The National Post:
OTTAWA -- U.S. President George W. Bush thanked Canada for its help in the war on terrorism and said Canada won't be excluded from lucrative contracts to help rebuild Iraq, retiring Prime Minister Jean Chretien said after receiving a farewell phone call Thursday.
"He thanked me for what we're doing in Afghanistan and for the offer of money in the reconstruction of Iraq,'' Chretien told a news conference.
Chretien said Bush assured him that recent news reports on the exclusion of Canada, and other countries that did not support the U.S.-led war in Iraq, from reconstruction contracts were not correct.
"He was telling me basically not to worry, so I said 'thank you.'''
Well, there are two ways that you could read this:
1) Terrible mistake there, Jean, ol' bean. Wolfowitz meant to write "Cayman Islands" instead, but we'll get things sorted out, so don't worry about it; or
2) There's not a hope in hell that we're taking you off the list, so don't worry about it.
I'd be inclined to bet on the latter. Nevertheless I'm quite sanguine about the matter -- if donating $300 million to Iraq is a good, generous thing to do, then how much more good and generous to donate it with no strings attached?
Canadian companies will still be able to bid on contracts, but they'll have to do it through the likes of Halliburton, which would've probably been true in any case.
Given Canadian expertise especially in things like oilfield and pipeline technology, I think it's likely we'll get our money's worth.
To my surprise, the raving neo-con Bill Kristol sees it differently. In the Weekly Standard he writes:
We hold no brief for the Chirac, Schroeder, or Putin governments. We are also very much in favor of finding ways to work more closely with other governments -- such as those of Britain, Spain and Poland -- who have courageously stood with us, and who hold the promise of continuing to be more helpful to us. We have even been critical of the Bush Administration for a certain lack of imagination in finding ways to work constructively with these friendly governments. But this particular effort by the Pentagon to reward friends and punish enemies is stupid, and should be abandoned.
We (hee!) makes some good points.
In the meantime, to our new PM. Can you please stop whining? If you'd just shut up for a moment, you might find the Americans a lot easier to get along with.