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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Now Can I say Mean Things About The French?

Now Can I say Mean Things About The French?

by John Cole|  May 6, 200311:03 am| 7 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs

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More food for “But France is one of our oldest allies” crowd:

The French government secretly supplied fleeing Iraqi officials with passports in Syria that allowed them to escape to Europe, The Washington Times has learned. Top Stories

An unknown number of Iraqis who worked for Saddam Hussein’s government were given passports by French officials in Syria, U.S. intelligence officials said.

This about sums it up:

A second Bush administration official said, “It’s like Raoul Wallenberg in reverse,” a reference to the Swedish diplomat who supplied travel documents to help Jews escape Nazi Germany in World War II. “Now you have the French helping the bad guys escape from us.”

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7Comments

  1. 1.

    Brandon

    May 6, 2003 at 2:37 pm

    Given some other recent revelations about France’s conduct, I wonder how many of these officials were on French payrolls as well.

  2. 2.

    Sal

    May 7, 2003 at 4:52 am

    The French say there is a lot of bunk in this article, but we are trained not to trust that old ally now, aren’t we? And we DO what we are told like good little steppers. France, they are on this weeks ‘axis of who we are gonna hate’ list, aren’t they? France, Germany, Gays, Environmentalists, professors, actors, lieberals…which group of Americans will get it next?… Who’s gonna be the ‘hate de jour’ for the Bircher’s next week? Quite a world boy George is creating, quite a world.

    And ah yes, Mr. Gertz, wonder which end the candle Moon will burn next.

    Q:Where will Moon lead the conservatives next?
    A: Anywhere he wants, they will do whatever he says and never know it.

    http://www.usasurvival.org/ck06022002.shtml

    http://www.usasurvival.org/ck05292002.shtml

  3. 3.

    Sal

    May 7, 2003 at 5:47 am

    “Given some other recent revelations about France’s conduct, I wonder how many of these officials were on French payrolls as well”

    Hey speaking of paying people, what about Dick Cheney getting his palm greased by Iraq. What do you say about that? Eh? Haliburton did business with them and Cheney LIED about it. Rumsfeld worked for ABB? when they sold nuke stuff to NK in 1982ish, what about that? Amazing how people will make excuses for them.

    Bushco has now, in essence, told the country they intend to frighten them into voting for him…my oh my…and the imp keeps an AIRCRAFT CARRIER at sea an extra day so he can ‘pend the night on the boaty boaty’ and the right just makes excuse after excuse for him, not unlike the way the moonies do in supporting of their “leader’… Clinton gets a haircut, the whole thing is blown out of proportion and we listen to it for ten years, “held up commercial traffic’ haha….Bush delays an Aircraft Carrier. An Aircraft Carrier for a photo op. It had 150 new fathers who were kept from seeing their newborns for an extra day so the child king could feel like a ‘big boy’ and get a dern photo op. That’s right, 150 new fathers who had been deployed longer than any aircraft Carrier in thirty years, Bush lies for a photo op, says they are too far out to sea, they slow down for him…on and on and the hypocrites on the right will never face who he is. They can’t see it, God is directing them, who cares about reality. sheesh.

    Here ya go, this one has’em as hard as trailer hitches…
    http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-cong/2003/may/06/050602071.html
    “I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw,” Byrd said on the Senate floor.

    I do not begrudge his salute to America’s warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely, … but I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech,” he said.

    He said American blood has been shed defending Bush’s policies. “This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial,” he said.

    “To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the president to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech,” he said. ..

    On Tuesday, before Byrd’s speech, Fleischer said Bush wanted “to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing. He wanted to see it as realistically as possible.”

    —

    I guess George needed to feel what they felt for when he sends them out to kill for him. Isn’t that the kind of thing Hannibal Lector would do?

  4. 4.

    Dean

    May 7, 2003 at 10:37 am

    Sal,

    You, uhm, might want to take a look a little more at what the issue of ABB and the North Koreans have to do w/ the current crisis.

    In 1994, the US (under President Clinton) create the “Agreed Framework” with North Korea. The idea was to replace the North Korean nuclear reactors, which are graphite-moderated systems optimized for weapons production, with “light-water reactors” optimized for power generation.

    LWRs are harder (but not impossible) to use for creating plutonium, a key nuclear weapons fuel (along w/ uranium). This Framework was implemented on the basis that:

    1. NK should not be excessively pressured for fear of starting a war;
    2. NK claimed that its nuclear reactors were for power generation (despite not being hooked into the power grid and lacking any transmission lines or towers to that effect); and
    3. NK demanded some kind of compensation for ending its nuclear program.

    This was in 1994, and THAT was when Rumsfeld worked for ABB.

    So, when ABB was bidding on building NK nuclear reactors, it was bidding on reactors that:

    1. Were being built w/ US knowledge
    2. Were PART OF the US plan to get NK to stop its nuclear program.

    The downside of this is what?

    If you’ve got a problem w/ building LWRs for NK, go talk to President Clinton, who helped create the Agreed Framework, not Rumsfeld.

  5. 5.

    Sal

    May 7, 2003 at 12:51 pm

    Dean, you are correct, yes we knew what was happening and Rumsfeld didn’t go on national TV and lie about his relationship like Cheney did.

    scroll down here for more info on the selective memory republicans…

    http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20030502.html
    Story: DID DONALD RUMSFELD AID NORTH KOREA’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM?: A NEW REPORT REVEALS RUMSFELD WAS ON BOARD OF ZURICH FIRM ABB WHICH SOLD NORTH KOREA TWO NUCLEAR REACTORS
    ====
    So you proud of the ;leader’ for delaying those sailors from seeing their newborns? What a thoughtful caring guy we have for a ‘leader.’
    What a thoughtful caring person.

  6. 6.

    Dean

    May 7, 2003 at 4:42 pm

    Sal,

    Your evidence that the Lincoln was delayed in putting into port?

    And your story makes no difference to what I posted earlier. In 2000, any effort to build NK nuclear reactors was PART OF THE SOLUTION to the NK nuclear issue. The construction of LWRs was authorized BY THE US to help put an end to the NK nuclear development program. It was aimed at replacing a reactor system optimized for producing plutonium, w/ one that is not.

    So, where is the problem w/ this?

  7. 7.

    Sal

    May 7, 2003 at 5:33 pm

    ‘So, where is the problem w/ this?’

    None, I am a big fan of Rummy’s.

    I had the date confused. I do love that all our governmnet offiacials don’t really change hats when they take office, though.

    It is my understanding that the ‘scheduled’ arrival date was about right when first set, but that the Carrier was ahead of that schedule and could have docked a day earlier.

    http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/122/nation/Bush_proclaims_a_victory+.shtml

    White House officials originally said that Bush was making the dramatic jet trip because the ship was too far out to sea to be reached by helicopter. Bush was trained in ejection procedures and water survival in case of a crash. But the carrier was just 30 miles from shore by the time he arrived, and officials said it had slowed down so that Bush could spend the night on board before the USS Abraham Lincoln docks today, extending by one day the sailors’ almost 10-month deployment at sea, the longest by a carrier in 30 years.

    —
    more on the leader and the military

    http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/114/north/Veterans_up_in_arms_over_proposed_cuts+.shtml

    —

    if you barf at the Globe as a source just don’t reply, I won’t answer. So what do you think about the French saying Moon’s man on the scene, Gertz is full of hooey? Through Moon’s longtime connection Gertz knows as much as anyone, do you think someone would feed him some bull?

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