Clearly France must flee from Iraq, now.
...oops.
Posted on 09/14/2006 4:40:20 AM PDT by rightgrafix
Al-Qaeda's deputy leader has claimed that a radical Algerian Islamist group had joined al-Qaeda and is being urged to punish France, it has emerged.
Ayman al-Zawahiri appeared a video on a website on the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks.
In the tape, he issued a warning of new attacks targeting Israel and the Gulf.
Although France's government opposed the US-led war in Iraq, French officials believe the country is still a target for Islamist militants.
In the video, Zawahiri says: "Osama Bin Laden has told me to announce to Muslims that the GSPC [the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat] has joined al-Qaeda," according to quotes given by the AFP news agency.
"This should be a source of chagrin, frustration and sadness for the apostates [of the regime in Algeria], the treacherous sons of [former colonial power] France."
He urges the group to become "a bone in the throat of the American and French crusaders".
"We pray to God that our brothers from the GSPC succeed in causing harm to the top members of the crusader coalition, and particularly their leader, the vicious America," he says.
Anne Giudicelli, head of the Terrorisc security consultancy who reviewed the whole tape, told Le Figaro newspaper the anti-France message had dominated the homepage of the website used by the GSPC for the past few days.
'High threat'
On Thursday, France's interior ministry said Zawahiri's comments "confirmed the high level of threat against our country", officials told AFP.
Ministry officials add that al-Qaeda had announced in a statement on 11 September 2003 that the GSPC was one of its components and there have since been other threats issued against France.
On Monday, Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, head of the DST domestic security service, said the threat of terrorist attack in France remained "very high and very international".
"For our Islamist adversaries, our country is frankly in the Western camp, the crusaders in their words, and we will be spared nothing," he told French radio.
The GSPC was created in the late 1990s by members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which the aim of establishing an Islamic state in Algeria.
The GIA and other militant groups waged a decade-long campaign of violence, following the annulment in 1992 of elections which Islamic groups were poised to win.
An estimated 150,00 people are thought to have been killed in the violence.
Seems appeasement didn't work
Clearly France must flee from Iraq, now.
...oops.
And America has not had riots?
French policies 'minimize' rioting, their policies do not 'eliminate' rioting.
Most French will opt for appeasement to prevent an outbreak of violence. The alternative to appeasement would be a harsh police state which they have evoked when riots occur. But when the rioting subsides, the French go back to sleep much as Americans do. They go to a policy of appeasement. We can criticize such a policy but as I mentioned the alternative is a harsh police state, and it would have to be continuing and constant until a policy of deporting nearly all Muslims was instituted, but that will likely never happen.
Compare with the USA; imagine a policy to 'round up' 20 million illegals and ship them back across the border. It can be done and more easily so than the French getting rid of their Algerians. Algerians in France are not the same as illegals in the USA. Algerians in France are more like Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the USA. The Algerians in France are mostly legal with historical ties to Colonial France.
The recent riots were brought on by policies that did not appease Muslims such as no vails allowed in public schools, proposals to eliminate job security protections, fomented violence caused by local Imams, etc. There is also a general frustration among Muslims in France as the French do not integrate and accept them fully. For example to get a French government job requires near perfect speaking, writing and reading of the French language. Broken French is not allowed. Same goes for the University system, a French accent, intonation and fluency is required for entry, no exceptions, no affirmative action, no bribes or payoffs.
The French did start deportation hearings on rioters that were caught. That shows they can be harsh when and where needed.
But by and large France has a policy of appeasement in order to 'minimize' violence. Because a harsh police state would have to go on for years and years proving an irritant to most French citizens.
But when push comes to shove (as during riots) the French are more harsh than Americans. Americans have had their share of riots too.
The point is there is no basis to criticize France for their appeasement like social policies because Americans have the same appeasement policies with Blacks and Hispanics.
Where France can be fairly criticized is in their delay tactics in the debate of enforcing UN resolutions in Iraq.
I am only passing along information that allows readers to get the context of the problem. It is mostly unknown to Americans how Muslims are part of French history.
Does this"Threat"include the exiling of"The French-Looking Candidate"?(to France,of course)
This story doesn't smell right. I don't believe for a second that AQ splinterettes plan to attack France. I think France is a handy "diversion" for world attention while the fascists lay the groundwork elsewhere for the next stack of murders en mass.
Anyone who has ever play the game "Diplomacy" (or even Risk) understands what it's like to play "France". Argh.
Is it just the translation, or do these people really talk like this? I know it's serious stuff but it just comes across sounding like Monty Python or something.
I don't doubt that many French support us.
But why are so many of your government officials and so many of your countrymen so anti-US at such a time that we need to band together?
"But why are so many of your government officials and so many of your countrymen so anti-US at such a time that we need to band together?"
Basically, they are not. They clearly DO favor a different approach on many issues - but still pursue the same goal, which is stability in those areas of the world we have special interests in, be that economical, historical, or cultural ties.
So yes, France and the United States clashed on Iraq, and badly so. But they went along quite fine when it came to stabilizing Lebanon and rolling back Lybyan influence in southwestern Africa in the 1980s, of keeping Iraq out of Kuwait and trying to topple Somalian warlords in the 1990s, or fighting Talibans in Afghanistan and getting Syrians out of Lebanon in the 2000s.
They also see eye-to-eye when it comes to fighting terrorism. Why do you think the Alliance-Base anti-terrorist unit is based in Paris, and not in London ? Because France had a tougher stance on that matter of state security, while Great Britain has always been more respectful of individual rights, even when if said individuals might end up representing a threat.
Our main problem is that we are a little too good at pushing each other's buttonbs and at doing it for fun - or at thinking it's the right thing to do. France can differ with the opinions in Washington without turning into an Al-Qaeda member - and conversely, the USA can defend an opinion which doesn't please Paris without being the Great American Devil.
At the end of the (historical) day, when all's said and done, there aren't too many battlefields where French and US troops didn't fight side-by-side, there aren't too many cases where US and French LEOs didn't work side by side, ansd they aren't many occurrences where French and American citizens didn't find out they had a lot of common and a mutual interest in each other. Whether it remains this way is, I think, ours to decide.
France just can't kiss enough ass to stay on the good side of these killers. How much is it going to take?
Yes Kuyard Ripling noted author/poet on the Bizarro Earth.
It would sink real good.
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