France's corrupt dealings with Saddam

Formerly titled: Treacherous French -
edit by miltownkid


France’s corrupt dealings with Saddam flourished throughout the 1990s, despite the strict arms embargo against Iraq imposed by the United Nations after the Persian Gulf war. By 2000, France had become Iraq’s largest supplier of military and dual-use equipment, according to a senior member of Congress who declined to be identified. The fact that new French missiles were showing up in the hands of Saddam loyalists months after the fall of Baghdad made Wolfowitz and his close aides livid. In May, Army intelligence found a stack of blank French passports in an Iraqi ministry, confirming what U.S. intelligence already had determined: The French had helped Iraqi war criminals escape from coalition forces

It isn’t fair to prostitutes to compare them to the French.

I mean weapons I can understand but then this posturing in the UN to discuss international law while illegally arming Saddam and using the top levers of power to corruptly milk money while innocent Iraqi women and children were starving and then to offer blank French passports to help the perpetrators escape. Is there no end to the shame that the French are capable of heaping upon themselves? I won’t be able to sleep tonight just thinking about the evil deeds that the French government of Chirac and de Villepin have perpetrated upon the innocent helpless Iraqi people. For shame! For shame! Too bad sackcloth and ashes have gone out of fashion. They are what is called for right now.

I’m very left-wing and wasn’t in favour of

Operation
Iraq
Liberation

However, I despise Chirac for his homophobia, his Islamophobia, and his general fellation of the Chinese Communist Party.

Oh…

And France’s economy is in the shitter now too.

France’s interior minister said Monday that the surge in fighting in Iraq

Hey, these are the same guys that ran away from helping Israel defeat Egypt back in the 70s and also gave Israel the nukez technology/HW technology in secret. Don’t expect too much ethical behaviour from them.

Simultaneously, one could look into America’s, or Britain’s past and point out atrocities they have committed. The world is all about business and politics, at one point or another all countries are probably guilty of some heinous crime.

Naturally this does not excuse da French, but really its just business, does not America sell weapons to other countries that are known to be evil/bad? And has done so in the past? Did U.S. not give Iraq the training and tech. for most of its technology in the 80s? If tomorrow France sells another RPG to Iraqi terrorists, is it really THAT surprising? To them its just business… but I guess if U want, U can boycott their products, croissonts, champagne, etc. :wink:

No you are wrong Web doctor.

Russia sold 59% of Saddam’s conventional weapons, France 13%, China 12%, Poland 8%, Czech Republic 7%, etc. US and UK less than 1% each.

see www.sipri.org

Also for wmds, it was 50% Germany for Saddam’s nuclear, missile, chemical and 8% for Switzerland and 5% for Italy and France and Brazil and the US and UK were only 3.5% and most of the US sales were computers which “could be used” for dual purposes not direct machines that were directly used for these wmd purposes. France continued to sell wmds and other weapons systems to Saddam against all international treaties and norms up until the very US invasion.

Finally, name one country that the US has sold weapons to that would endanger any of its “allies.” Name one country where the US sold weapons that significantly destablized a region?

Just stumbled across this. Utterly fascinating and written in 1945 by one of France’s foremost political strategists. A bit long but an absolute must read for anyone that wants to understand French foreign policy.

policyreview.org/aug04/kojeve.html

It is even possible that it is in this unified Latino-African world that the Muslim problem (and perhaps the

Um, not to get off topic from your anti-French foreign policy stance, but does it not pale to what Reagan did in Latin America, the effects which are even being felt today (Contra scandal)?

Although currently other countries are not openly selling weapons or supporting enemies of its allies, it has happened in the past…

Although I don’t like the French either (maybe cause I was forced to learn french, or found them to be rude and smelly when i visited Paris), but I don’t think you can just add them to an international axis of Evils, they are like all other countries/ppl working in their best interest.

I skimmed through the article link U posted, as after the first paragraph seemed kinda boring :noway: but the author’s views are shaped from a compltely different world, he talks about economic domination through coal and metal harvesting, and snds like an extremist at times, I doubt the elite politicians of France are following this guy’s doctrine.

