As for Roland missiles, they are hardly “latest generation” : IIRC, their production stopped in the late 1980s - to make it short, 20 years ago. When the Polish troops found them, they acknowledged they confused the production date and the “best before” date. The press officer who had released the first communiqué got a slap on his hand for the pointless diplomatic row, AFAIK.
Now, the WMD issue. I personally think the WMD is a dead horse, which won’t be flogged into life. And so is the endless droning by the anti-war crowd about the supposed insincerity of the war rationales.
In 2003, Saddam knew his regime was going down. If he had WMDs, why not use them ? Why send them to rival Syria - while he,at the same time, would just stay hidden like a cockroach in some Iraqi hole ? That doesn’t make much sense - if he wanted to use the WMD as a bargaining chip with Syria, he would have secured a safe place for himself, not live like a beggar like that.
The other thing is, a WMD program just has to involve literally thousands of people who either know what they’re doing or can at least give credible evidence. You need scientists and technicians, and army specialists. You need a lot more people to build the labs, mobile or not, to certain specifications. I personally find it significant that after 4 years none of these people were rounded up, put up before a bank of cameras, so the Coalition and WH spokespersons could tell the whole world “See ? We were right all along, and you were dead, dead wrong”.
As for the old “Oil-for-Food” meant “Money-for-no-invasion” theory, it’s all nice and dandy, except that, well, it doesn’t make a lot of sense once you think about it. Every person in the world who opened a paper in 2003 knew that Iraq was going to be invaded by a US-led army. Every government in the world knew the Baathist regime was already dead as a dodo, and hold no illusion as how fast it would crumble.
So why seal deals, potentially damaging and damning ones to boot, with a dead regime ? The “Oil-for-Peace” theory goes, France and Germany did it for oil, because oil means money.
But wait, to secure rights over exploitation of Iraqi oil, France and Germany had but one thing to do, and that was to jump on the invasion bandwagon. A few weeks later, there would have been French and German troops rolling in Baghdad, and both nations would have found themselves sitting at the table of the victors to talk about the spoils of war.
The way I see it (which you’re free to sneer at or not) is that setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion was a bit like sending an OED team to detonate a time bomb.
Consider Iraq in 2003. The Baathist regime had been considerably weakened after GW1, but still tried to enforce absolute rule over the country. Saddam was getting older, and his rule was bound to grow weaker. In a dictatorship like Iraq, the repressed aspirations and ambitions at every level, be that political, social, religious or ethnic, were bound to make the regime explode and the country erupt into flames. One day, there would be an Iraqi civil war, fueled by its neighbors. One day, the Kurds would decide to declare de facto independence, and Turkey would be drawn into invading this Kurdistan. One day, Iraq would be very weak when Syria and Iran would be much, much stronger. One day, the Baathist regime would collapse and send shockwaves that would be felt all over the world. The time bomb was very much ticking.
So the choices were, IMHO of course, whether to let things run their course and risk to have this device explode at the worst possible time, or to decide where and when the explosion will occur. It was a preemptive war in the sense it preempted Saddam’s eventual demise and injected American power in Iraq in the hope of trying to change the geopolitical situation.
In this respect, I think OIF has been largely successful. Of course, it’s been a costly success, in terms of lives, matériel, and money. And of course, the geopolitical forces that were at play in Iraq still have a lot of momentum. The antiwar crowd should realize that these forces are far from being dammed, and that as soon as the US forces leave, they will resume their deadly course.
Quote: All right, where to begin ? I'm a 34 year-old Frenchman - and yep, French as a frigging frog. I used to come to FR and enjoy the debates, and so I decided to be part of it instead of a mere lurker. I chose FR because I'm politically conservative and heavily interested in world politics (and a bit of a history buff, as you could put it), and I look forward debating with like-minded Americans. As for the Franco-American flame war going on, I can only say this : I love my country as you love yours, and such love compels me to be grateful for the people that liberated France. And so (if you pardon the pun), thank you all for you made us a free Republic,too. Unquote ******************************** That photo may not be a Roland, but Newsweek published photos of the Rolands located AT Baghdad International Airport, as it was being occupoied by US Marines. Of course, why Newsweek must have made a mistake...Oooops! And of course, France said they were black market, but Ooops Again, they were proven to be latest generation Rolands....Ooops! You have a very large OOOOOOPS! factor going there!
France was playing hard with Russia and Germany to diminish US influence in the ME. They lost that gamble, tucked their tails between their legs and headed for Syria with the very WMDs that required them to leave conventional weapons behind, such as the Roland.
Then all three nations launched a propaganda war decrying US involvement in Iraq, siding with Islamofascism. Now the same players are basically hyping their wares in Iran, only the nuclear stakes make the game much higher, and China is in aid. Nuclear whore live very short lives, as will again be the case in Iran for any European nation who deems to play both sides of the fence. There is only one side of the fence, a simple truth which France seems to have missed in its machinations. And France needs to get on that right side, or take what it has coming: a diminished capacity in world affairs and world trade.I long for the France represented by LaFayette, is it truly dead?
Perhaps now, with a new conservative leader in France, the modern Vichy French politicians who perpetrated the oil for food scandal( food=WMDs)will recede into their anti-semitic holes in the ground where they belong.
Quote:
Lt. Greg Holmes, a tactical intelligence officer with the Third Infantry Division, told NEWSWEEK that U.S. forces discovered 51 Roland-2 missiles, made by a partnership of French and German arms manufacturers, in two military compounds at Baghdad International Airport. One of the missiles he examined was labeled 05-11 KND 2002, which he took to mean that the missile was manufactured last year. The charred remains of a more modern Roland-3 launcher was found just down the road from the arms cache.
Unquote.
***************************************
Take it to the bank.
France and Germany were in so deep with the oil for food scandal and the trafficking of weapons contrary to UN sanctions, including WMDs, that it will take several generations for both countries to live it down. The people of France and Germany know. I believe thats one of many reasons both Germany and France have swung politically right.