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US report of Iraq payoffs miffs France
EFL
The US' handling this week of a report on Saddam Hussein's attempts to purchase weapons and buy influence has angered French officials and set back a year of US efforts to repair the rupture caused by the Iraq war, French and other European officials said on Friday. The anger of France and others is focused on the assertions in the report by Charles Duelfer, the top US arms inspector in Iraq, that French companies and individuals, some with close ties to the government, enriched themselves through Iraq's huge payments to gain influence around the world in the years before the war.
Let me see if I get this straight. Efforts to improve US-French relations -- damaged by French perfidy, corruption, and gross irresponsibility with regard to Iraq -- are imperiled by US handling of information showing French perfidy, corruption, and gross irresponsibility with regard to Iraq. I must be missing a nuance, or else this makes no effing sense.
Must have been French efforts to improve relations by getting Kerry elected.
Administration spokesmen said that there was no intent in releasing the report to endorse its findings or blame France or any other country for corruption, or to link any alleged corruption to that country's subsequent opposition to the war in Iraq.
True, France's status as Saddam's mafia lawyer at the UNSC, tirelessly pushing to end sanctions regardless of Iraqi behavior, began before the ink was dry on UNSCR 687. The corruption part was just icing on the cake.
French officials say that the report's charges, based on documents and interviews in Iraq, have been denied in the past, but that Duelfer's report did not contain the denials. They also complain that France was not given more than one day's notice before the report was issued.
Cry me a river, Jacques. We promise, next time we expose French complicity in genocide and terror we'll give you 48 hours' notice -- no, really)
They were incensed that the report also mentioned Americans in connection with similar charges, but that unlike the French they were not identified because of US privacy regulations.
One more reason to be American, and not French.
"You protect American citizens, but you put in danger a number of private citizens in other countries who may be innocent people," said Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to the US. "These names are from an old list, published months ago, and those mentioned denied it flatly."

A European diplomat said the damage to French-American relations was so great that it could disrupt a new spirit of cooperation with France on other fronts, namely the joint US and European efforts to put pressure on Iran to dismantle its suspected nuclear weapons program and to organize an international conference next month on Iraq.
So the damage caused by shameful and even criminal French misbehavior, now exacerbated by recognition of shameful and even criminal French misbehavior, threatens to disrupt the naive and pathetic European efforts to bribe Iran out of their nuke ambitions, and derail a pointless conference to which France has announced it would invite our Sunni enemies in Iraq? Whatever will we do?
Encourage the Israelis to take care of it for us?
"This report does great damage," Levitte said. "There really is a sense of outrage in Paris. We don't want to create a situation that will put us back to one year ago. But these are dirty tricks at the expense of France, with the White House putting the finger on the name of France."
Outrage! France's good name tarnished! Let's all take a break now so we can stop laughing.
Feel free to draw another anti-American cartoon in Le Monde.
Administration spokesmen said Friday that the US did not endorse the allegations that anyone was enriched by Iraq's practices, only that Iraq was trying to buy influence and weaken sanctions.
Let me see if I follow this -- massive bribes were paid, but nobody got richer from them?
"It doesn't say that those transactions were completed," said Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman. "It doesn't say whether or not governments intervened. It doesn't say whether or not the individuals declined. It doesn't really say what happened."
Was that a Clinton defense lawyer or a State spokesman? Along with the seething and whining of the French, the presumed anguish of the nuance specialists in the Europe Bureau is the happiest thing I've contemplated in a while.
But that was not the tone adopted by Cheney and other officials caught up in President Bush's shrill re-election campaign.
Whuh?? Catch that -- Bush's "shrill" election campaign? Strength, resolution, optimism, ambitious goals in keeping with our values -- shrill! Medi-scare, draft-scare, promising miracles to heal the sick, trolling for homophobia, embracing the lunatic and anti-semitic anti-American left -- uh ... nuanced!
In Florida on Thursday, Cheney said Saddam used oil funds to corrupt "some employees of the United Nations as well as other governments in the hopes that they would work with him to undermine the sanctions."
Posted by: Verlaine 2004-10-18
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=46273