The French Betrayal of America

Rating:
Summary: Too subjective !!!
Review: If only Mr Timmerman had tried to know who Jacques Chirac really is, why he thinks with his heart rather than his wallet, and what his values are, he would have got the issue.
Living in a country for years does not make you more open-minded as long as you go on thinking the same way. Trying to understand others, Mr timmerman, means being able to think their ways, certainly not the way you would like them to think.

Rating:
Summary: How dare anyone criticize "Mecca"!
Review: I'm just impressed The Washington Post Book World bothered to review this book in the first place. To the Left, Europe, France in particular, is the Mecca. Dare to criticize the Mecca and earn the Left's wrath. I remember reading the Book World every Sunday when I was a kid. I enjoyed reading the different reviews of many different books. It was the Book World that introduced me to Anne Rice. However, sometime around the onslaught of political correctness in the 1980s, I became a bit disenchanted with Book World. Suddenly, it was like reading a religious doctrine each Sunday. Its religion, of course, being socialism. Although the Post dared to review this "blasphamous" book, it's no surprise that the review is belittling, at best. Ok, this isn't supposed to be a critique of Book World, so on with The French Betrayal of America by KENNETH TIMMERMAN. It's great. Read it!

Rating:
Summary: On Target, Mr. Timmerman
Review: I am very impressed with the content of this book. Mr. Timmerman has obviously done his homework. When the French, Germans and Russians refused to join the coalition for Operation Enduring Freedom, it was obvious that there were ulterior motives. Mr. Timmerman has noted those motives with great detail, and has backed his work up with credible sources. It is interesting that those who "pooh-pooh" his work, cannot cite one reference to substantiate their claims. A job well done. Kinda makes me feel like, perhaps we should have let certain conquering armies keep France.

Rating:
Summary: Telling It Exactly As It Is
Review: John Kerry is finally admitting the obvious - that even if he is elected President, the Chirac Vichyite regime in France still wouldn't lift a finger to help us in Iraq.

And why should they? The current French leadership, from Chirac on down, and even the so-called "Socialist" opposition have all benefited with their "blood" (of American Soldiers and Israeli and Iraqui civilians) for oil arrangements with Saddam. It is all coming out in the wash how Chirac, former French Foreign and Defense Ministers, Businessmen and Financiers have made billions - while Saddam used the monies collected to kill his own people, to seek out WMDs, and to pay Hamas.

As this book (and others) have pointed out, Chirac himself is notorious in this regard. Back in 1974, as the then Prime Minister under the Giscard D'Estaing government, Chirac negotiated with Saddam for the purchase of the Osirak Nuclear Reactor - the same one destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 1981 . Chirac has never cared what Saddam did to his people, all he cares about is the Franc - and in grovelling to the Arab world at the expense of his own country and the West. In doing so, Chirac "sticks" it to Israel, (he has always been a supporter of Yasser Arafat) and to America, which in the past was content to take his insults until this current President Bush came along, and until we endured 9/11.

Even then, and even now, Chirac prefers Islamic terrorism to his erstwhile allies in the U.S. and Britain. French weapons, as well as the old Soviet ones, dominated the arsenals of Saddam's Iraq, and are still being used today to kill American GI's. French business contracts were most favored by the Baathist regime. The influx of Arab immigrants into France, even those with the most extreme views of Sharia and Fatwa, was greeting with approval and enthusiasm by Chirac and his cronies - even after French citizens were themselves being raped and killed by the more extreme of the newcomers.

But after all, Chirac is only carrying on the tradition of those who instigated the Dreyfus Case, of Petain, Laval, Vichy, De Gaulle, Giscard, Mitterrand - and sacre bleu! - himself. Or why France is no longer any great shakes in the world.

All this and more, the contracts, the deals, the "stabbing America" in the back is carefully documented by Timmerman. And this isn't anything new - French animus towards America goes back to DeGaulle, even after scores of American boys died on the roads to Paris so that the French could get to the city first, Giscard, Chirac, even Mitterrand and others are part and parcel of this anti-Americanism even after we saved their country in two wars.

Timmerman's book, full of accounts of deceit, of arms sales while civilians starved or were killed by terrorists, of how the Franc was more important than the blood of Americans, is a must read if we are ever to have a cohesive, firm policy with a country that whether we like it or not has chosen to be our adversary, instead of our ally. Regime Change? Yes, in France.

Rating:
Summary: Sad, especially to those who's families paid the price!
Review: This is an excellent book that included a great deal of new information to me, especially about Chirac's early links to Saddam Hussein and French industry's dependence on sales to the Iraqis. I have many French friends and, as the previous reviewer pointed out, many were saddened and angered by Chirac's betrayal of the United States. There are others, however, who feel just as strongly we brought it on ourselves. In any case, as the nephew of a soldier who died during the allied drive through France in WWII, my family feels especially betrayed by the current French leadership and can only hope that the good people of France throw these scoundrels out of office the next time they get a chance.