The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq

Prologue: Chirac and Saddam

(ppxvii-xix)

It was a magnificent early autumn afternoon when Saddam's Boeing 707 touched down at the Orly airport in Paris, decked out for the occasion with the eagle of Saladin, Iraq's martial national symbol. The date was Friday, September 5, 1975. Jacques Chirac, the French Premier, was on hand to greet his visitor the instant his foot touched French soil. A long red carpet led into the VIP lounge, where champagne and French cocktail sandwiches awaited the Iraqi guests. "I welcome you as my personal friend," Prime Minister Chirac told his visitor. "I assure you of my esteem, my consideration, and my affection."

Touched by this reception, Saddam replied with characteristic modesty. "We hope that the relations France maintains with [other] Arab countries will benefit from the same warmth and cordiality as today. The relations between our two countries can only improve as a result of my visit, which, I hope, will be beneficial for world peace in general. "

What Saddam didn't say, and Chirac didn't ask, was that the Iraqi leader had a peculiar notion of world peace, which many in the West would have failed to comprehend. Peace, for Saddam, meant domination through arms. He had come to France to seal a strategic pact which would soon translate into massive French arms sales and the transfer of critical nuclear technologies to Iraq, dramatically accelerating the Middle East arms race and marking the start of Saddam's ambitious nuclear weapons program.

Until this fateful trip to France, the Soviet Union had been Iraq's principal arms supplier. But the French were eager to get their foot in the door. They explained their willingness to sell arms and technology to Iraq in grandiloquent terms, in newspaper editorials dedicated to the "philosophy" of technology transfer. Prime Minister Chirac and his advisors made a direct pitch. Buying arms from the French offered a "third way" out of the super power embrace, and had no political strings attached. It was an argument that struck home with Saddam Hussein, who was eager to wriggle out of the Soviet grip.

Although the 38-year old Saddam was nominally only second in command of the Baathist regime, the French accorded him all the honors of a head of state. They lodged him at the sumptuous Marigny palace in Paris, where visiting Kings and State Presidents had resided before him. They threw a gala reception in his honor at the Chateau of Versailles. President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing invited him for state lunches at the Elysée. Prime Minister Chirac stuck to him like glue. The five-day trip was a long succession of champagne panegyrics. The French wanted Saddam as desperately as Saddam wanted them, for the Iraqi had something they needed to keep their economy afloat: oil. French media pundits, taking a tip from the spin doctors at the Elysée, called it "a marriage of reason." Today, it has become a cliché to speak of arms-for-oil deals, but this is where it all started, as a love affair between France and Iraq.

That weekend, Chirac tapped an old Gaullist Party hand who controlled one of the most superb medieval sites in France, to assist him in the wooing of oil-rich (and arms hungry) Saddam. Raymond Thullier was one of France's best-known chefs. He had served as the Mayor of Baux-en-Province for more than twenty years, and had hosted the mighty many times before. His discreet weekend resort went by the quaint provençal name, L'Oustalou de Baumanière, and was undoubtedly one of the most extravagant weekend hideaways frequented by the French political elite. Nestled in a sheltered ravine in the depths of Provence, not far from the Mediterranean coast, it offered a dramatic view of an abandoned medieval fortress town perched up on the cliffs like a Wild West version of the Hanging Garden of Babylon.

Although he was almost 90 years-old when he recalled the scene, Thullier's mind was as lively as ever. He described the menu he had served his distinguished guests, and dug up photographs of Chirac sitting side by side with the new Master of Babylon, drinking coffee after their meal in the sheltered gardens of L'Oustalou. "Chirac never left him for a second," Thullier recalled. "It was like they were bride and bridegroom." In the photograph, Saddam Hussein is wearing a white and black checkerboard suit with a colored shirt and mismatching tie. "He glowed like a peacock," Thullier laughed. (Not long after this trip, Iraqi exiles say, Saddam invited a French tailor to take up residence at his court in Baghdad, so he would never be embarrassed by the poor quality of his Arab suits again).

After lunch, Chirac had prepared a surprise for his guest: a bullfight through the streets of the ancient necropolis up on the cliffs. Thullier, who had personally supervised the restoration of the medieval ruins, handled all the arrangements. The site was sealed off from tourists, bleachers were set up, and a large, well-protected bull pen was erected among the crumbling buildings. The village boys trained for days in preparation of the event, which was something of a provençal tradition. Unlike Spanish bullfights, the provençal jeu de taurillons involved no bloodshed. It was more of a game, pitting baby bulls against the local boys, who scampered through the ring trying to pluck a bright flower from behind the ear of the bull.

"Saddam caught on almost immediately," Thullier recalled. "After the first bull, he was jumping up and down and shouting, encouraging the boys. Then one of his retainers came up to me and said he was offering one million francs (around $200,000) to the boy who could beat the next bull. You can imagine what happened after that! Every boy in town tried to get into the ring."

Three times, Thullier said, Saddam bet on the bulls, and each time he promised a one million franc prize. "After it was all over, the kids who won came up to me and asked if I thought he was serious. 'Of course, he is,' I said. 'Just you wait and see.'"

A few weeks later, Thullier recalled, an emissary from the Iraqi embassy in Paris wandered into his office, and delivered three checks, each for one million francs. Saddam had come through for the local boys. Soon he would come through for the big boys as well. Over the next fifteen years, he would spend a good $20 billion on French arms. For Saddam Hussein, it was the price of independence from the Soviets. For the French, it was a veritable bonanza.