France won't send troops to Iraq

[Nambe]

Associated Press

BRUSSELS, Belgium (July 15, 10:42 a.m. ADT) - France's president Tuesday ruled out sending French troops to Iraq, following India and Germany in rejecting U.S. calls for help without approval from the United Nations.

Although a few nations are sending troops, near daily guerrilla attacks - many of them deadly - and growing doubts about the basis for the war are complicating Washington's search for peacekeepers to replace exhausted American troops in Iraq.

In Paris, President Jacques Chirac, a leading opponent of the war, told the Czech president that sending French soldiers to Iraq "cannot be imagined in the current context."

He cited comments last week by his foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, who said a French role was unthinkable without approval by the U.N. Security Council. ---

[Beetwasher]

1. This admin are the EXPERTS on Foreign Policy!

With a foreign policy like ours, who needs enemies?

[proud patriot]

2. Bush needs to go back to the U.N. and Nato

and formerly request assistance ...

[oneighty]

3. Unthinkable

Bush*, with hat in hand. Begging?

I would welcome some of that

Foreign affairs with humility?

When pigs fly.

180

[Ouabache]

4. So the UN is still irrelevent, Mr. Bush?

Bush is getting our tired under-staffed troops totally screwed with his abysmal foreign policy, and unilateralism.

[hussar]

9. We will have to wait until God tells him to

n/t

[Poll_Blind]

5. So Germany, India and now France say NO.

Who will be next?

PB

[DUreader]

6. Australia as of today no longer doing combat

[NNN0LHI]

8. You can rule out China and Russia too

Basically everyone who actually has the manpower to help us have told Junior to sit on it and spin. The war is over. And we didn't win. Some just don't realize it yet.

Don

[KDLarsen]

7. I heard this on the radio on the way home..

.. and I laughed out loud, just from imagining * standing in the U.N. begging "Pretty please".

[oldcoot]

10. Who can blame them?

After the way we treated the French, who can blame them for not wanting to send troops? Hey, Congress, how do you like your "Freedom Fries" now?

[grasswire]

11. Hey!

The grownups are in charge!

[Feanorcurufinwe]

12. Chirac

You know Chirac is actually on the Right in France. However the French were pretty much united against the war. Remember they have a lot of experience dealing with the Arab world due to their own disastrous colonial history and they also have a significant arab population.

[underpants]

13. Maybe their troops in the Ivory Cost and AFGHANISTAN were enough

Maybe they don't want to commit a war crime by not getting UN consent.

Mybe they are just giving W the ole high sign.

[TEXASYANKEE]

14. Makes sense.

Why in the world would France, or any other thinking country, agree to send their troops to Iraq -- with US/UK soldiers being used for daily target practice??

I understand why Bush and his BFEE connections wanted to go into Iraq (revenge against Saddam and getting access to that oil) but why noone in this misAdministration had the foresight to predict this current situation happening is totally beyond my comprehension.

[myomy]

15. Who’s going to apologize to the French for being right about

war and WMD?

[NNN0LHI]

16. The next real president will n/t

[kskiska]

17. Joe Klein was just on "The Big Story" with that wingnut John Gibson

Gibson asked Klein if he thought the French should send troops. Klein said, "Oh, my god, yes! They have all those Arabic-speaking troops!" and said that we need to go to the U.N. We can't do this alone. I guess Gibson was worried about those French Fries and how it would just kill him to eat one.

[dArKeR]

18. France: No Troops To Iraq - CBS

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/15/iraq/main563422.shtml

http://www.geocities.com/darkerxdarker