According to Betsy Devos, the cause of Iraqi suffering during the years of the U.N. sanctions was...France! Betsy, chair of the State GOP, comes to this conclusion in her "Betsy's Blog" weblog on the State GOP website. In it she writes:
Interesting. The more we learn about the UN Oil for Food scandal, the more we see French fingerprints. It seems French companies were complicit in the bribery and extortion that were inflating Iraqi gas prices, keeping food from starving Iraqis and lining the pockets of Saddam Hussein. In fact, weapons inspectors in Iraq have turned up numerous stockpiles of French weapon systems which were sold to Iraq during the embargo. It seems the French, who have opposed every step President Bush has made towards bringing democracy and freedom to the people of Iraq, have had far more extensive and successful relations with that country than we have in the past.
Of course Betsy Devos provides no sources for any of these claims. Her claim that numerous stockpiles of French weapons have been found is particularly suspect. An internet search done by the Media Mouse staff found very little information about this topic, locating only two articles. An AP story states that Polish troops found four French-made anti-aircraft missiles in Iraq, missiles that France has not produced since 1993. According to a Pakistani paper, a French company sold helicopter and fighter airplane parts to Iraq. Of course, the actions of an individual company do not necessarily represent the policies of a government. A good example of this would be the fact that during the nineties when the U.S. government was enforcing the UN sanctions against Iraq, Halliburton (while Dick Cheney was CEO) held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq. As to her claim that France has had "far more extensive and successful relations" with Iraq than the U.S. has had in the past, it is interesting to note that according to the Sunday Herald, the U.S. had 24 companies that had sold weapons to Iraq, Britain had 17, and France had 8.
As to her claims that France was responsible for starving Iraqis, one simply needs to ask the former heads of the U.N. sanction regimes in Iraq to find the real cause of suffering in Iraq. UN humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad Denis Halliday and his successor, Hans Von Sponeck, both quit their posts in disgust and described the U.S. and U.K. enforced sanctions against Iraq as "war crimes" and close to "genocide." Devos is intentionally misconstruing the reality of both the Iraq sanctions and the oil for food program for her own partisan political reasons. Of course her political feelings about France don't seem to apply to the business dealing of her family. The Amway Corporation, which was co-founded by Betsy's husband's father and has made her family fabulously wealthy, has a successful French division.
