www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1098617/posts
TIMMERMAN Posted on 03/16/2004 1:29:24 AM PST by kattracks March 16, 2004 - MANY Americans are convinced even today that the war in Iraq was all about oil. And theyre right - but oil was the key for French President Jacques Chirac, not for the United States. In documents I obtained during an investigation of the French relationship to Saddam Hussein, the French interest in maintaining Saddam Hussein in power was spelled out in excruciating detail. That was what French oil companies stood to profit in the first seven years of their exclusive oil arrangements - had Saddam remained in power. The French claimed their opposition to the United States-led war to oust Saddam Hussein was all about policy. The editor of the Paris daily Le Monde, Jean-Marie Colombani, just resuscitated those arguments in an editorial that singled out George W. Bush as a threat to the very foundation of the historical alliance between the United States and Europe, and called fervently for the election of John F. But Colombani, whose papers coverage of the war in Iraq was noteworthy for its wanton disregard for the truth, had not a word to say about his countrys war for oil. Indeed, the secret deals the French state-owned oil companies negotiated in the 1990s with Saddam Hussein went widely unreported in France. Speaking in Vienna, al-Habobi confirmed that his government was awarding Total SA rights to the future production of the Nahr Umar oil field in southern Iraq, and that Elf was well-placed to be awarded similar terms in the Majnoon oil fields on the border with Iran.
Those two deals, which I detail in The French Betrayal of America, would have been worth an estimated $100 billion over a seven-year period - but were conditioned on the lifting of United States sanctions on Iraq. Simply put, analyst Gerald Hillman told me, the French were saying: We will help you get the sanctions lifted, and when we do that, you give us this. The Total contract, a copy of which I obtained, was very one-sided, says Hillman. Hillman, a political economist and a managing partner at Trireme Investments in New York, did a detailed analysis of the contract. An ordinary production agreement typically grants the foreign partner a maximum of 50 percent of the gross proceeds of the oil produced at the field they develop. But Saddam willingly agreed: He saw the Total deal, and a similar one with Elf, as the price he had to pay to secure French political support at the United Nations. Much has been written in recent weeks about the corruption of the United States Oil-for-Food program. Documents uncovered in Iraqs oil ministry and published by the Baghdad daily al Mada list several cronies of French President Chirac among those who had received special oil allocations as a political payoff from Saddam. But the amounts attributed to these individuals - in the tens of millions of barrels, on which they stood to earn between 25 to 40 cents per barrel - pale in comparison to the $100 billion payoff orchestrated by Chirac and Saddam. No, oil wasnt the only reason France opposed the United States at the United Nations in the lead-up to the war. The megalomania of Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin who lied to Secretary of State Colin Powell repeatedly and later boasted about it to visiting United States congressional delegations certainly entered into the mix. So did French pride, wounded at the realization that France is no longer the great power it once was. But the French did not merely disagree with the United States over Iraq, as did a certain number of our allies: They actively sought to rally world leaders and public opinion to treat the United States - not Saddam Hussein - as the enemy. The enormous difference between those two positions - legitimate dissent and active subversion of Americas right to self-defense - is why America is right to treat France as a former ally. Under Chiracs stewardship, France has shown the world that it cared more about propping up a murderous dictator than it valued its 225-year alliance with America.
|
http://csua.com/feed/