Here's an excerpt from Bill Gertz' forthcoming book on France's arms trade with Saddam, which continued right up until the 2003 war(via Milt's File):
French aid to Iraq goes back decades and includes transfers of advanced conventional arms and components for weapons of mass destruction. The central figure in these weapons ties is French President Jacques Chirac. His relationship with Saddam dates to 1975, when, as prime minister, the French politician rolled out the red carpet when the Iraqi strongman visited Paris. "I welcome you as my personal friend," Chirac told Saddam, then vice president of Iraq. The French put Saddam up at the Hotel Marigny, an annex to the presidential palace, and gave him the trappings of a head of state. The French wanted Iraqi oil, and by establishing this friendship, Chirac would help France replace the Soviet Union as Iraq's leading supplier of weapons and military goods. In fact, Chirac helped sell Saddam the two nuclear reactors that started Baghdad on the path to nuclear weapons capability.France's corrupt dealings with Saddam flourished throughout the 1990s, despite the strict arms embargo against Iraq imposed by the United Nations after the Persian Gulf war. By 2000, France had become Iraq's largest supplier of military and dual-use equipment, according to a senior member of Congress who declined to be identified. Saddam developed networks for illegal supplies to get around the U.N. arms embargo and achieve a military buildup in the years before U.S. forces launched a second assault on Iraq. One spare-parts pipeline flowed from a French company to Al Tamoor Trading Co. in the United Arab Emirates. Tamoor then sent the parts by truck through Turkey, and into Iraq. The Iraqis obtained spare parts for their French-made Mirage F-1 jets and Gazelle attack helicopters through this pipeline.
U.S. intelligence would not discover the pipeline until the eve of war last year; sensitive intelligence indicated that parts had been smuggled to Iraq as recently as that January. "A thriving gray-arms market and porous borders have allowed Baghdad to acquire smaller arms and components for larger arms, such as spare parts for aircraft, air-defense systems and armored vehicles," the CIA said in a report to Congress made public that month. U.S. intelligence agencies later came under fire over questions about prewar estimates of Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But intelligence on Iraq's hidden procurement networks was confirmed.An initial accounting by the Pentagon in the months after the fall of Baghdad revealed that Saddam covertly acquired between 650,000 and 1 million tons of conventional weapons from foreign sources. The main suppliers were Russia, China and France. By contrast, the U.S. arsenal is between 1.6 million and 1.8 million tons. As of last year, Iraq owed France an estimated $4 billion for arms and infrastructure projects, according to French government estimates. U.S. officials thought this massive debt was one reason France opposed a military operation to oust Saddam. The fact that illegal deals continued even as war loomed indicated France viewed Saddam's regime as a future source of income.
So private French companies were gun-running, and because of this, the French government opposed the Iraq war in the Security Council?
Are you going to explain how this differs from the wildest and silliest Halliburton/Unocal conspiracy theories on the other side?
Posted by: dsquared | September 10, 2004 at 01:59 PM
No
Posted by: Mick H | September 10, 2004 at 02:06 PM
Ah, go on!
Posted by: Kevin Donoghue | September 10, 2004 at 07:21 PM
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