Update on the French passports for fleeing Iraqis
Jun 8th 2003 | 3:43 am
#1
Guest
Posts: n/a
Update on the French passports for fleeing Iraqis
I thought that this story was, from the beginning a Pentagon
disinformation plant in Gertz's ear. The Moonie paper would
publish this kind of story and not confirm their sources.
Then Representative Sensenbrenner got all excited and wanted an
investigation of the charge. This was done and Sensenbrenner got unexcited
and obviously is not interested in chasing down acts of
disinformation possibly coming out of the Pentagon.
The big lie technique is working well in America right now
and wonder if some sort of reaction will occur?
Earl
******
Baiting the French
comment | Posted June 5, 2003
Baiting the French
by Doug Ireland
George W. Bush may have intoned " Vive la France " to a reporter from Le
Figaro and other foreign journalists just before he took off for his
dismissively quick drop-in at the G-8 meeting in Évian--but it's unlikely
that will be taken as a signal by his cohorts to cease peddling anti-French
stories to journalists with a skepticism deficit.
A month after Colin Powell, in April, solemnly affirmed that France would be
"punished" for its opposition to Bush's war, the New York Times reported
that "a midlevel meeting in the White House was called to discuss ways to do
so." Just by happenstance, of course, that meeting coincided with a marked
ratcheting-up of nasty media stories accusing Jacques Chirac's government of
being in bed with Saddam Hussein.
In an unprecedented May 15 letter to the United States, Jean-David Levitte,
France's US Ambassador, denounced a "disinformation campaign aimed at
sullying France's image and misleading the public." Levitte cited and
refuted eight stories he called "false," all of which "rely on information
from 'anonymous administration officials.'" Examples: The New York Times
published a story saying high-precision switches used in nukes had been sold
by France to Iraq; it turned out the sale by a private company of the
switches, which were dual-use and had been requested as medical equipment,
was barred by the French government when it figured out the deception.
Newsweek published a blind item suggesting French Roland 2 missiles made in
2002 had been found in Iraq; it turned out that no Roland 2s were
manufactured after 1993, and that France had sold no weaponry to Iraq since
1990.
But no story proved as incendiary as a May 6 report by Bill Gertz in the
ultraconservative, Moonie-owned Washington Times --based on "anonymous
intelligence sources"--alleging that France had provided passports to "an
unknown number" of Saddam's henchmen to help them escape to Europe as the
Baath regime collapsed. The frogbaiting frothers on Fox News and other nets
railed about this no-names report for weeks; it became a staple of
right-wing talk-radio's virulently anti-French spewing and fodder for
late-night TV comics. Dennis Miller, chez Jay Leno, launched into a
five-minute riff using the passport story for a broadside against the
French, "who never take baths." About the only TV talking head who came to
France's defense was Bill Press, who said on CNBC that the passport story
and similar tales "are coming out of the same little intelligence cell at
the Pentagon that told us that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and
that there were tons and tons of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
The passport story sparked a call for an investigation by House Judiciary
Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner--to which the Department of Homeland
Security responded two weeks later that according to US intelligence, there
was "no indication that France supplied passports to Iraqis." The Washington
Post 's Karen DeYoung reported May 15 that the White House, the State
Department and the CIA all said they were "aware of no such intelligence
information." And the story was categorically denounced as false by
Dominique de Villepin, France's foreign minister.
But that didn't stop the Pentagon's leakers, who, speaking "on the condition
of anonymity," fed the Washington Times a May 24 story saying that "a U.S.
military intelligence team" in Iraq had "uncovered" a dozen blank French
passports--where and when was never specified. In this story, Gertz went to
great lengths to suggest that the passports could not have been stolen,
because the "French Embassy was protected by armed guards and barbed
wire...after the fall of Baghdad." (France has no formal embassy in Iraq,
only an "interest section." However, a French spokesman in Washington says
passports were burgled from a prefecture in France some months ago; the
culprits remain unidentified.)
When I asked Gertz about his story, which was written from Washington, he
admitted that no one he'd talked to had actually seen the "uncovered" blank
passports, and that he was relying entirely on a Pentagon-leaked "field
report," which he hadn't seen either. Not one of the hundreds of foreign
journalists on the ground in Iraq has confirmed the Moonie paper's claim. If
there are any passports, and if they're real and not forgeries, their serial
numbers should make them easy to trace. Yet so far, the Administration has
not responded to France's request, in the wake of the Washington Times
story, for a look at them. Which makes Bush's declarations to the French
press about how he "appreciates" the close cooperation between US and French
intelligence services rather empty.
