I believe part of the issue was weather related, as well. If time was spent, it would have been impossible to prosecute a war that year, and would have required waiting nearly six months.
If the war had been necessary, that would have been bad.
I’m affraid I don’t share your opinion of ** Tomndebb **. Actually, I’ve quite a lot of respect for him as a mod.
Indeed, it was mentionned as a reason why the approximate date of the invasion was set in stone. Before that, not enough troops were present and combat-ready, after that, the weather wouldn’t be favourable. Actually, likely dates for the invasion were mentionned long before it began, despite all the diplomatic posturing taking place meanwhile.
I knew you were going to say that, as I also know that you don’t like me.
Still, I’m glad that your respect for the truth surpasses your personal sympathies.
May I suggest your post is a major embarassment, uncalled for, unduly vindictive, and absolutely contrary to acceptable content in this forum.
Dutch, while I appreciate the defense, we really don’t need to drag this thread off in a series of personal exchanges. Responding to New Iskander’s attack is a bit like swatting gnats with sledgehammers, so I’d suggest we just drop it.
Indeed, and you could even get a third one from the infamous banana tariff battle of 1998. However, since this thread has totally departed from the question of how other countries will react based on relations between France and the USA, I believe I’ll take off.
I guess that means you can’t explain all your ‘fact-free’ and baseless assertions about build-up to Iraq invasion. That was a stellar example of left-wing ‘truthiness’.
It would be interesting if you were actually capable of pointing to what you considered “baseless” or "fact free’ in my post rather than simply posting an other insulting drive-by.
I posted a recounting of the events regarding the UN resolutions, the U.S., and France in a manner that deliberately echoed the “voice” in which ScoobyTX had posted his claims.
clairobscur posted some welcome coreections to some of the details in my (admittedly loose) presentation. The overall facts that I presented: the two resolutions proposed by the U.S., the clear build-up to a war initiated by President Bush, and the fact that Hussein actually permitted the UN inspections teams to return to Iraq and resume their efforts despite which President Bush still called for a resolution that would permit a war, have not been contradicted by clairobscur’s posts or, certainly, by anything resembling information from you.
So, it would appear that you are simply lying, (permitted but frowned upon) while making a pesronal attack against me, (frowned upon and not really permitted, although it seems better to simply allow your dishonesty to stand to indict you than to admonish you for personal attacks).
Talk about personal attacks! But no matter, no matter…
First, the brazen lie.
This is simply made out of whole cloth. No French gov’t official ever said anything like that, no French gov’t official ever implied anything like that, this out and out fabrication on your part. As I recall (and claiobscur confirms) putting severe pressure on Saddam, including explicit military threat, was supported and even welcomed by French and all other gov’ts. Why would you make it up?
Likewise, nobody was satisfied with Saddam’s cooperation. Everybody knew Saddam was playing games. French simply wanted more time to decide upon the course of action. Bush demanded two weeks, French proposed two month.
The French were even seriously considering taking part in the invasion (as claiobscur confirms). I remember the speculations that French were going to join the coalition were persistent until the last week or two before the invasion.
Is that the ‘irony lost upon’ defense? If it is, it might get you somewhere. Please confirm or disprove.
Now, mischaracterizations.
Permitted is a much better word; in your original post the word you used was invited.
What you actually said there:
Again, what French actually said was that they needed more time to decide upon the course of action (two months to be exact) and their military participation was not off the table, by any means.
So your language is needlessly sloppy and inflammatory and you are making things up, pure and simple.
Now, why do you do that?
The answer is very simple. Don’t even try to misrepresent it as a personal attack. Au contraire, what I’m saying is quite pertinent to the subject in question, which is ‘trashing France’.
Now, read carefully and try to understand.
Just before the Iraq invasion, for every right wing idiot cracking ‘surrender monkeys’ jokes, there was at least one left wing shameless partisan (like you), misrepresenting the French. The whole thing was one big broken telephone. What French were really doing and what they really wanted was completely lost. The argument was between rabid right wingers and left wingers (like you). Both sides were making shit up. It was all about power in US.
Actually, I think left wing partisans like you were the instigators. To parody, it went something like this:
The French: We agree that Saddam is cheating but we think Bush is too hasty. We don’t discount the need for the use of force, but we need more time to decide.
tomndebb (verbatim): “France said, No, you wanted a resolution; you got a resolution; Hussein is complying with that resolution; we will not allow you to use the UN in violation of its own charter to give you a false cover for your personal desire for a war and we will never support this second resolution.”
right wing nutcase: Cheese eating surrender monkeys!
THAT you consider a “blatant lie”? OK. So I guess that the reports were false that Chirac declared his opposition to military action on February 22, 2003 after the U.S. began agitating for a second resolution to invade. Or, I suppose that Chirac was talking about Indonesia when he discussed the proposed second war resolution on March 10, 2003?
(If you are objecting to the phrase “shipping troops to the Middle East,” i will confess that my memory may have confused some of the objections raised in the U.S. with objections raised in Europe, however, it is pretty clear that France couched its opposition to a second resolution in terms of “when Hussein is cooperating with the resolution that you introduced.”
If that is your definition of a "“blatant lie,” then we probably need to excise hundreds of your posts to get your honesty up to your own standards.
By your current standards, your following statement is a blatant lie:
However, this was in response to my discussion of the second resolution, which, as my quote from Chirac notes, is not what was being discussed at the time of the resolution. They clearly did indicate that Hussein was at the time complying with the inspections and they clearly indicated that there was no way they would support the second resolution. You are taking statements made prior to the inspectors’ re-entry to Iraq and pretending that they applied after the inspectors had been re-inserted.
I have never made the claim that France would never have supported war. I have noted that France refused to go along with the manufactured reasons proposed in February and March. Since I was, indeed, responding in the “voice” of ScoobyTx, in which each point was not exhaustively footnoted, I could see where you might have gotten confused. On the other hand, your need to leap out with accusations of dishonesty do nothing to further the discussion–particularly when you cannot get your facts straight even while decrying my post.