Documents found in Iraq show that the French government was working with Iraq to derail a human-rights conference.
France colluded with the Iraqi secret service to undermine a Paris conference held by the prominent human rights group Indict, according to documents found in the foreign ministry in Baghdad.
Various documents state that the Iraqis believed the French were doing their utmost to prevent the meeting from going ahead.
Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP who chairs Indict, said last night that she would be demanding an apology from the French government for its behaviour, which she described as "atrocious".
The files, retrieved from the looted and burned foreign ministry by The Telegraph last week, detail the warmth and strength of Iraqi-French ties.
They include a six-page letter dated February 1998 from Saddam Hussein to Jacques Chirac, welcoming the French president’s support in the campaign against sanctions and assuring him that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.
Expect much more of this sort of thing to turn up. It is clear that the French were willing to turn a blind eye to the horrendous human rights abuses going on inside Iraq in exchange for oil concessions. While the French were complaining about our supposed trading blood of American soldiers for oil they were more than happy to trade the lives of thousands of innocent Iraqis for their own oil concessions.
And the US is willing to turn a blind eye to horrendous human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia for oil concessions….and the US is willing to turn a blind eye to horrendous human rights abuses in China for cheap labor concessions. Perhaps it’s time you focus on that rather than making a fool out of yourself attacking the French for doing the same with the one country which abuses human rights that we have selected to be our enemy.
I’ve read your panoply of comments today, and while I”m tempted to try to respond to each and every one…
…I can’t. Life calls.
So suffice to say, you’re wrong. You’re wrong in different degrees on different issues, but at the end of the day the entire debate is suffused with your impenetrable wrongitude.
Perhaps I’ll come back and say exactly why, later. Perhaps not.
But until then, simply rest assured: You’re wrong.
Have a nice day.
Pilferama: A bit of
cognitive dissonance perhaps?
I have a feeling he was referring to Mark.
Oh… quite possible. *removes foot from mouth*
Also, feel free to debate and discuss as much as you want. Arguments are meant to be attacked, so feel free to dig in any time you like.
hi jay,
this time, I’m not going to write something like I did every other times(that sounded pretty much like pilferama:”you’re just so wrong!”).
No, today, I agree with what you say just above:”debate is cool”!This I must say, your webpage have a special “comments section”, that is available to everyone, and that is really not censured.
I suddendly realized something though:on your webpage, all the comments you receive are against you!!!all the time!!!
debate is made to share ideas between different people to help everyone evolve with his own opinion.You just never evolve.I’m not saying you should change your mind and think like us at all.But by reading that everyone(really just check the commenst you get!!) are against your position (besides a few articles on irrelevant topics),maybe you should stop being so sure of your positions. Just have a doubt.ask yourself some questions you usually refuse to ask.maybe you’ll end up by sticking back to your extremist position.maybe not!
CUBYE
vik
Just because an opinion is popular (and most people who visit this site don’t leave comments that’s debatable) does not mean that it is right.
Now, if someone can come up with an argument with persuasive evidence as to why I’m so wrong, then I’m willing to listen.
Problem is I still don’t see how American support of Riyadh, our past support or Jakarta, Baghdad, and Manilla, and many other regimes equally as bad as Saddam’s is less worse. If you pardon that poor gramatical construction at the end of the last sentence, the facts remain. The French and American governments remain different shades of the same shit. That is pretty blunt, but that argument holds up. We overthrew Saddam in 2003, the French overthrew Emperor Bokassa in 1975, etc..,etc. If either Paris or DC were keeping a scorecard of good and bad foreign policy things they did the past half century, the good side would be getting its ass kicked worse than the both our nations did in Vietnam.
clap, clap clap!!!
😉
Vik