Some really interesting facts are available, if you're willing to spend a bit of time digging for information from a variety of sources worldwide. For example...

While the campaign contributions scandal that caused Jacques Chirac so much hassle in the last election cycle there were only briefly mentioned in the United States media, there was a bit of a stink over there. It seems the largest cash contributors to Chirac and his party were none other than Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party (Hussein's power base) of Iraq. In addition, it seems that France stands to be stuck with BILLIONS of dollars in unpaid IOUs if the Iragi regime of Hussein goes down. On top of that, the French have negotiated huge oil concessions for themselves with Iraq that will fall by the wayside if Hussein gets terminated or thrown out of office. That should make the Chirac's and therefore the French's positions fairly transparent. Gee, and folks say it is President Bush who is the one interested in Iraq's oil.

According to German reporters, Hans Shröeder' most recent election campaign was fgoing ddownhil fast when it did two things that changed the results. First, he assumed a well publicized anti-America campaign and pandered to the anti-semites in Germany with thinly disguised comments that the cognoscenti understood and keyed on. That was what happened publicly. What is alleged to have gone on outside the light of public scrutiny was a huge infusion of cash to his election campaign from good old Uncle Saddam himself via the Iraqi Embassy in Bonn. Once Shröeder won election, Germnan investigators were ordered to drop their investigation into the election law violations that had been alleged. Once again, we have oil deals worked out between Germany and Iraq that won't survive if Hussein and his regime don't. Despite all the clamor to the contrary by mindless haters for the sake of hating, no one has found any mention of the Bush family or anyone connected with them in any way being involved in those oil deals, but two interesting names did crop up. The accusation is unproved so far, so I will not identify those persons myself. You are welcome to do the research into this that I did and the names appear almost by magic in many places... and one is a WELL KNOWN American politician on record as being against any war against Iraq. The other is a well known American entertainment type who is in the forefront of screaming publicy every chance he or she gets that President Bush is only after Iraq's oil.

As with France, there are huge sums, in the BILLIONS of dollars, in Iraqi IOUs to the Germans that become worthless if Hussein is no longer in power.

Finally come the Russians. They are not nearly as good at the subtleties of corruption as the French and Germans as yet. Russia stands to lose a major oil concession from Iraq if Hussein is toppled and, the Iraqis have papered the walls of the Kremlin with IOUs that become worthless when Hussein begins assuming room temperature.

A research group from Sweden and another from Brussels, Belgium have done studies of shipments of materials that include many that were prohibited by U. N. resolutions dating back to 1991. It seems France, Germany and Russia have all been caught shipping prohibited materials to Iraq repeatedly. A Danish inspector who raised a stink about some machined goods that were shipped to Iraq from a French firm was discovered dead and under suspicious circumstance.

Why haven't we been told of these things in our press that claims such independence and desire for freedom? Why aren't these things discussed when people start their idiotic accusations of the US wanting Iraq's oil? Why aren't they discussed in our national media when the French, Germans and Russians show their asses at the UN?