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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: JohnM who wrote (84161)3/20/2003 12:41:11 PM
From: The Philosopher  Read Replies (2) of 281500
 
On the French, slacker, I have no serious idea as to what their intentions,
motives, or otherwise were.

Financial. Pure and simple. See my other posts here on that issue.

The other aspect, though probably of lesser importance IMO, is that there are a number of Iraquis in France, and they may have feared internal terrorism if they publicly supported the war. But they could have just kept quiet and probably not incited hostility among local Iraquis. (Many of those Iraquis are dissidents, of course, many or most of whom probably support the war, but France's opposition to the war is not likely to incite them to terrorism, whereas support of the war might incite some of the Arab population to terrorism.)

But in the end, I believe it is simply a combination of being fearful of being pushed off the world power stage by the US combined with very hefty economic interests in keeping Saddam in power and keeping the economic benefits of having him buy from France and not from the US.
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