Saddam bribed Chirac???

HQ6 · 01-28-2004, 19:20

Iraqi govt. papers: Saddam bribed Chirac

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Documents from Saddam Hussein's oil ministry reveal he used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The oil ministry papers, described by the independent Baghdad newspaper al-Mada, are apparently authentic and will become the basis of an official investigation by the new Iraqi Governing Council, the Independent reported Wednesday.

"I think the list is true," Naseer Chaderji, a governing council member, said. "I will demand an investigation. These people must be prosecuted."

Such evidence would undermine the French position before the war when President Jacques Chirac sought to couch his opposition to the invasion on a moral high ground.

A senior Bush administration official said Washington was aware of the reports but refused further comment.

French diplomats have dismissed any suggestion their foreign policy was influenced by payments from Saddam, but some European diplomats have long suspected France's steadfast opposition to the war was less moral than monetary.

"Oil runs thicker than blood," is how one former ambassador put his suspicions about the French motives for opposing action against Saddam.

Al-Mada's list cites a total of 46 individuals, companies and organizations inside and outside Iraq as receiving Saddam's oil bribes, including officials in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Sudan, China, Austria and France, as well as the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian Communist Party, India's Congress Party and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

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I love being right.

Does anyone have more detail on this?

CPTAUSRET · 01-28-2004, 19:40

Interesting, not at all surprising though:

Terry

**Airbornelawyer** · 01-28-2004, 19:59

This is going to be the fourth or fifth time I have had to write this today, and I am getting tired and cranky about it, so I apologize for any rudeness.

You have posted a Washington Times posting of a UPI wire story based on a report in the UK paper The Independent based on a report in a Baghdad paper, al-Mada, based on documents shown to it which reportedly came from the Iraqi state oil concern SOMO (the State Oil Marketing Organisation, an adjunct of the Iraqi Oil Ministry).

The UPI story is riddled with errors, including, most prominently, the one you chose for your thread title. Where in that article does it allege that Saddam bribed or tried to bribe Chirac? It doesn't. Among other errors, the article says "46 individuals, companies and organizations" were on the list. In fact, 270 individuals, companies and organizations were on the list, from 46 countries. Of these 270, according to Le Monde, 11 were French and none was Chirac.

Those French identified by name were: former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua; businessman Patrick Maugein; Michel Grimard, president of the Franco-Arab Friendship Association (l'Association d'amitié franco arabe); former diplomat Bernard Mérimée; ADAX S.A., a maker of precision parts; a French-Lebanese businessman whose name is garbled; someone identified as Claude Kaspereit (but possibly Gabriel Kaspereit, a low-level Gaullist politico, or someone related to him); and someone named Bernard Desmaret. Several names are unclear as they are bad Arabic transliterations of non-Arab names.

As noted. people and groups from 46 countries are on the list. Among these countries are Algeria, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Cyprus, Egypt, Indonesia, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Panama, the Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, the UAE, the United Kingdom, the United States, Yemen and Yugoslavia, and among non-states, the PLO and PFLP. Groups and organizations include the Russian Orthodox Church, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the aforementioned PLO and PFLP.

And the SOMO list, BTW, was generated in 1998, so the opening line of the story, that the bribes were to oppose the imminent invasion, is also a distortion.

The story is a deliberate distortion, spun to play to the pettiest and most ignorant anti-French bigotry in the US. It is a disgraceful piece of journalism, and undermines legitimate criticism of French government policies and actions.

CPTAUSRET · 01-28-2004, 20:06

Quote:

Originally posted by Airbornelawyer
This is going to be the fourth or fifth time I have had to write this today, and I am getting tired and cranky about it, so I apologize for any rudeness.

The story is a deliberate distortion, spun to play to the pettiest and most ignorant anti-French bigotry in the US. It is a disgraceful piece of journalism, and undermines legitimate criticism of French government policies and actions.

