Wdtabor wrote:

In article Co2Cb.502462$HS4.3878194@attbi_s01, "Jay Honeck"
writes:


How, exactly, does one pressure France?

Short of standing on their border and shouting at them in German.

On the contrary, I believe we have found the PERFECT method of pressuring
the French (and other so-called "allies") -- we have quite simply
disqualified them from bidding on any reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

This has been "Big News" the last couple of days, as if it were somehow
revolutionary to exclude disloyal nations from reaping the benefits of our
labors. Personally, I call it "justice".

Money talks.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not really disagreeing with the principle. We
are certainly within our rights to dole out the spoils of war as we see
fit.

On the other hand we may have missed an opportunity to mend some fences and
change the perception that the war was really about enriching our economic
interests. Money talks indeed.

Regardless of whether it was the best policy choice or not, they have
botched it in the way it was handled. The timing was incredibly bad, coming
on the heels of another Halliburton scandal. And by trying to circumvent
our own trade aggreements in such a transparent manner we've negated most
of our own credibilty.

Policies driven by vindictiveness will hurt us more than help us. We ought
to above that sort of thing. Apparently we are not a superpower when it
comes to statesmanship.

Expect Bush to let them bid after they forgive all or part of the Iraqi
debt.

Which should be called the Baathist debt since the Iraqi's never benefited
from it, and they should be collecting it from Saddam.

But still, when they make the cocession of forgiving that debt, Bush will
let them in .

It might have worked that way, but I fear both sides have become entrenched
in childish contrariety.


--
Frank....H