O, Canada
You've stepped in it this time.
All of your sheen is turning into slime.
"It's a war for oil," brought your blood to boil,
Now the truth is out, 'twas just a foil.
O Canada, your PM's hands are red.
O Canada, the oil was yours instead.
Let's see if I've got this straight: TotalFinaElf's largest shareholder is a subsidiary of Montreal's Power Corp, whose co-chief executive is Jean Chrétien's son-in-law, Andre Desmarais. Mr. Desmarais' brother, Paul Desmarais Jr., sits on the Total board.
For months, the anti-war crowd has insisted that "it's all about oil," that the only reason the Iraqi people were being "liberated" was so that the second biggest oil reserves in the world could be annexed in perpetuity by Dick Cheney and Halliburton and the rest of Bush's Texas oilpatch gang. Instead, it turns out that, if it is all about oil, then the principal North American beneficiary of the continued enslavement of the Iraqi people is the family of the Canadian Prime Minister -- that's to say, his daughter, France Chrétien, and his grandchildren.
What a delightful footnote to the Chrétien-Chiraquiste war effort. This is a victory not just for the Iraqi people but for "Anglo-Saxon" reality over Franco-Canadian postmodern cynicism.