A L:

I am going to go out on a limb, with my presumption that you did not appreciate the aforementioned article:

At least that's the way it seems to me:

Terry

HQ6 · 01-28-2004, 20:06

Thank you for the clarification and requested detail.

longrange1947 · 01-28-2004, 21:37

Terry

What gave you that idea?

Good rebuttal Airborne Lawyer! Noticed the US on that list.

**Roguish Lawyer** · 01-28-2004, 21:41

Wow. Nicely done!

**Airbornelawyer** · 01-29-2004, 11:19

Quote:

Originally posted by longrange1947
Noticed the US on that list.

Yeah, you would think a responsible American media (an oxymoron, I know) would be more concerned with finding out what Americans were on that list. The French media is certainly going after Pasqua and the others (all of whom naturally deny everything). The one UK name I know of on the list was pro-Saddam former Labour MP George Galloway, whose alleged bribe-taking became public last April.

HQ6 · 01-29-2004, 11:48

Damn. I should have researched this better before I posted. Sincerely, ABL thank you for the expanded detail on the article. I'll pass the information on to the data base which pointed me to the article in the first place.

Although, it would be accurate to say that the headline for the article was intentionally inflammatory against Chirac specifically, wouldn't you say the message behind the story is fairly well accurate? That the professed moral outrage heard loudest from Chirac at the on set of Iraqi Freedom was nothing more than a farce and the real reason for not wanting the US to take action against Saddam was in fact financially based?

BTW I can't take credit for the thread title... It was the headline for the article

Take care

HQ6

**Airbornelawyer** · 01-29-2004, 12:49

No.

I wrote a long piece over a year ago at SOCNET on why the blood-for-oil argument was as invalid for France opposing war as it was for the US going to war, but there's no need to rehash that argument here. The question is whether the article provides any evidence in support of that argument, and not the merits and demerits of the argument itself. The al-Mada article alleges bribes in 1998 and the most senior person named was even then a former cabinet minister (and intraparty rival of Chirac, by the way). There may be more recent bribes, and there may be higher level officials involved, and there may be an explict quid pro quo of opposing the US, but there is no evidence in that article, the documents it is based on, or anywhere else to substantiate that.

HQ6 · 01-29-2004, 12:53

I didn't say blood for oil. I said financially based. Meaning the large financial debt to Saddam had built up with France.

Alas, I guess we will have to agree to disagree here.

Take care,

HQ6

**Airbornelawyer** · 01-29-2004, 13:01

"Blood for oil" is just shorthand for the economically-based arguments. If you can find the old SOCNET piece, it goes into greater detail, but the essence is that French economic relations with Iraq were and are miniscule compared with French economic relations with the United States.

Bribery is actually a better argument in this regard than national debts because a key individual might shade a decision based on a few thousand dollars that a nation wouldn't over billions.

**Roguish Lawyer** · 01-29-2004, 13:12

Dave, have you considered litigation? I think you may be miscast.

HQ6 · 01-29-2004, 13:21

If France is so magnanimous, why would they not consider debt reduction for Iraq until after the US opened up bidding to them for reconstruction contracts? Why, if Chirac felt the entire action so morally bankrupt, did he send a congratulatory telegram to Bush upon Saddam capture?

France is playing the political game. No worries there. I can understand that. However, don't try to feed me that opposition to the US was a moral issue. It wasn't moral. It was political and financial.

At least that is my take on it.

As I said, might be better to agree to disagree here.

Take care,

HQ6

**Airbornelawyer** · 01-29-2004, 14:17

Didn't you ever see that episode of The Odd Couple where Felix writes on the blackboard, "When you assume..."?

Where did I claim that French policy had anything to do with magnanimity or that "opposition to the US was a moral issue"? As I noted above, junk articles like the UPI story undermine legitimate criticism of French government policies and actions. To me, they are of a kin with the "BUSH LIED!!!!" pseudo-arguments of the Left over WMDs. Rather than read the Kay reports or actually listen to what he has been saying, they twist the results of his investigation to fit their anti-Bush theme. And real issues like how to improve our intelligence-gathering capabilities get lost in the polemics.

Regards,
Dave