Heh! Heh!

I must be missing something. (“As usual,” I can hear my perceptive critics shouting in the electronic background.)

France and Germany are in a snit, again, this time because they have been barred from bidding on reconstruction contracts in Iraq. I’m no expert on the nitty gritty of foreign aid contracting, but it is my impression that USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development) and the Defense Dept. are required by law to contract with American companies for their overseas work unless specific waivers are requested and granted. Did this change when I wasn’t looking? Were such laws (assuming for the moment that I’m right about them) automatically superseded when the U.S. joined the WTO?

Both France and Germany are major providers of overseas assistance. I would like to see how many U.S. companies have received contracts in the past to work on their projects.

In any event neither France nor Germany would seem to have standing to lecture us about the niceties of international law at the moment. As Keith Richburg reports in the article cited immediately below on the conflict between large and small states inside the EU:

In recent months, Germany and France have raised the ire of smaller countries by openly violating rules that require countries using the common currency, the euro, to keep their budget deficits within prescribed limits — and then prevailing on the EU not to collect penalties from them.

What was that again about glass houses? Oh yes, that it would be far too snide to mention them….

UPDATE – For the perfect comment on France and Germany’s desire to profit from our effort to rebuild Iraq rather than to participate in the rebuilding, as they’ve been invited to do, see this post by Susanna Cornett, and be sure to follow the provided link.