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what would the immediate impact be? Thayer: In 2007, the George W. Bush administration amended the International Trafficking in Arms Regulations (ITAR) to permit the sale of nonlethal weapons to Vietnam on a caseby-case basis. Restrictions were kept in place on weapons and equipment that could be used by ground forces in crowd control. All lethal weapons and many military services remained banned. The Obama administration has made it to clear to Vietnam that its poor human rights record remains a major impediment. In January, when U.S. Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman visited Hanoi, they were given a wish list of military equipment. They made clear at a press conference that they opposed the removal of arms restrictions until Vietnam improved its human rights record. When U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Hanoi in June, Vietnamese Defense Minister Gen. Phung Quang Thanh requested that the U.S. remove all ITAR restrictions. Panetta passed on the same message. If the ban were lifted, Vietnam most likely would seek to acquire coastal radar, air defense missiles and maritime patrol aircraft in addition to spare parts for its inventory of Vietnam War-captured American equipment. Photo: The Soviet built project 205-ER Vietnamese missile boat HQ-359 (photo by Wikimedia user Truongsa7, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).