On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 21:54:14 +0100, in a place far, far away, "frédéric
haessig" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

So, why do you think France opposition to the war was caused by the Oil
for
food scandal?


The cases have the same values

No, we don't have a president here who avoided jail only by becoming
president.

That has nothing to do with the case under discussion.

Yes, it does. Chirac is corrupt. The Oil for Food (and palaces, and
weapons) thing was just part and parcel of the corruption.

That type of argument can only weaken your position, as it shows you have
nothing better to say.

And I suggest you don't get into this, as there is quite a lot to say about
GWB.

laughing

I suppose that a of Europeans enjoy fantasizing that. After all, many
of them consider him worse than Hitler.

Such as? Nothing factual of which I'm aware.

France opposed the war against Iraq. Some corrupt frenchmen got a lot of
illegal money from Iraq. You see an immediate and direct causal
relationship.

USA went to war against Iraq. Some corrupt americans got a huge amount of
illegal money out of this.

What "illegal money" is that?

The one we are speaking about for the last 4 message or so.

The billions of $ which 'disapeared' since the US takeover. 8 billion of
which Bremer was grilled over in congress. You know, the one he said he
would be 'shocked' if it was ever 'proven' part of would have ended in AQ
hands.

That doesn't make it illegal. It only indicates incompetence (as
bureacracies are wont to be). If there were any real provable illegal
activity here, you can bet that the press, on both sides of the pond,
would be all over it.


You see absolutely no relationship.

I see that absent 911, we would not have gone into Iraq, or attempted
nation building (which George Bush opposed on September 10th).


Again nothing to do with the argument.

Of course it does. The point is that we had many reasons to remove
Saddam, and one need not invoke corruption as one of them. The
French, on the other hand, had one main reason to keep him in power.
He was bribing them to do so. And of course, they get the additional
psychic benefit of throwing a wrench in the works of the Evil
Hyperpower.

And please don't take us for idiots. Even the current US administration
admitted that, even prior to 9/11, they were planning to invade Iraq as soon
as they could find a way to justify it.

When did it do that? In any event, regime change in Iraq was the
policy of the *Clinton* administration.

The guilty are no nearer to the centers of decision in either case.

I disagree.

OK.

Justify your disagreement.

I have.

give a proof of link between money coming from Oil for Food and Chirac,
Rafarin or Villepin.

Finding a link between Warprofiteers and people handling 'untraceable' money
in Iraq on the one hand and Bremer, Rumsfeld, Cheney or GWB on the other is
rather easier to do.

Really? As I said, if that were the case, it would be a huge scandal
here. Particularly with the Dems in charge. Everybody screams about
how it was a war for Oooiiilll, and to make Halliburton rich, but
somehow they never actually can make a coherent case.