[ez]

The rift is easily explained. Iraq is a SOCIALIST country, led by the Arab Baathist Socialist Party. This socialism was imported from Michel Aflaq and France, who assisted Saddam in using his Leninst tactics to achieve power.

France and Germany are also trending socialist, and so this is not about anything but the old Cold War rift...capitalism v. socialism.

The danger of Saddam is that he is the Lynchpin which unites the Socialists (France, Germany, Russia, China, North Korea) with the Islamofascists (Al Queda, Wahhabists). THAT is why he must be taken down and the link between the nuclear armed socialists and arabs be severed.

[Tallguy]

The rift is easily explained. Iraq is a SOCIALIST country, led by the Arab Baathist Socialist Party. This socialism was imported from Michel Aflaq and France, who assisted Saddam in using his Leninst tactics to achieve power.

I don't think France & Germany care a bit about the form the Iraqi goverment. As Steyn says in his article: this isn't about Iraq or Saddam.

[xm177e2]

Ba'athists are not really socialists. If anything, they are more like Hitler's "National Socialism," and France and Germany have no love for that.