Now Chirac, France's president, is a notorious liar and crook. Last year,
while voters renewed his immunity from probable indictment by re-electing
him, his puppet character on the popular TV show Les Guignols was baptized
Supermenteur (Superliar), a name that stuck. Yet it's hard to imagine what
could have motivated Chirac's government to help senior Baathist thugs
escape under French protection. Even before the passport story, the US
boycott campaigns against French products were already of major concern to
corporate France, Chirac's fervent supporters. And Chirac was being
criticized by other elements of his conservative coalition for having gone
too far in his confrontation with Washington. So why would Chirac chance
making the situation worse? On its face, the story is illogical.
It's hard to prove a negative, so I asked some of Chirac's most ardent
French critics what they thought of his alleged collusion with the Baghdad
dictatorship; if they can't find the passport story, it probably isn't
there. "For years France--under both left and right governments--was silent
on Saddam's ethnic cleansing and human rights violations and had a bad
reputation for it, which was deserved," says Alain Frachon, deputy editor of
Le Monde , the leading daily, noted for its antipathy to Chirac. But, he
said, in the past ten years France's involvement with Iraq has "continually
diminished. Last year, for example, there was only $600 million in French
trade with Iraq--that's small change, really." As for the passport story, "I
don't believe it," Frachon said. "When Saddam's son Uday secretly sought
French treatment after he was hit by thirty bullets in an assassination
attempt, we knew about it right away. But we have no indication" the
passport story is true.
Claude Angeli, dean of French investigative journalists and veteran editor
of the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné (which has broken more Chirac
scandals than the rest of the press combined), says the fact that de
Villepin--Chirac's chief of staff before he became foreign
minister--personally stepped up to deny the passport story tells us a lot.
De Villepin, after years in Chirac's shadow, has a new-found public
popularity as France's spokesman against the war and "now sees himself as a
future prime minister or president," Angeli told me. De Villepin "would
never have denied [the passport story] if it happened, because it would be
too risky," not just for Chirac but for his own political future.
Jean Guisnel authoritatively covers military and intelligence matters for
the center-right newsweekly Le Point . On the passport story, Guisnel is
categorical: "My military and intelligence sources all tell me it's
absolutely not true."
In his May 25 Washington Post column, that paper's ombudsman, Michael
Getler, cited the French-baiting episode in his critique of major stories
based on anonymous sources and politicized intelligence, concluding that
"reporters aren't probing hard enough against the defenses of an
administration with an effective, disciplined, and restrictive attitude
toward information control." In other words, most of the US press is falling
down in exposing the White House use of the Big Lie technique--or, worse, is
a willing partner in it.
While Bush, when asked in an interview with France3 TV if he'd forgive
France for its antiwar stance, casually responded "Sure," he was being
disingenuous. As CNN White House correspondent John King put it during the
Évian summit, "Bush's aides say he'll never forget." The Washington Times ,
favorite paper of the White House, promises another installment on the
passport story "soon."
disinformation plant in Gertz's ear. The Moonie paper would
publish this kind of story and not confirm their sources.
Then Representative Sensenbrenner got all excited and wanted an
investigation of the charge. This was done and Sensenbrenner got unexcited
and obviously is not interested in chasing down acts of
disinformation possibly coming out of the Pentagon.
The big lie technique is working well in America right now
and wonder if some sort of reaction will occur?
Earl
******
Baiting the French
comment | Posted June 5, 2003
Baiting the French
by Doug Ireland
George W. Bush may have intoned " Vive la France " to a reporter from Le
Figaro and other foreign journalists just before he took off for his
dismissively quick drop-in at the G-8 meeting in Évian--but it's unlikely
that will be taken as a signal by his cohorts to cease peddling anti-French
stories to journalists with a skepticism deficit.
A month after Colin Powell, in April, solemnly affirmed that France would be
"punished" for its opposition to Bush's war, the New York Times reported
that "a midlevel meeting in the White House was called to discuss ways to do
so." Just by happenstance, of course, that meeting coincided with a marked
ratcheting-up of nasty media stories accusing Jacques Chirac's government of
being in bed with Saddam Hussein.
