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Banned
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Originally Posted by roachboy
Konichiwaneko:
its funny you talk about the french government in a way that implies you see it as somehow on the left when chirac is politically not that different from a moderate (sane) republican. of course there is the fact that chirac's government did not swallow to load of shit handed to the un security council by the bush administration....this did not make chirac suddenly a leftist--it just made his government appear as though they were taking their position on the unsc seriously and actually weighing evidence--which the americans did not provide.
then of course, there was sustained smear campaign that followed, courtesy of the whole range of rightwing media outlets and thinktanks, that shaped the domestic american view of what actually happened--a campaign that hinged on the assumption that most americans neither know nor care about anything in particular to do with french politics. so it follows, your position.
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Interesting statements, but here's some more verifiable information on how "chirac's government did not swallow to load of shit handed to the un security council by the bush administration":
(It's from a Canadian newspaper, by the way)
Quote:
And they talk of peace
Andrew Coyne
National Post
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Having liberated France from the Germans, and having sheltered the Germans
for 40-odd years from the Russians, and having poured billions of dollars
into rescuing the Russians from themselves, the United States now finds, as
it races to protect its own citizens from madmen with doomsday weapons, its
most implacable foes are ... France, Germany and Russia. You know, the peace
lobby.
I will leave it to others to speculate on the motives of these three nations,
or to discuss their qualifications to lecture others on the evils of
interventionism. (A poll shows 57% of Germans agree with the statement that
Americans are "a nation of warmongers." Two, three, four ...) What is
unarguable is that their hostility to any effort to rein in Saddam Hussein
was in evidence long before this crisis; it has nothing to do with questions
of peace or war.
When the issue was sanctions, they were against sanctions. When the issue was
inspections, they were against inspections. And while they now profess to
favour disarmament, they have not only consistently opposed any practical
measure to effect it over the years, they have themselves been Saddam's chief
suppliers of weapons of mass destruction -- and may be even to this day. It
is difficult to escape the conclusion that they are not so much interested in
opposing war as in supporting Saddam.
The French, needless to say, are the most deeply implicated. France has been
romancing Iraq since at least 1972, when Saddam, already the number two man
in the Ba'athist regime, nationalized the Iraqi oil industry, more or less at
the point of a gun. Had the West held firm in its opposition, the putsch
might not have succeeded, and Saddam would never have acquired the revenues
to pursue his ambitions. But France broke ranks -- in exchange for a cut of
the action.
The pattern was to be repeated three years later, when Saddam began shopping
for a fast-breeder nuclear reactor, with a view to acquiring nuclear weapons
within 10 years. No one was willing to provide him with the advanced
technology he was seeking -- not even the Russians, who had sold him a
small research reactor some years earlier. It was not until he met with the
French prime minister, one Jacques Chirac, that Saddam found what he was
looking for. The French agreed, knowing full well what Saddam was up to, in
exchange for $3-billion in cash, some oil concessions and a huge contract to
purchase France's Mirage F-1 fighter planes. Oh, and one other thing: The
Franco-Iraqi Nuclear Co-operation Treaty stipulated that "all persons of
Jewish race" be excluded from participating.
More deals followed: armoured vehicles, surface-to-air missiles, antiship
missiles. By 1982, Iraq accounted for 40% of all French arms exports. Other
countries -- the Russians, the Italians, the British, less so the Americans
-- also sold arms to Iraq, especially during the Iran-Iraq war, when
revolutionary Iran seemed the greater threat to the region. The Germans,
egregiously, provided Saddam with much of his chemical weapons capacity,
from mustard gas to nerve gases like Tabun and Sarin, as well as the ballistic
missile technology with which to deliver them to places like Tel Aviv and
Jerusalem. But none did so with anything like the audacity of the French.
Even after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, French support for Iraq did not
waver. François Mitterrand went so far as to make a speech to the UN in
September of that year in which he lent legitimacy to Iraq's territorial
claims. The French were early and ardent enthusiasts for lifting the
sanctions imposed after the war, and did everything in their power to
undermine the disarmament regime. In 1997, following a series of
confrontations with UN inspectors, the Security Council passed Resolution
1134, which threatened to impose travel restrictions on Iraqi officials
(quelle horreur!) if the harassment continued. France abstained (along with
Russia and China). Emboldened, Saddam stepped up his defiance. The
inspections regime soon collapsed.
In 1999, Resolution 1284 greatly expanded the existing "oil-for-food"
exemption to the sanctions (around the Clinton administration, according to
Kenneth Pollack, a senior advisor on Iraq, it became known as
"oil-for-stuff"), and promised to lift all remaining economic sanctions. The
only condition: Saddam had to let the inspectors back in, and show progress
towards disarmament. Again the French abstained, this time after promising to
vote in favour. The reason: The Russians had abstained, and the French were
worried they would lose their share of the booming "oil-for-food" trade, by
then worth about US$17-billion a year, if they did not do the same.
And so it continues to this day, even at the cost of wrecking the United
Nations (and NATO in the bargain). And yet, in the face of this sordid
Franco-Russian record of trading Security Council votes for Iraqi oil
revenues, it is the Americans who are accused, on no evident grounds
whatever, of being motivated by oil-lust.
You would think the Germans would have some issues about being involved,
however indirectly, in gassing Jews. You would think the French would feel a
certain déja vu about collaborating with dictators. You would think the
Russians ...
But you would be wrong.
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It's also worthy of note that before the war France was owed $3 billion by Saddam; Germany $2.4 billion. Russia was owed $3.4 billion and claimed $52 billion in pending contract obligations with Baghdad.
If you pull aside the veils a little more, of the list of individuals, political entities and companies that profited from doing illicit business with Saddam, accepting his oil contracts and paying him secret kick-backs, 11 were French and 46 were Russian.
That explains why both the French and Russian ambassadors to the United Nations initially opposed an independent investigation of the oil-for-food scandal. It also offers yet another reason why France and Russia were so reluctant to join the "coalition of the willing," put together by Bush, that ended Saddam's tyranny.
Credit: Joseph Perkins, The San Diego Union - Tribune |