Is That Yellowcake On Your Face?

Once again, the idiotic potbanging by the agitational left is founded on a lie. The “16 words” that the left are so cranked up about came from British intelligence that knew full well what France gave Saddam.

This reassuring assumption [that Mitterand had limited nuclear fuel shipments to Iraq], however, is massively belied by the contents of a 1987 letter from none other than current French President Jacques Chirac to Saddam Hussein. By 1987, Chirac was again French Prime Minister. His letter was leaked to the French press and widely interpreted at the time as a thinly veiled offer to rebuild Osirak. Waxing nearly rhapsodic in his praise of French-Iraqi relations, Chirac refers in the letter to "the cooperation begun over 12 years ago on our joint personal initiative in a domain that is essential for the sovereignty, independence and security of your country" (my emphasis - JR). (The full letter from Chirac to Saddam Hussein, dated June 24, 1987, is reproduced in Claude Angeli and Stéphanie Mesnier, "Notre Allié Saddam" [Oliver Orban, 1992], annexe VII.) The allusion to Iraqi security concerns is especially notable, since it suggests that Chirac was fully aware of the military significance of the Osirak project.

People don’t discuss “sovereignty” when it comes to electricity generation or worst still in the present date, the euphemism “right to technology". The goal was to give Saddam nukes. Nothing more.