France was not always opposed to the American invasion of Iraq. One
persistent Pentagon rumor, however, might explain why the French came to oppose
the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. In December, 2002, a French
staff officer visited the Pentagon with a proposal from his government. France
would send 18,000 troops (about what they contributed in 1991) to join the Iraq
invasion force. However, France wanted a specific area of occupation after the
war, with full authority in that area for as long as Iraq needed to be
occupied. The American State Department backed the French proposal, but the
Department of Defense didn?t trust the French, and were suspicious of their
motives. So the French officer went home empty handed, and the French
government decided that invading Iraq was really an evil thing to do.

What exactly were the French up to? No one is
sure, but the most plausible theory was that the French wanted to be in Iraq,
after Saddam fell, to make sure no embarrassing documents, or witnesses, showed
up. France had been supplying Saddam with weapons, and other assistance, for
over three decades. Moreover, how better to help get the Sunni Arabs back in
power, than to have 18,000 French troops occupying, say, western Iraq. This
sort of arrangement is nothing new for the French. Although France participated
in the Balkans peacekeeping of the 1990s, France was known to be pro-Serb, and
French officers were later caught helping out the Serbs in illegal ways. Very
embarrassing, but not unexpected. The Pentagon was well aware of how the
French pulled their pro-Serb stunts in the 1990s, and apparently wanted no more
of that nonsense in Iraq.