systems are said to be among items being sold.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Further discussions are said to be under way for Iraq eventually to buy <b>MiG-29 jets, heavy armoured vehicles<\/b> and other weaponry.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>George W. Bush&#8217;s little adventure just keeps on yielding dividends for us, doesn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iraq is planning significant purchases of Russian weapons, including the possible purchase of a large number of MiG-29s: Iraq has signed contracts to buy Russian arms worth $4.2bn (\u00a32.6bn; 3.2bn euros) this year, Russian news agencies report.Moscow, the main supplier of arms to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, thus becomes the country&#8217;s second-biggest arms supplier after &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1008,964,1063],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense-procurement","category-foreign-relations","category-iraq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}