In early 2003, France NEVER publicly made the statement that Iraq was in possession of WMDs as of early 2003.
Carl, you are wrong on both the facts and the implications. In January 2003, Dominique de Villepin argued in the UNSC that "Already we know for a fact that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are being largely blocked, even frozen," which says quite plainly that they did exist, for how do you block or freeze something that doesn't exist?
As for M. Chirac's use of the word "probably", considering that in January 2003 France was arguing desperately to protect Saddam from the Americans (and as we now know, collecting big bucks from Saddam for so doing), saying that Iraq "probably" had WMDs was a pretty big admission against their own case. Surely if they could have scraped up any reasons for doubt, they would have? It would have made them look a lot better in the UNSC than having to argue, as they did, Sure Saddam has WMDs, sure he's broken all the previous UN resolutions, but we think it's no big deal and we're going to vote against another UN resolution under any circumstances.
The fact that they stated in public in January 2003 that Saddam did have WMDs is made all the more certain by the fact that M. Chirac has never claimed since the war, "see, I told you Saddam had no WMDs," which he would have done in a heartbeat, could he have got away with it. |
