France Wants Moussaoui Back

The French have apparently not let the ink dry on the jury submission from yesterday's sentencing recommendation in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial before starting to interfere with its implementation. Le Monde reports today that French officials have contacted the US in hopes of transferring Moussaoui to France in order to serve his sentence (h/t: CQ reader Leo T):

My high-school French is rather poor these days (thank heaven for BabelFish!), but the gist of this report is that France wants to rely on two bilateral conventions to extradite Moussaoui when sentencing is complete. They wish to explore the transfer of the al-Qaeda terrorist to French custody to serve out his sentence, supposedly under American law, but with an eye towards their own brand of justice. The conventions mentioned in the article date to 1983 and 1985, and give specific processes for the transfer of French citizens convicted in American courts, as well as the reverse.

The French show the minimum respect for American sensibilities by announcing they will wait until after the formal sentencing today to request this extradition. Moussaoui's mother has publicly pressed the Chirac government to allow the erstwhile terrorist to serve his sentence nearby, and to do so as soon as possible.

This is a small taste of what would have occurred if the jury had given Moussaoui the death penalty. The French government would have given this much more visibility even today had that occurred, and it would have continued for years until we executed the supposedly mentally ill terrorist. As it is, if the French want to confirm American opinion of their nation, then they should by all means pursue this diplomatic effort. It will give us plenty of opportunity to remind the Chirac government of its lack of fidelity in its pledge to support us if we went back to the Security Council just once more on Iraq. We can also talk about all of the bilateral efforts between Paris and Baghdad that undermined the sanctions regime, sent military arms to Saddam Hussein, and paid bribes and kickbacks to the Ba'athist regime that Oil-For-Food specifically sought to sideline.

If the French get their hands on Moussaoui, we will only wake up a few years later to French pronouncements of miracle cures and rehabilitation, and watch the video of the AQ terrorist gleefully leaving the French prison over the protests of the American government. We do not wish to rely on French tenacity in the war on terror; we learned that lesson a long time ago. Let the French try to invoke whatever treaties they want to request Moussaoui's extradition, and let them stomp their feet when we tell them to pound sand.

MARK TWAIN had the French down pat in the Eighteen Hunderdss

A French married lady cannot enter even a menagerie without bringing the purity of that menagerie under suspicion.
- Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Notebook #19, July 1880-January 1882

The objects of which Paris folks are fond--literature, art, medicine and adultery.
- - speech at the Stanley Club in Paris, ca. April 1879

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals--apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

I like to look at a Russian or a German or an Italian--I even like to look at a Frenchman if I ever have the luck to catch him engaged in anything that ain't delicate.
- Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

France has usually been governed by prostitutes.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

A Frenchman's home is where another man's wife is.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

M. de Lamester's new French dictionary just issued in Paris defines virtue as: "A woman who has only one lover and don't steal."
- quoted in A Bibliography of Mark Twain, Merle Johnson

In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
- The Innocents Abroad

There is nothing lower than the human race except the French.
- quoted by Carl Dolmetsch, Our Famous Guest

It is human to like to be praised; one can even notice it in the French.
- "What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us"

In certain public indecencies the difference between a dog & a Frenchman is not perceptible.
- Notebook #17, October 1878 - February 1879

It appears that at last census that every man in France over 16 years of age & under 116, has at least 1 wife to whom he has never been married. French novels, talk, drama & newspaper bring daily & overwhelming proofs that the most of the married ladies have paramours. This makes a good deal of what we call crime, and the French call sociability.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

French are the connecting link between man & the monkey.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

Trivial Americans go to Paris when they die.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

It is the language for lying compliment, for illicit love & for the conveying of exquisitely nice shades of meaning in bright graceful & trivial conversations--the conveying, especially of double-meanings, a decent & indecent one so blended as--nudity thinly veiled, but gauzily & lovelily.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

...anywhere is better than Paris. Paris the cold, Paris the drizzly, Paris the rainy, Paris the damnable. More than a hundred years ago somebody asked Quin, "Did you ever see such a winter in all your life before?" "Yes," said he, "Last summer." I judge he spent his summer in Paris. Let us change the proverb; Let us say all bad Americans go to Paris when they die. No, let us not say it for this adds a new horror to Immortality.
- letter to Lucius Fairchild, 28 April 1880, reprinted in Mark Twain, The Letter Writer

An isolated & helpless young girl is perfectly safe from insult by a Frenchman, if he is dead.
- Notebook #20, Jan. 1882 - Feb. 1883

A dead Frenchman has many good qualities, many things to recommend him; many attractions--even innocencies. Why cannot we have more of these?
- Notebook #20, Jan. 1882 - Feb. 1883

Moussaoui needs to be sent to a tough prison, not put into solitary confinement, but as a regular prisoner in with all inmates - let nature take its course.

The first thing that is going to happen while this terrorist lives is that some poor soul will be kidnapped, whose life will be threatened unless Moussaoui is released...count on it.

Second the continued cost of keeping this beast incarcerated, appeals etc. is astronomical...the jury has unleashed not only an expense to the taxpayer but one that will be used against us. How I wish they had asked for his death…Political Correctness is a killing disease that is killing America.

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