Article: French Kiss-off: Lafayette, where are you?(reasons France is blocking US plans for war with Iraq)

The persistent, at times vicious, hostility displayed by France towards the United States in recent months requires some explanation. Part of the explanation is practical, materialistic, even sordid. Both France and her ally (for this purpose) Germany have past, present, and future plans to share Iraq's riches.

German ambitions go back to before the First World War, when the project of a Berlin-to-Baghdad railway was launched. Germany's defeat, along with that of her ally Turkey, put paid to that, and Germany played no part in the carve-up of Turkey's Arab empire in 1919. But Germany had another go in 1940-1, when she backed the Rashid Ali coup in Iraq against ...

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