The following article is from the Canadian National Post
 "And they talk of peace"
 Andrew Coyne
 National Post
 Wednesday, February 12, 2003

 Having liberated France from the Germans, and having sheltered the
 Germans for 40-odd years from the Russians, and having poured billions
 of dollars into rescuing the Russians from themselves, the United States
 now finds, as it races to protect its own citizens from madmen with
 doomsday weapons, its most implacable foes are ... France, Germany and
 Russia. You know, the peace lobby.
 
 I will leave it to others to speculate on the motives of these three
 nations, or to discuss their qualifications to lecture others on the
 evils of interventionism. (A poll shows 57% of Germans agree with the
 statement that Americans are "a nation of warmongers." Two, three, four
 ...) What is unarguable is that their hostility to any effort to rein in
 Saddam Hussein was in evidence long before this crisis; it has nothing
 to do with questions of peace or war.
 
 When the issue was sanctions, they were against sanctions. When the
 issue was inspections, they were against inspections. And while they now
 profess to favour disarmament, they have not only consistently opposed
 any practical measure to effect it over the years, they have themselves
 been Saddam's chief suppliers of weapons of mass destruction -- and may
 be even to this day. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that they
 are not so much interested in opposing war as in supporting Saddam.
 The French, needless to say, are the most deeply implicated. France has
 been romancing Iraq since at least 1972, when Saddam, already the number
 two man in the Ba'athist regime, nationalized the Iraqi oil industry,
 more or less at the point of a gun. Had the West held firm in its
 opposition, the putsch might not have succeeded, and Saddam would never
 have acquired the revenues to pursue his ambitions. But France broke
 ranks -- in exchange for a cut of the action.
 
 The pattern was to be repeated three years later, when Saddam began
 shopping for a fast-breeder nuclear reactor, with a view to acquiring
 nuclear weapons within 10 years. No one was willing to provide him with
 the advanced technology he was seeking -- not even the Russians, who had
 sold him with a small research reactor some years earlier. It was not
 until he met with the French prime minister, one Jacques Chirac, that
 Saddam found what he was looking for. The French agreed, knowing full
 well what Saddam was up to, in exchange for $3-billion in cash, some oil
 concessions and a huge contract to purchase France's Mirage F-1 fighter
 planes. Oh, and one other thing: The Franco-Iraqi Nuclear Co-operation
 Treaty stipulated that "all persons of Jewish race" be excluded from
 participating.
 
 More deals followed: armoured vehicles, surface-to-air missiles,
 antiship missiles. By 1982, Iraq accounted for 40% of all French arms
 exports. Other countries -- the Russians, the Italians, the British,
 less so the Americans -- also sold arms to Iraq, especially during the
 Iran-Iraq war, when revolutionary Iran seemed the greater threat to the
 region. The Germans, egregiously, provided Saddam with much of his
 chemical weapons capacity, from mustard gas to nerve gases like Tabun
 and Sarin, as well as the ballistic missile technology with which to
 deliver them to places like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. But none did so with
 anything like the audacity of the French.
 
 Even after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, French support for Iraq did
 not waver. François Mitterrand went so far as to make a speech to the
 UN in September of that year in which he lent legitimacy to Iraq's
 territorial claims. The French were early and ardent enthusiasts for
 lifting the sanctions imposed after the war, and did everything in their
 power to undermine the disarmament regime. In 1997, following a series
 of confrontations with UN inspectors, the Security Council passed
 Resolution 1134, which threatened to impose travel restrictions on Iraqi
 officials (quelle horreur!) if the harassment continued. France
 abstained (along with Russia and China). Emboldened, Saddam stepped up
 his defiance. The inspections regime soon collapsed.
 
 In 1999, Resolution 1284 greatly expanded the existing "oil-for-food"
 exemption to the sanctions (around the Clinton administration, according
 to Kenneth Pollack, a senior advisor on Iraq, it became known as
 "oil-for-stuff"), and promised to lift all remaining economic sanctions.
 The only condition: Saddam had to let the inspectors back in, and show
 progress towards disarmament. Again the French abstained, this time
 after promising to vote in favour. The reason: The Russians had
 abstained, and the French were worried they would lose their share of
 the booming "oil-for-food" trade, by then worth about US$17-billion a
 year, if they did not do the same.
 
 And so it continues to this day, even at the cost of wrecking the United
 Nations (and NATO in the bargain). And yet, in the face of this sordid
 Franco-Russian record of trading Security Council votes for Iraqi oil
 revenues, it is the Americans who are accused, on no evident grounds
 whatever, of being motivated by oil-lust.
 
 You would think the Germans would have some issues about being involved,
 however indirectly, in gassing Jews. You would think the French would
 feel a certain déja vu about collaborating with dictators. You would
 think the Russians ...
 But you would be wrong.




Subject: France


David Letterman: "France wants more evidence [of
Iraqi violations]. The last time France wanted more
evidence, it rolled right through France with a
German flag."
 
Dennis Miller: "The only way the French are going in
is if we tell them we found truffles in Iraq."
 
Jay Leno: "I don't know why people are surprised
that France won't help us get Saddam out of Iraq.
After all, France wouldn't help us get the Germans
out of France!"
 
Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.: "Do you know how many
Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris? It's not known,
it's never been tried."
 
Blunt again: "Somebody was telling me about the
French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay
the other day -- the description was: 'Never shot.
Dropped once.'"
 
And even an unwitting French President Jacques
Chirac: "As far as I'm concerned, war always means
failure."
 
Do you know it only took Germany three days to
conquer France in World War II? And that's because
it was raining," said John Xereas, manager of the DC
Improv.
 
According to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:
"Going to war without the French is like going deer
hunting without your accordion."
 
Raise your hand if you like the French.  Raise both
hands if you are French