Posted on 05/01/2003 12:37:09 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Before the war, French President Jacques Chirac huddled with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to plan strategy to undercut American efforts to enforce U.N. sanctions on Iraq.
Part of the French-led strategy included sandbagging Secretary of State Colin Powell in a bait-and-switch private meeting to discuss terrorism. Actually, Powell was ambushed in an anti-war crossfire.
This underhanded tactic left no doubt that Chirac was more interested in sabotaging the United States than in disturbing Saddam Hussein's unchecked tyranny.
Despite its best efforts in the United Nations, NATO and the European Union, France ultimately failed to block a U.S.-led attack on Iraq.
French opposition to American interests is hardly new. But the French government's do-or-die attempt to prevent any interference with Saddam Hussein's rule was more like the actions of a sworn enemy than an alleged ally.
Documents recovered on the floor of the damaged and looted Iraqi foreign ministry reveal part of the motivation for Chirac's attempt to protect the Iraqi regime.
The Times of London and other British newspapers have reported that their journalists discovered official Iraqi documents that show the French had been secretly briefing Iraq's regime on U.S. plans relating to Iraq.
According to the recovered documents, "friends of Iraq" at the French foreign ministry passed along information that came from private meetings between French and American officials, including Powell.
The French ambassador to Iraq, according to the newspapers, gave Saddam reports on U.S. war plans, strategy and thinking.
No doubt these reports were valuable to Saddam's brutal regime and likely helped the dictator in his war preparations. The French briefings also may have boosted Saddam's paranoia and motivated his last-minute killing spree of Iraqi citizens suspected of disloyalty.
Other recovered documents, according to the British journalists, show how France colluded with the Iraqi secret police to stifle dissent directed toward Iraq at a Paris human rights conference. The documents report that the French government attempted to prevent the meeting of the human rights group Indict.
Also found was a letter from the Iraqi dictator to Chirac thanking the French president for his campaign against U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq.
One document, according to the British journalists, was dated Sept. 25, 2001, and related a briefing by the French ambassador about talks held between Chirac and President Bush.
Another recovered Iraqi document reported what an Israeli official told the French ambassador in Washington.
The French denied these reports at the same time that French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin met in Iran with the terrorist-supporting Shiite mullahs who are attempting to undermine U.S. efforts to prevent the formation of a Shiite state in Iraq.
The French fought to lift U.N. sanctions on Iraq before the war. They had no concerns about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's hands. Now they oppose U.S. efforts to lift the sanctions because of phony concerns about the need for U.N. inspectors to certify the destruction of all WMD.
Chirac recently met privately with the leaders of Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg to plan for a new joint military defense system for Europe despite the similar role of NATO, which has U.S. membership.
These reports need to be officially verified. If true, the underhanded and dishonorable Chirac government must never again be trusted except to stab the United States in the back.
Rowland Nethaway is the Waco Tribune-Herald editor.
I think that was already self evident from his behavior prior to the war. He took the UN from being a complete joke to being VERY OBVIOUSLY a complete joke.
I think many of us were so sick at Chirac that we looked at his history. Oh great, he's the guy who devoted much of his time over 30 years to Iraq's nuclear program. What a "peaceful" kind of guy.
de Villepin was in IRan? I missed this...
The agreement by France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg - although much watered down from the Belgian plan for an EU defence headquarters - will inevitably be presented in America, and by some in Britain, as part of a long-term strategy to undermine the western alliance.
After a brief mini-summit in Brussels, called by Belgium to build support for a European defence policy, the leaders of the four countries insisted that their intention was to fortify and "renew" Nato, not to destroy it.
Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, said an EU defence policy and increased military spending would bolster the European "pillar" of Nato. The intention was not to drive the Americans out of European defence but to encourage Europeans to pull their own weight. "In Nato, we don't have too much America, but we do have too little Europe," he said.
Jacques Chirac, the French President, said the four wanted to build a stronger partner-ship between Europe and America, based on more equal military capability and contributions but also a clearer and more unified European voice within the alliance.
He replied to Tony Blair's criticism in a newspaper interview on Monday, which accused France of wanting a "multipolar" world that might set up Europe "in opposition to America". M. Chirac said the world was inevitably multi-polar. He said he, like Mr Blair, wanted a partnership with America, but that it must be a partnership based on equality and respect for differing points of view.
The timing of yesterday's meeting angered other EU member states, including Britain, and caused some embarrassment for France and Germany, which are trying to repair the damage caused by the transatlantic and EU rifts over Iraq. The last thing Paris in particular wants at present is to seem to be conspiring against Washington.
