Jacque Chirac: The West's Moral Compass

If you have read the various posts in this blog you have seen that the Guardian has stated that America deserved to be attacked on September 11th, that the country is in a state of political repression where dissent against the war in Iraq is not allowed, and that Al-Jazeera is the preferred choice of media outlets to get uncensored and correct information about the Middle East.

So what does the Guardian say about world leadership? Well, as Betty Davis once said, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride."

According to this Guardian article, authored by Marc Rouche of Le Monde, the citizens of Clark County need to look no further then Jacque Chirac.

"Crepe suzettes!" you say. "Is this some throwaway gag from an old Jerry Lewis movie?"

Nope. Mr. Rouche claims that when it came to staking out a political position about the war in Iraq, Mr. Chirac owned "the moral high ground". Mr. Rouche goes on to write:

"The French president's desire for a peaceful solution surely gives him the moral high ground against the Anglo-American warmongers. And it must be frustrating for Mr Blair to see that it is Mr Chirac who reflects and represents the large anti-war sentiment in Britain, particularly within his own party.

Let's be clear: Mr Chirac does not endorse Baghdad, and he finds Saddam's regime as despicable as do Bush and Blair. But he fears the American hawks will ignite Muslim fundamentalism worldwide. The fear of domestic conflagration and terrorism are also ever-present: there are 6 million French Muslims to take into account.

Mr. Chirac is viscerally opposed to the idea of a clash of civilisations. Bush's core support, on the other hand, comes from evangelical Protestantism, with its two faces of intolerance and lack of cultural understanding."

Currently as this post is being written, our nation is divided about the war in Iraq and whether or not it was the correct course of action to take at the time. This is an important national debate that we need to have. It's also vitally important to come to terms with the fact that reasonable citizens can seriously disagree with one another on this very complex subject.

However, we are also sure that you or your neighbors in Clark County who support the war or who have sons and daughters stationed in Iraq are not "Anglo-American warmongers". Neither are they political captives to Protestant evangelism (with maybe the possible exception of a few over-enthusiastic Baptists attending an Ohio State/Michigan game).

Let's move beyond Mr. Roache's tawdry characterization of middle America and take a closer look at his claim that Mr. Chirac owns some moral high ground.

According to a London Times article last week:

"A LEAKED report has exposed the extent of alleged corruption in the United Nations' oil-for-food scheme in Iraq, identifying up to 200 individuals and companies that made profits running into hundreds of millions of pounds from it.

The report largely implicates France and Russia, whom Saddam Hussein targeted as he sought support on the UN Security Council before the Iraq war. Both countries were influential voices against UN-backed action."

It goes on to say:

"The report says oil was given to key countries: "The regime gave priority to Russia, China and France. This was because they were permanent members of, and hence had the ability to influence decisions made by, the UN Security Council. The regime . . . allocated 'private oil' to individuals or political parties that sympathised in some way with the regime.

A French oil company teamed up with the regime to bribe a UN-appointed inspector monitoring exports of Iraqi oil. The inspector, a Portuguese national working for Saybolt, a Dutch firm, was paid a total of £58,000 in cash to forge export documents.

The French firm is linked to a close associate of Jacques Chirac, the country's president. A spokesman for Saybolt said it would be investigating the allegations."

Are we really still talking about a moral high ground? Or are we really mired in a Gaullist sinkhole?

According to Judicial Watch (a Washington based non partisan, non-profit watchdog foundation):

"Mr. Chirac has engaged in a decades-long illicit campaign to violate and subvert international law, European Union (E.U.) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conventions, as well as U.N. resolutions and sanctions. According to recent press reports, as well as the 1991 book, The Death Lobby; How the West Armed Iraq, by Kenneth R. Timmerman, and the 1992 book, Notre Allie Saddam by French journalists Claude Angeli and Stephanie Mesnier, Mr. Chirac has been engaged in a nearly thirty (30) year conspiratorial relationship with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein - trafficking in arms, military equipment and nuclear technology.

Over the last thirty years Mr. Chirac has facilitated, both in and out of government office, the sale and/or transfer to Iraq of: petrochemical plants, desalinization plants, gas liquefaction complexes, housing projects, telecommunication systems, broadcasting networks, fertilizer plants, defense electronics factories, car assembly plants, a new airport, a subway system, and a navy yard, not to mention Exocet, Milan, HOT, Magic, Martel and Armat missiles; Allouette III, Gazelle, and Super-Puma helicopters; AMX 30-GCT howitzers; Tiger-G radar, and a nuclear reactor capable of making the bomb.[1]

In return for supplying Saddam Hussein with arms and nuclear technology, Mr. Chirac and others have personally benefited through financial support for their political party(ies) and campaigns.[2]"

This is backed by author Kenneth R. Timmerman:

"If you read the French press, or the glowing accounts of Chirac's opposition to the U.S. effort to build an international coalition to oust Saddam Hussein that appeared here in America, you might actually believe that the French were standing on principle.

I reveal that Chirac was defending something quite different when he sent his erstwhile foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, around the world to buy votes against America at the United nations. Chirac was determined to maintain Saddam Hussein in power so that two extraordinarily lucrative oil contracts, negotiated by the French, could go into effect. Very little has been written about this until now.

The deals were negotiated separately by CFP Total and by Elf Aquitaine during the mid to late 1990s. At the time, both companies were state-controlled. They have since been privatized and combined into the world's second largest oil giant, TotalFinalElf.

Through my sources, I obtained a copy of one of these contracts. It spans 154 pages, and grants the French exclusive right to exploit one of Iraq's largest oil fields at Nahr al-Umar for a period of twenty years. Under the deal, the French were given 75% of the revenue from every barril of oil they extracted - 75%! That is absolutely stunning. Not even during the pre-OPEC days were foreign oil operators granted such extravagant terms.

I discussed the contract with an independent oil analyst, Gerald Hillman, who estimated that during the first seven years alone, it would earn the French around $50 billion. Elf-Aquitaine negotiated a virtually identical deal with Saddam to expand the gigantic Majnoon oil field as well. Put together, those two deals were worth $100 billion to the French. That's 100 billion good reasons for Mr. Chirac to keep Saddam in power."

It is worth noting that while these revelations are damning of Mr. Chirac, they are recent. However it's not as if the Guardian should not have been suspect of the cozy personal relationship between Saddam and the French president. The Guardian had to be aware of the deep roots going back to 1975, when Chirac assisted Saddam in the building of a nuclear reactor in Baghdad. This was the Osirak reactor, dubbed "O-Chirac" by the Israelis before they destroyed it in a raid in 1981.

Perhaps Christopher Hitchens characterized Mr. Chirac the best:

"Here is a man who had to run for re-election last year in order to preserve his immunity from prosecution, on charges of corruption that were grave. Here is a man who helped Saddam Hussein build a nuclear reactor and who knew very well what he wanted it for. Here is a man at the head of France who is, in effect, openly for sale. He puts me in mind of the banker in Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale: a man so habituated to corruption that he would happily pay for the pleasure of selling himself."

[Posted by bob at The Breakdown Lane]