Second-hand tanks for the Iraqi Army

Major Holdridge posted a link to the MNSTC-I Advisor article on new Nato countries' contributions to the new Iraqi army:

The arrival of dozens of T-72 tanks from Hungary this week infused "new blood" into the Iraqi Army's 9th Mechanized Division, its top leader said.

"This is a great day for our division," said Iraqi Gen. Bashar, division commander. "We are building our division and these are the base. We are pinning the strength and power of our division on our tanks."

The 77 tanks arrived over three days, culminating Nov. 11. The delivery also included 36 BMP personnel carriers, four recovery vehicles and several containers of parts and weaponry. It's the largest equipment donation to the Iraqi Army from NATO allies to date, officials said.

A cynic might point out that this is both an improvement and a safety measure: it's better equipment than "regular" Iraqi troops had before the fall of Saddam (T-72's instead of T-55's), but they are still vulnerable to US Abrams tanks. As long as the Iraqi army is facing Iranian or Syrian troops, they will at least have armoured parity, but if they try to turn on the Americans, the Abrams is still a superior weapon system.