Webdoctors:

Please read the WHOLE article. It very clearly articulates France’s goals and these are often diametrically opposed to ours. Why cooperate with them then? In the same policyreview issue, a commentator discusses how amazed he is that the article is still so relevant in so many ways to what underpins French foreign policy today. I strongly suggest that you read not just the first paragraph but the entire article AND the commentary.

Second, you are comparing apples and oranges. The Russians and Cubans were also involved in Nicaragua. The US was fighting their influence to turn Nicaragua communist. We won. Communism then fell around the world. Nicaragua has a democratically elected government and no one wants to go communist. I think that was a war and as such there were opposing sides. We do have the right to support the side that we think best when other enemies were involved.

BUT how did our involvement in Nicaragua in any way threaten the French or their interests? Compare this with France’s Machiavellian ties to Syria, Iran, Iraq and Libya among others. They could not seem to go out of their way any further to oppose and block US security interests and goals and directly threaten us. Or do you somehow see this differently than I do?

After all, when has the US given blank passports to a regime opposed to France? I think a fair comparison would be if the Algerian militants who set off a terror campaign in France in the mid 1980s were to run for protection to the US embassy and we would offer it to them and help spirit them out of the country, then you are getting close to just how much of a stab in the back the French have given to America.

Does France have a right to strive for a Latin empire to ensure that it does not become a “corollary” or “subsidiary” of the Anglo-Saxon empire? Naturally but by extension we have no reason to coooperate with them to help them thwart our goals (which incidentally benefit most of the rest of the world to a far greater extent) just to appear “fair” or “nice” to the French.

Let them have their world, but let’s kick them out of NATO. That would be a good start. We were exceedingly foolish to let them back in in the first place. Once Angela Markus is elected chancellor in Germany, we will have that important nation back and we must rush to expel France and perhaps Belgium from NATO.

Hell, don`t you know the west and in first postition USA builded up Irak/Saddam as a fortress against Iran? USA even supplied Saddam with weapons of Mass Destruction. So I was wondering why Bush does not simply show the delivery papers to the press to proof Irak has weapons of mass destruction :slight_smile:
Please remember, one Irak was the enemy and Saddam was on our side. There is such a lovely picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam.

During Irak war, France and Germany only warned about the chaos which may arise by attacking Irak, which was not involved in 911. Now we are in the middle of it.

But who gives a f…, now we do not have an alternative to blowing up muslim countries, so we can stop this discussion. Terrorists cut french, german or american throats now and make no difference.

Bob Honest:

You have failed to read this thread. The US did not arm Saddam. It sold him weapons in 1982-3 when Iran looked set to take Basra. That’s it.

Conventional weapons:

Russia 59%
France 13%
China 12%
Poland 8%
Czech Republic 7%
UK and US less than 1% each

www.sipri.org

Then, for wmds (nuclear, missiles and chemical weapons equipment),

Germany 50%
Switzerland 8%
France 5%
Italy 5%

UK and US both 3.5% all sold in one year 1982-3 and the US was mostly computers that “could be” used for “dual” purposes as opposed to Germany which was selling chemical weapons equipment that could only be used for making chemical weapons. That is why the government of Iran is suing only one nation: Germany.

www.iraqwatch.org

So get your facts straight and stop mouthing leftist slogans that have no basis in reality. You are wrong. The US did not arm nor was it responsible for Saddam. He was Germany, France, Russia and the UN’s man.

As Charles Pasqua, former French minister of the interior starts to buckle under questioning and pressure to finger “possibly other French ministers who were involved” in the oil for food scam, we find the following new information highlighted… Read on from the national review…

To be sure, Hussein-era documents should not necessarily be taken at face value. Yet the Duelfer report goes on to include specific information on Iraq’s French connection:

Iraq gave 14 million barrels of oil to French businessman Patrick Maugein, whom it considered “a conduit to French President Chirac.” (The Duelfer report does add that this claim about Maugein’s link to Chirac, obtained from “a former Iraqi official,” is “not confirmed.”)

"In 1988, Iraq paid $1 million to the French Socialist party, according to a captured IIS report dated 9 September 1992. Abd-al Razzaq Al Hashimi, former Iraqi ambassador to France, handed the money to French defense minister Pierre Joxe, according to the report. The IIS instructed Hashimi to ‘utilize it to remind French Defense Minister, Pierre Joxe, indirectly about Iraq’s previous positions toward France, in general, and the French Socialist party, in particular.’" (Joxe has denied this happened.)

