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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (136587)	6/14/2004 1:03:04 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Mary, I call countries allies when they behave like allies, and rivals when they behave like rivals. France is a rival, far more concerned with vaulting itself to a leadership position in the EU on the basis of an anti-American league than with any of its old obligations to NATO, not that they ever took them very seriously. The few billion dollars that some French made illegally has nothing to do with France the country Illegal? You mean the Oil-for-Food bribes. That was only millions to French officials, nothing. TotalFinaElf stood to reap many billions once sanctions were lifted - Saddam wrote them a package of real sweetheart deals. You talk about profits to Haliburton, you are looking at the wrong oil company for real profits. Saddam Hussein had no friends in the international community. Wrong. He had lots of friends. Everybody who hates the US was his friend, that's not a small club. He had three powerful friends where it counted, on the UNSC - France, Russia and China, all of whom wanted to see the sanctions lifted. He had no friends in the Islamic world Wrong again. Remember how all the Arab dictators rushed to make kissy-face with Saddam in 2002 and even 2003? Because who knew if America was going through with its war? And if America backed down, that left Saddam triumphant - and they were all very scared of Saddam, which is certainly what passes for friendship in Arab political circles. He had no friends within the terrorist network Nah, I'm sure it's a pure coincidence that a Lieutenant Colonel of Iraqi Intelligence was a major player in Ansar al Islam. And Abu Nidal just liked Baghdad as a vacation spot. And I'm sure we all believe that Salman Pak, complete with its jumbo jet, was a counter-terrorist training camp, like the Iraqis kept saying. Nothing to see there, move along. If they were that friendly with Saddam Hussein, how did we get the sanctions in place in the first place? Because a) Saddam had weakened his hand by invaded Kuwait b) the US was really determined in 1991, and it's hard to resist (sucessfully) when really determined (wise nations save their resistance for the long term), and c) the sanctions were never meant to be more than a short-term policy, and delivered lower results for higher costs over time. It's not easy being the world leader. If we aren't going to do it, who is? Nobody. But it's foolish to expect either love or much in the way of cooperation, particularly when upsetting a status quo ante that was harmful to us, but which so many of our so-called 'allies' benefited from.