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In 1996, the Scott Inquiry into the Arms-to-Iraq affair investigated the Thatcher government’s record in dealing with Saddam Hussein. It revealed how £1bn of Whitehall money was used in soft loan guarantees for British exporters to Iraq. The judge found that during the Iran-Iraq war, officials destroyed documents relating to the export of Chieftain tank parts to Jordan
which ended up in Iraq. Ministers clandestinely relaxed official
guidelines to help private companies sell machine tools which were used
in munitions factories. The British company Racal exported sophisticated Jaguar V
radios to the former Iraqi dictator’s army on credit. Members of the
Conservative cabinet refused to stop lending guaranteed funds to Saddam
even after he executed a British journalist, Farzad Bazoft, Thatcher’s cabinet minuting that they did not want to damage British industry.
taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher
