Posted on 10/06/2004 10:52:53 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
Paris -- A high-stakes scheme to free two French journalists kidnapped in Iraq threatens to embroil President Jacques Chirac in a political scandal over whether his government assisted private intermediaries in negotiating with terrorists for the hostages' release.
The rescue attempt by an unlikely cast of characters -- a maverick politician from Chirac's ruling party, a former bodyguard for a leading right- winger, and an African strongman -- has been labeled an embarrassing fiasco by the press and a "knockabout farce" by former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Damn the frogs...
You can bet that they will wear the knees out on their pants.
They stood up to the Nazis so well.
Ah, it finally made the MSM.
Much maligned (by some) Debka broke the news a few days ago.
Chirac is not to be trusted.
It is still an interesting read with a lot of detail:
Chirac Plants Hurdle on US Road to Fallujah
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
October 3, 2004, 10:25 PM (GMT+02:00)
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=912
Had they brought it off, they would have delivered to Chirac four impressive objectives in his dispute with Bush over Iraq.
A. France would have shown the world it can outdo the Americans and the Allawi government in settling crises in Iraq by negotiating with insurgents instead of waging bloody war against them. This demonstration was intended to discredit Bush’s Iraq policies and hurt his re-election prospects.
B. Paris would not only have granted the Iraqi Baath guerrillas and their al Qaeda allies recognition as legitimate negotiating partners but also granted legitimacy to the illicit Syria-Iraq-Syria smuggling routes bringing men and arms to bolster the anti-US warfront in Iraq.
C. The purported transfer of the French hostages across the Iraqi-Syrian border was timed to coincide with the most promising US-Iraqi initiative thus far to co-opt Syria to a joint military effort for sealing that border to illegal and hostile infiltrations. This setback to Washington’s plans would have seriously delayed the final offensive to recover Fallujah from insurgent-terrorist control.
D. It would also have delivered a setback to US-Syrian relations as a whole, showing up factions of Syrian military intelligence as more than willing to pitch in on any anti-American actions. Washington would have had to accept that any deal with Damascus was full of dangerous holes.
By bombing the French-sponsored Baath guerrilla convoy on its way to Syria, American warplanes whipped these assets out of the French president’s grasp. But still up in the air is the fate of the two French hostages, as is also the date of the US-Iraq Fallujah offensive. The two issues however are no longer intertwined.
French Journalists in Iraq? Hmmm. Maybe they were looking into the oil for food scandal. They could have stated in France to do that. :-)
And the two Italian gals publicly thanked the Iraqi "Resistance" fighters. Thanked them for what? Kidnapping them? Not cutting off their heads?
You don't thank terrorists and you don't negotiate with terrorists. That's wrong.
Anything that makes Chirac squirm and twist and face a roiling scandal that could embarrass and weaken him is quite all right in my book.
Zoot alors !!!
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