Bill Gertz has the facts on your beloved Putin...arms merchant of death.
Gertz gets his information mixed up and totally wrong. He was bumping his gums in the last couple of weeks that France was government to government supplying factory fresh Roland SAMs before Iraqi Freedom commenced. As a serving Coalition member this was the biggest piece of BS ever written. All the Rolands found were early variants no longer produced and all delivered and in service with the Iraqis during the 1980s. None, repeat none, were Roland 3s or newly delivered from France. The missiles had been, like many other in their arsenal, refurbished by the Iraqi's themselves. The Iraqis were skilled at reburshing missiles and even converted some of their SA-6s with seeker heads from AA-8s in a bid to challenge Coalition control of the No Fly Zones.