Former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz "says he personally awarded several French individuals substantial oil allotments. According to Aziz, both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift UN sanctions, or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council."

Participants in the Oil-for-Food scam also included the French oil companies Total and SOCAP, businessman Michel Grimard, and the Iraqi-French Friendship Society, according to the Duelfer report.

nationalreview.com/miller/mi … 120842.asp

:laughing:

:laughing:[/quote]

Ah…creative editing.

:laughing:[/quote]

Ah…creative editing.[/quote]

It doesn’t change the fact that while France was purporting to take the “moral high ground,” it was conducting illegal deals with Iraq and making millions of dollars at the expense of the starving Iraqi people. France’s foreign policy is based on one principle, and one principle alone: oppose any and all American foreign policy initiatives and weaken their position as a superpower (while at the same time lining their own pocketbooks).

Why do I dislike the French so much? Part of the reason is that my grandfather, as a captain in the US army, served with the French underground during World War II. A French officer (a colonel, I believe) was injured, so my grandfather crawled out into the middle of the battlefield and saved him. For this, he was personally awarded the highest French medal of honor by Charles De Gaulle. For this kind of sacrifice, and the sacrifices of thousands upon thousands of American lives spent to save France’s ass during both World Wars I & II, this is the kind of crap they pull. If it wasn’t for the US, the French would all be speaking German right now instead of complaining that the Canadians and Swiss are butchering “pure French” and that words like “le parking” and “le e-mail” are unacceptable parts of the French language because they come from English. What prats!!! :raspberry:

Well, you would be amazed Buddha how different perceptions are in France for whatever reason. I was just speaking with two of my French friends and they were just as vociferous about the following points:

  1. The CIA trained and armed and funded Osama bin Laden so the “chickens came home to roost on 911.”

  2. The US sells weapons to everyone, why can’t we?

  3. The French have the right to sell weapons to China since the US is as well.

  4. They both strongly disagreed that France was “in bed” with Saddam and that corruption was behind the French move in the UN.

  5. Both were very emphatic about the culture exceptionelle.

I repeatedly pointed out that we did not arm or fund or train Osama but to no avail. I offered them sites to check this info out but they were not interested.

I pointed out that France was one of the key countries arming Saddam and that we were not, but they were not interested. I pointed to very curious contract signed between French politicians and Saddam’s Iraq. No interest.

I pointed out that I could show them information on who America sells arms to and under what conditions and that not one of those nations is a threat to France or French interests and that French arms sales especially to China would seriously threaten us (again to no avail). Ditto for its relationships with many of these Middle Eastern “regimes.”

And I asked why the French culture is immune to merging and mixing with any other culture including the American one since it has so frequently borrowed from Poland (Chopin) and America (Jospephine Baker) and the jitterbug which is the DANCE of all of French social functions. Nope. Not interested.

Final conclusion: Bush is an idiot. America is far worse than France about selling weapons and has a disgusting foreign policy based on pure profit motives. The culture for the most part is shit, Americans are stupid and fat and we should listen to them more because they are more deserving of world leadership than we are.

Naturally, we got no where and both sides had to agree to disagree, but I found it fascinating how much so many French people actually believe without proof the kind of crap that they were espousing. They could not raise one fact or cite one source to counter me but these things are things that “everybody knows.” I said fine. I don’t, prove it to me. Couldn’t and wouldn’t.

This leads me to believe that our trouble with France is very severe indeed. I should point out that neither of these two Frenchmen were Parisian otherwise I would have written it down to partisan interests affected by life in the French capital.

I really do not have the faintest idea what we can do about France and the French. I fear that this could be a long and divisive relationship and that it is set to get worse before it gets better if ever it does.

