In article ,
Skysurfer wrote:

AES/newspost wrote :

The French would obviously have much preferred to keep on doing
lucrative business deals [1] with the, shall we say,
"pre-terrorist" state that Iraq was prior to our "ill-considered
efforts" [2].

[1] Lucrative for French businesses and French politicians, as I
think we now are aware.

"No more persuasive is the widely voiced (in the U.S.) argument that
the French were defending wide-reaching and profitable commercial
relationships with Saddam's regime. The truth is that France enjoyed
minor economic ties with Saddam. Under the United Nations'
now-defunct Oil for Food program with Saddam's Iraq, the French were
only the 13th-largest participant. The U.S. under that program
bought more than 50 percent of Iraq's total oil exports, the French
8 percent."


But the relevant question is not who _bought_ the oil, it's where (and
how) did the Iraqis _spend_ the proceeds from those purchases? And a
fair amount of info on that has come out since the occupation.

[Memorable quote from Christopher Hitchens as one of four participants
in a quite well done public debate at UCLA just days before Bush gave
the orders to go: "Saddam Hussein never failed to offer a bribe -- and
Jacques Chirac never failed to take one."]