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Location: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

3/27/2003

Denying France a Victory
I'm all for consumer boycotts of the products of France, a country that once was a U.S. ally but now is actively working to prevent the defeat of Saddam Hussein - although I doubt the boycotts will have much impact. But there is a way to hit France a little harder. According to today's Wall Street Journal, a California congressman is "demanding that planners [of the reconstruction of post-war Iraq] choose a wireless-phone technology developed by an American company." Rep. Darrell Issa has sent letters to the Pentagon, the U.S. Agency for International Development and fellow lawmakers urging them to support the deployment of CDMA, a wireless technology developed commercially by Qualcomm Inc., which happens to be headquarted in California.

But Issa isn't merely trying to secure pork for the home state. He's got a better motive than that:

"We have learned that planners at the Department of Defense and USAID are currently envisioning using federal appropriations to deploy a European-based wireless technology known as GSM ('Groupe Speciale Mobile' - this standard was developed by the French) for this new Iraqi cellphone system," Mr. Issa wrote to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"If European GSM technology is deployed in Iraq, much of the equipment used to build the cell-phone system will be manufactured in France by Alcatel, in Germany by Siemens, and elsewhere in Western and Northern Europe. Therefore, if our understanding of this situation is correct, because of ill-considered planning, the U.S. government will soon hand U.S. taxpayer dollars over to French, German, and other European cell-phone equipment companies to build the new Iraqi cell-phone system. This is not acceptable," reads the letter Issa is urging his colleagues to sign.

Given how France and Germany have actively aided Iraq's brutal dictator, Issa is right - using U.S. tax dollars to benefit France in this way is not acceptable.

Mr. Issa's characterization of GSM as a French-developed standard is not exactly accurate - GSM was developed by a consortium of European companies, most prominently Finland's Nokia Corp. and Sweden's L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co.. Still, going with GSM is more likely to benefit France. Going with CDMA benefits America.

Issa's not just writing letters - he's planning to introduce legislation to block the use of GSM. He's right to do so. The U.S. should actively cut out any French involvement with the reconstruction of Iraq, starting with canceling the lucrative contract that France's Total Fina Elf signed with the outlaw Hussein regime to develop Iraq's northern oil fields.

I'll try to keep you updated on Issa's battle, and related news. Here's a link to the WSJ story, although you can't access it without being a paid subscriber. Here's a Reuters story on it courtesy of Forbes.com. And here's one in RCR Wireless News.