Nick Schulz has a good article discussing why it's not always good to listen to "allies." Discussing a new book coming out, The French Betrayal of America, by Kenneth Timmerman. Some of the interesting things that are pointed out in the book include:

• The French president lied to Bush and to the public about the war in Iraq.
  President Jacques Chirac had personally told President George W. Bush well ahead of time that France would be at America's side.

• France urged Saddam to commit genocide.
  Saddam launched his genocidal campaign against the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq to make their region "safe" for French oil engineers.

• France helped build Saddam's long-range missiles and nukes.
  Based on exclusive access to new documents, provided by Iraq to the United Nations -- that French defense companies were key partners in helping Saddam Hussein perfect the long-range missiles that killed U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia in 1991 and rained terror onto Israel.

• Chirac has blocked cooperation on a high-profile terrorism case.
  France's top counter-terrorism judge was ordered to stop cooperating with the United States in the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui despite mounds of documents that would have helped the United States to convict Moussaoui of conspiracy to commit mass murder.

• France illegally sold U.S. military secrets to Saddam Hussein.
  A prominent French defense company shipped U.S.-designed laser designator pods to Iraq in the 1980s that compromised the most high-tech weapons in the U.S. arsenal.

• President Mitterrand, a Socialist, became Ronald Reagan's best ally in Europe.
  The French Betrayal of America reveals the extent of French strategic and intelligence cooperation with the United States at the peak of the Cold War, in areas that will surprise readers on both sides of the Atlantic. The French ran a key agent inside the KGB, whose "cosmic" reach -- right up to the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union -- hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union.

• President Chirac almost went to jail for corruption.
  Chirac was on the verge of getting indicted on corruption charges in 1999 until he cooked up an immunity deal with the head of the French Supreme Court, former Socialist foreign minister Roland Dumas. While the French corruption scandals are well known in France, they have rarely been reported in the United States and will alternately shock and amuse American readers.

Another article by Ilya Shapiro discusses the ever popular question, "Why Do They Hate Us?".

(via ProfessorBainbridge)