[chrishacken]

> The saddest thing about WWII is that the people who started the war, by funding it, were never brought up on charges at Nuremberg. Prescott Bush and Standard Oil made millions off selling fuel to both sides. IBM made the punch-card based catalogue service for the Nazis. Henry Ford's company made tank treads for both allied and Nazi tanks and even built the rails leading to Auschwitz.

The difference is these all took place before the war started. We sell weapons to countries all the time. That doesn't mean we wouldn't stop them if they began committing atrocities that we currently have no knowledge of.

[lostlogin]

The weapons being sold are used for atrocities fairly regularly. Pretending this isn't happening is what we do best.

[chrishacken]

I guess that can be true, depending on which conflict you're talking about. For instance, we sell Israel weapons all of the time, and one can argue that their entry into Palestine was an "atrocity", however, I'm sure if we were bombarded by missiles as they were that we wouldn't hesitate to enter and clear out a small nation of terrorists either. Obviously their execution could use some work. We're not exactly experts at it ourselves, but war is far more complicated than what you see on TV.

[lostlogin]

I wouldn't describe Palestinian Territory as "a small nation of terrorists". If the US took an approach other than giving and selling arms (refered to as "aid" at times) to Israel meaningful peace negotiations might be possible. The areas I specifically had in mind were places like Saudi and Bahrain. Arms sales to Bahrain were briefly restricted/stopped but resumed fairly quickly once news reels stopped appearing.