Friends in need?

Allies: The U.S., Britain, Europe, and the War in Iraq, by William Shawcross (PublicAffairs, 272 pp., $20)

IN late 1974, Jacques Chirac, then prime minister of France, traveled to Baghdad to meet Iraqi vice president Saddam Hussein. The two men discussed Iraq's purchase of French nuclear reactors. The next year, Saddam traveled to Paris; Chirac gave his visitor a personal tour of a French nuclear plant, and declared that "Iraq is in the process of beginning a coherent nuclear program and France wants to associate herself with that effort." Coherent it was: Saddam subsequently told an Iraqi magazine that working with France was crucial "toward production of the Arab atomic bomb."

The French sold Iraq two nuclear reactors and agreed to train 600 Iraqi nuclear technicians and scientists. Paris also agreed to sell Iraq $1.5 billion worth of weapons, including Mirage F1 fighters, surface-to-air missiles, and advanced electronics and air-defense systems. Chirac called Saddam "a personal friend and a great statesman"; Saddam began selling France Iraqi oil on favorable terms; and thus the stage was set for a great Security Council showdown a quarter-century later.

Of course, the French were not the only ones who did business with Saddam Hussein. The U.S. tried its hand at geostrategic balancing by supporting Iraq against Iran's mullahs in the 1980s. But France was determined to stick with Saddam until the bitter end--all the while, oddly enough, invoking moral arguments in defense of its policy. When foreign minister Dominique de Villepin was grandstanding at the Security Council last year, he insisted that the world was choosing between France's preference for peaceful disarmament and America's desire for disarmament by force. Amazingly, the gallery did not burst out in laughter.

In Allies, William Shawcross does not pull punches. In riveting detail, he tells the story of French vanity, greed, and collusion with one of the most barbaric tyrants of the last half-century. In short, this book is a gem. The aim of Shawcross, this exlefty turned neocon, is to tell the story of the alliance that George W. Bush and Tony Blair forged to end Saddam's rule, and of the efforts of the nations that tried to stop them. The Bush administration, whose ability to explain and persuade often leaves something to be desired, should make the Shawcross book required reading for Republican debaters who face the slander of Democrats on Iraq; Shawcross often does Bush better than Bush himself. Our embassies should arm diplomats with this book to buck up U.S. public diplomacy.

Shawcross heaps praise on his fellow Brit Tony Blair, and rightfully so: Blair stood up to France, Germany, a wobbly public, the hostile media, and the worst instincts of his own party. "What amazes me," Shawcross quotes Blair as saying, "is how many people are happy for Saddam to stay." On Iraq, the prime minister was having his Thatcher moment. Blair never hesitated. The BBC and members of the Labour party have pretty much concluded that Blair (and Bush) lied about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Rubbish, says Shawcross. First of all, Britain and America were not alone in believing that Saddam possessed proscribed weapons. In Resolution 1441, in November 2002, all 15 members of the Security Council agreed that Saddam had failed to account for illegal weapons and insisted that he disarm. Hans Blix agreed that Saddam had not accepted the necessary disarmament. The entire Arab world never had a doubt.

Of course, it is important to find out what happened to those stockpiles. But Shawcross is right to point out something the media tend to overlook: exactly what it is we have found in Iraq. He quotes former weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus, who says a "combination of researchers, engineers, know-how, precursors, batch production techniques is what constituted Iraq's chemical threat--its chemical weapons." Shawcross also describes the organized looting carried out by the regime in its dying days, when evidence was destroyed, material dispersed, and hard drives wiped out. But strong evidence still points to the conclusion that, long after the inspectors left in 1998, the Iraqis were pursuing (in Shawcross's words) "an organized strategy of deception." In fact, Saddam was still cheating even after Blix and the U.N. inspectors were readmitted in 2002.

What else do we know? David Kay, former head of the Iraqi Survey Group, the team tasked to hunt for WMD in Iraq, discovered "illicit procurement networks" and a "clandestine network of laboratories and facilities within the security service apparatus." If September 11 showed a failure of intelligence and a failure of imagination, says Shawcross, just try to picture the damage 140 liters of VX could do, in the hands of a psychopath like Saddam Hussein. The death toll could reach one million.

It's quite clear that Saddam Hussein once possessed weapons of mass destruction: He used them against Iran and against his own people. He never stopped deceiving about them, and never lost enthusiasm for them. Saddam praised the killers of 9/11; one Iraqi government paper called the attacks "God's Punishment." Returning the favor, al-Qaeda now praises the work of loyalists to Iraq's former regime: Those who help the Americans and their allies are, according to a bin Laden communique, "heretics" and "criminals," "slaves" of "the crusaders" and accomplices of "the Jews." No, Bush and Blair need not look back.

Shawcross's book is no whitewash, though. He thinks that the Pentagon planned better for war than for peace; that it was a mistake to disband the Iraqi army; that Washington turf battles have undermined Iraq's reconstruction; that information policy--the battle to win Iraqi hearts and minds--has been woefully lacking. No argument here. But Shawcross is a member of what is today a rare species: European journalists who really like America and truly want the United States to succeed. It is virtually impossible to find European pundits who like the U.S. president and think the "axis of evil" speech was right on the money. Shawcross was, in former years, one of the severest critics (from the left) of U.S. Cold War policy. But whatever he once was, he is surely on our side now.

Shawcross reserves most of his bewilderment and contempt for those opponents of the Iraq war who claim to speak for human rights. Tens of thousands of Iraqis were imprisoned, and 300,000 had been slaughtered since 1991--yet half the West last year was still temporizing, apologizing, and seeking to blame America first. Shawcross reports that former New York police chief Bernard Kerik, during his postwar stint in Iraq, reviewed countless videotapes of Saddam's cruelty--and said the tapes showed Iraqis being killed by grenades "tied to the neck or stuffed in the shirt." Saddam himself once sat and watched as a victim was eaten alive by Dobermans; cameras rolling, the gruesome scene was recorded for posterity.

Gore Vidal asked back then: "Don't you think that's their problem? That's not your problem, and that's not my problem. There are many bad regimes on earth ... [and] I would put the Bush regime as one of them." In Egypt last year there was a hit pop song about Iraq: "Better Saddam's Hell than America's Paradise." Good to know where folks are.

Mr. Gedmin is director of the Aspen Institute Berlin.