Khidhir Hamza says if you want to know why the French and the Germans are delaying and obstructing for Saddam, you simply have to follow the money:
What has become obvious is that the U.N. inspection process was designed to delay any possible U.S. military action to disarm Iraq. Germany, France, and Russia, states we called “friendly” when I was in Baghdad, are also engaged in a strategy of delay and obstruction.
In the two decades before the Gulf War, I played a role in Iraq’s efforts to acquire major technologies from friendly states. In 1974, I headed an Iraqi delegation to France to purchase a nuclear reactor. It was a 40-megawatt research reactor that our sources in the IAEA told us should cost no more than $50 million. But the French deal ended up costing Baghdad more than $200 million. The French-controlled Habbania Resort project cost Baghdad a whopping $750 million, and with the same huge profit margin. With these kinds of deals coming their way, is it any surprise that the French are so desperate to save Saddam’s regime?
Germany was the hub of Iraq’s military purchases in the 1980s. Our commercial attach
addison
And I’m told UN Sanctions starved Iraqi children to death–500,000 of them, I believe, is the current tab. How does that play into Saddam spending $200 million here, $750 million there, etc., for hardware?
Thomas
Hey you bloody motherfucker,
personally i dont like Mr. Schr
Johannes
Your are completely wrong when you believe that the German government did oppose the war on Iraq because of the weapons business. Germany has very strict laws about the export of weapons, it was not even legal to sell weapons to Saddam. Do you not honestly believe that our government tries to protect the illegal businesses of some criminals?
Instead I would like to ask you why you think that the US attacked Iraq. There are countries where help is much more desperatly needed than it was in Iraq (i.e. Liberia) and the US did not do anything about it. The US government is led by geostrategic thoughts and not by by true care for the people in this case. I am not trying to say that Saddam was a good dictator but there werent hundreds of people dying everyday in Iraq as opposed to the situation in other countries. Dont expect us to support a war that was fought for those reasons.