But the one point that I would cite as “chickens coming home to roost” is that

a. the US government does not adequate fund public relations efforts to get our message directly to the people of Europe or any other region for that matter. We assume somehow that everyone naturally knows that are motives are good and when the media of other countries gets going, we are painted with a very different brush. You think the media in the US is biased with 90% voting far left. This would be center right politics in France. You should see what the true journalistic slant is in countries like France and we are not faring well. When Le Figaro is the closest thing to defending America and its interests there is in France, imagine how we fare with Le Monde and such. We should be doing the same thing in America for that matter. Why is it that our best universities are churning out students whose heroes are Noam Chomsky and Che Guevera and not Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. When the proof of who has done more good is given to them, they still do not care. This is brainwashing and it’s high time we countered it everywhere. Unreformed communists and Marxists dominate our universities and that is why even in America, half the electorate probably sees no logical problems with Michael Moore’s movie or Noam Chomsky’s 911. They are not taught to think criticially and see the other side’s motives because they have only been given one side and that is the Leftist view.

b. We have never before “punished” countries like France for posturing and opposing America on the world stage. We have laughed it off like well posturing pretending it did not really matter when they have been able to gain great influence at our expense. We must challenge and fight them with everything that we have in our arsenal. The French government’s interests are not in sync with ours nor would I say that they are in line with what is best for the world. They are good for France only and they see no problem with that. Ergo, we must fight much harder to shut them out and shut them up. The Russians and Chinese manipulate the French beautifully, we can and should do the same. They will respect us for it. For the rest of the world, we can have a different foreign policy based more on ideals, but with the French, they get what they give and we will give it to them in double doses. It is just that simple.

So no reason to hate France or the French, but every reason to realign our foreign policy goals with the necessity of countering their daily attacks and we must win over the French people to what we are doing by going over the heads of the French government and media leaders to broadcast our side of the story. If we do not, how can we possibly expect them to understand where we are coming from? If they only hear the negatives (like in the Soviet days and in Islamofascist countries today) how in the world can they be expected to like us or our policies when they get the poisonous drip drip drip of biased media coverage attacking our every aim, goal, policy and existence?

My two friends found it incredible that I could have such opposing views and while I did not even come close to changing their minds at least I held my own and they realize that not everyone who supports Bush and his policies is some fat-cat oil company executive of some fat trailer-trash bleached blonde named Shawna who don’t know a thing about politics but eats at McDonald’s, drinks Budweiser and votes for Bush cuz he’s one of us.

Get ready for some hard work. There is a long long long road ahead. Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to McDonald’s to grab a Big Mac and some of those disgusting American french fries with a super sized Diet Coke. Increible!

The treacherous French in Myanmar :fume:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3761022.stm

Quote from BBC article:

"There were harsh exchanges, and just two days later the 25 EU states formally announced they would extend their sanctions on Burma’s generals, to ban any new investments in Burmese state-owned firms.

But international critics say those new sanctions are full of loopholes.

French President Jacques Chirac seemed to cast doubt on their effectiveness, saying he hoped the EU’s sanctions policy would not damage the operations of the French oil firm Total, which has large investments in Burma."

:raspberry: Keep them out of world politics, for f*cks sake! :raspberry:

… I must admit after reading countless sources here in this forum I am conviced France is doing an asshole-style international politics. Unworthy and unhonourable. Before I never found so many sources on that subject.

First they use their mouth to agree with other countries on some human rights issue.
Second they weaken plans for sanctions.
Third they quickly buy some cheap stuff from the dictatorship in question (like quickly buying cheap oil from Sudan now)
Fourth they say “The sanctions are not a good way to develop the country / help the people” etc.

Still threads should not degrade to insults on French people, but their governements foreign policy often sucks :grrr:

Isn’t a cock :cluck: their nations symbol? Pah…

[quote=“Quote from BBC Article”]"There were harsh exchanges, and just two days later the 25 EU states formally announced they would extend their sanctions on Burma’s generals, to ban any new investments in Burmese state-owned firms.

But international critics say those new sanctions are full of loopholes.

French President Jacques Chirac seemed to cast doubt on their effectiveness, saying he hoped the EU’s sanctions policy would not damage the operations of the French oil firm Total, which has large investments in Burma."[/quote]

Unbelieveable. And yet still, no outrage from the world community as to France’s foreign policy. France’s arms sales aided the genocide in Rwanda, and now their business interests in Sudan are causing them to oppose any UN action, which is leading to yet another genocide. How many more people have to die because of France’s foreign policy? If they were really concerned about stability in Africa and human rights, how could they possibly oppose sanctions against Sudan when the evidence is so crystal clear!!! And yet again … no one in the international community steps up and holds France to account for their actions …not even the US.

At least most of the EU (sans France) does not support lifting sanctions on China.