The four countries present yesterday were those that most directly opposed American efforts to use Nato resources in the Iraqi conflict. But the leaders said the two issues were not connected. The meeting, from which other EU countries were excluded then belatedly invited, had been planned for nine months, they insisted.
The outcome - a seven point call for greater European defence spending and an EU security and defence policy, working both within and outside Nato - will cause an awkward political problem for the British Government. There was much the Blair government would agree with, and has even campaigned for, since it scrapped Britain's opposition in principle to an EU defence policy at St Malo in 1998.
Even the idea of a small EU military planning and command unit - called a command "nucleus" rather than a "headquarters" in yesterday's statement - does not necessarily conflict with British ideas of what the EU should, and should not, be involved with in the defence field.
The Blair Government will nevertheless be irritated at being left out of any big initiative in EU defence policy, which is, par excellence, the area where Mr Blair hopes to be at the "heart of Europe". Realistically, as the participants, and especially M. Chirac, acknowledged yesterday, EU defence policy cannot get far without Mr Blair. Britain is, with France, the only serious military power in Europe.
Belgium, which called yesterday's meeting, spends only 1.3 per cent of its GDP on defence, and Germany only 1.5 per cent, compared with about 2.5 per cent for Britain and France. Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian Prime Minister, was mocked as General Verhofstadt by his own national press yesterday for calling the mini-summit (just before Belgian elections) when his country makes such a small contribution to Nato.
Originally, Belgium had proposed a fully fledged EU military headquarters, which was seen by both London and Washington as the seedling for a rival to Nato. France and Germany succeeded yesterday in having this scaled down to a permanent military planning and command "nucleus" to help the EU take on military tasks such as the peace-keeping force in the Balkans.
The four countries said they were offering this idea to other member states but that they would in any case form a planning staff themselves in Tervuren, just outside Brussels, next year.
They also said they would set up the nucleus of an EU rapid reaction force - an idea already agreed by Britain - by adding small Belgian and Luxembourg units to an existing Franco-German brigade. [End]
Powell was representing GWB at the meeting. Just like the Democrats, I guess Chirac just didn't pay attention to who GWB really was.
You don't sandbag W and then get a second chance with him to play kissy face.
Greenpeace Launches Anti-Nuclear Parody
We're the Ace of Spades.
By not saying that, by presenting only the Ace of Clubs, you distort their position. That's spinning. For whom is for you to say.
A Warm Welcome
(A dark stage, filled with fog. Lightning flashes, infernal music and screams are heard. Rowan Atkinson enters, dressed in a ruby-coloured silk jacket. He smokes a cigarette on a holder, has a clipboard in his hand and horns coming out of his head. He starts to speak, in a warm and friendly voice.)
Ah, hello, it's nice to see you all here.
Now, as the more perceptive of you have probably realized by now, this is hell.
And I am the Devil, (pause) ...good evening, (nods) er, but you can call me Toby if you like, we... we try to keep things informal here ...as well as infernal... (chuckles) That's just a little joke, I tell it every time...
(coming to business) now: You're all here for (turns over a page on his clipboard) ...eternity - oooh - which I hardly need to tell you is a heck of a long time, umm, so you'll all get to know each other pretty well by the end.
But for now I'm going to have to split you up into groups, will you STOP SCREAMING!
Thank you.
Now, murderers... Murderers, over here please, (points directions) thank you...
Er, looters and pillagers over here... thieves, if you could join them, and lawyers, you're in that lot.
Er, fornicators, if you could step forward... (astonished) My God, there are a lot of you. Can I split you up into adulterers and the rest: Male adulterers, if you could just form a line in front of that small guillotine in the corner there...
Ah... the French. Are you here? If you'd just like to come down here with the Germans... I'm sure you'll have plenty to talk about.
Okay. Erm... (turns over another page) Atheists. Atheists, over here please... (looks at them with a mixture of pity and ridicule) You must be feeling a right bunch of nitwits? I think so... Never mind.
And finally Christians? Christians? Ah yes, I'm sorry, I'm afraid the Jews were right. If you could come down here... that would be really kind, thank you.
Okay: Right, well, are there any questions? Yes? Nnnoo, I'm afraid we don't have any toilets. Um, if you'd read your bible, you might have seen that it was "Damnation Without Relief". So if you didn't go before you came, then I'm afraid you're not going to enjoy yourself very much. But then I believe that's the idea...
(turns to an imaginary assistant) Okay: Well, it's over to you ...Adolf.
And I'll, er, catch you all later at the barbecue - Bye!
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