What did Saddam spend it on?

So far, the Cole inquiry has focused on the extent to which AWB (formerly known as the Australian Wheat Board) officials knew that $300 million of wheat board money, mainly in the form of bogus trucking costs, was intended for Saddam Hussein's regime, how they misled the UN and the number of warnings that went unheeded. Canberra faces political fallout over AWB The (Melbourne) Age

That is all very well; the corporation (AWB) has sole rights to export Australia’s $5 billion annual wheat harvest, so they probably had a few spare bucks kicking about.
Iraq's trade minister, Mohammed Mehdi Saleh , the Six of Hearts in America's pack of Most Wanted Iraqis playing cards, was given the job of soaking the UN through the wheat exporter.
I’m curious to know what was on Saddam’s shopping list and how he spent his $300 million on.

Our previous post, So, Who Knew? listed
Saddam's regime gained access to hundreds of millions of dollars, some of which went on palaces or Arabian racehorses for Saddam's son, Uday, or to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, who blew up buses and restaurants in Israel.
Some also went on weapons, such as machine guns for the Iraqi National Guard, who would soon be shooting at Australian troops.”

But a few ponies, expendable suicide bombers and machine guns don’t tally up to $300 million. Or perhaps it does, depending on who Saddam was buying from. There is another jolly bunch on the Baghdad scene, the Al-Khawam brothers. On the face of it this bunch of camel traders would have been, as Shi’ites, Saddam’s enemies. But they were crooks too, and more capable than Saddam’s pack of cards.
In post war Iraq senior officials have accused the Al-Khawam brothers of a hand in a $1.5 billion sting on the Iraqi Ministry of Defence early this year.
Iraq ended up with a decrepit consignment of 27-year-old Russian military helicopters, right-hand-drive Pakistani trucks, inferior Polish armoured cars and outdated ammunition.


Picture: Sheik Hatam Al-Khawam SMH

Hundreds of millions of dollars - in boxes of US cash - were flown out of the country and similar amounts were wired to personal bank accounts in Beirut and Amman before any of the arms junk arrived in this chaotic country.
There has never been any suggestion that Al-Khawam Brothers Inc is a subsidiary of Halliburton. In fact it appears that these have a long history of dealing independently with and for Saddam’s regime.
No doubt they were an expensive habit for the mustachioed dictator; one calling for extraordinary money raising efforts. But we can be sure if the brothers were involved the military threat from the illicit cash would have been diminished drastically.
In the end he could well have simple [pissed the cash up against the wall on a few baubles, with a little help from his friends.