Hoist by our own petard?

The Financial Times announces today that Chinese "armor piercing" ammunition is being used by the Taliban and the insurgents in Iraq. I'm almost surprised they didn't follow the government line as far as to substitute "al Qaeda" for insurgents.

I have become so accustomed to deceptive descriptions of arms and ammunition in the popular press that I usually ignore such terms as "armor piercing," "cop killer" and "military" but my real concern here is that the knee-jerk China bashing is obscuring the real problem of the international arms trade in which the US is a major participant, having supplied arms to the Middle East and other places of unrest for a long time. It's not unusual for a country to be attacked with weapons of it's own manufacture or that were made by an ally as, for example, Great Britain whose destroyer was sunk by a French Missile during the Falklands war. That incident did not result in a British assault on France, but then George Bush was not calling the shots as he is here, nor did Mrs Thatcher seek to expand that war on other fronts.

The US has sold arms to Iran and to Iraq as well as to dictators and warlords all over the world, many of whom sold them out the back door to more dangerous customers. It's a multinational problem but we are a factor in the problem and we are a country heavily influenced by the wants of the international military-industrial complex.

Until the major arms exporters, like the US, Russia, China, France and Israel decide to cooperate in making a serious effort to control arms proliferation, we will continue to be shot at by an international buffet of weaponry. Of course as the profits are so enormous, it's never going to happen.