In an unprecedented May 15 letter to the United States, Jean-David Levitte,
France's US Ambassador, denounced a "disinformation campaign aimed at
sullying France's image and misleading the public." Levitte cited and
refuted eight stories he called "false," all of which "rely on information
from 'anonymous administration officials.'" Examples: The New York Times
published a story saying high-precision switches used in nukes had been sold
by France to Iraq; it turned out the sale by a private company of the
switches, which were dual-use and had been requested as medical equipment,
was barred by the French government when it figured out the deception.
Newsweek published a blind item suggesting French Roland 2 missiles made in
2002 had been found in Iraq; it turned out that no Roland 2s were
manufactured after 1993, and that France had sold no weaponry to Iraq since
1990.
But no story proved as incendiary as a May 6 report by Bill Gertz in the
ultraconservative, Moonie-owned Washington Times --based on "anonymous
intelligence sources"--alleging that France had provided passports to "an
unknown number" of Saddam's henchmen to help them escape to Europe as the
Baath regime collapsed. The frogbaiting frothers on Fox News and other nets
railed about this no-names report for weeks; it became a staple of
right-wing talk-radio's virulently anti-French spewing and fodder for
late-night TV comics. Dennis Miller, chez Jay Leno, launched into a
five-minute riff using the passport story for a broadside against the
French, "who never take baths." About the only TV talking head who came to
France's defense was Bill Press, who said on CNBC that the passport story
and similar tales "are coming out of the same little intelligence cell at
the Pentagon that told us that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and
that there were tons and tons of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
The passport story sparked a call for an investigation by House Judiciary
Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner--to which the Department of Homeland
Security responded two weeks later that according to US intelligence, there
was "no indication that France supplied passports to Iraqis." The Washington
Post 's Karen DeYoung reported May 15 that the White House, the State
Department and the CIA all said they were "aware of no such intelligence
information." And the story was categorically denounced as false by
Dominique de Villepin, France's foreign minister.
But that didn't stop the Pentagon's leakers, who, speaking "on the condition
of anonymity," fed the Washington Times a May 24 story saying that "a U.S.
military intelligence team" in Iraq had "uncovered" a dozen blank French
passports--where and when was never specified. In this story, Gertz went to
great lengths to suggest that the passports could not have been stolen,
because the "French Embassy was protected by armed guards and barbed
wire...after the fall of Baghdad." (France has no formal embassy in Iraq,
only an "interest section." However, a French spokesman in Washington says
passports were burgled from a prefecture in France some months ago; the
culprits remain unidentified.)
When I asked Gertz about his story, which was written from Washington, he
admitted that no one he'd talked to had actually seen the "uncovered" blank
passports, and that he was relying entirely on a Pentagon-leaked "field
report," which he hadn't seen either. Not one of the hundreds of foreign
journalists on the ground in Iraq has confirmed the Moonie paper's claim. If
there are any passports, and if they're real and not forgeries, their serial
numbers should make them easy to trace. Yet so far, the Administration has
not responded to France's request, in the wake of the Washington Times
story, for a look at them. Which makes Bush's declarations to the French
press about how he "appreciates" the close cooperation between US and French
intelligence services rather empty.
Now Chirac, France's president, is a notorious liar and crook. Last year,
while voters renewed his immunity from probable indictment by re-electing
him, his puppet character on the popular TV show Les Guignols was baptized
Supermenteur (Superliar), a name that stuck. Yet it's hard to imagine what
could have motivated Chirac's government to help senior Baathist thugs
escape under French protection. Even before the passport story, the US
boycott campaigns against French products were already of major concern to
corporate France, Chirac's fervent supporters. And Chirac was being
criticized by other elements of his conservative coalition for having gone
too far in his confrontation with Washington. So why would Chirac chance
making the situation worse? On its face, the story is illogical.
It's hard to prove a negative, so I asked some of Chirac's most ardent
French critics what they thought of his alleged collusion with the Baghdad
dictatorship; if they can't find the passport story, it probably isn't
there. "For years France--under both left and right governments--was silent
on Saddam's ethnic cleansing and human rights violations and had a bad
reputation for it, which was deserved," says Alain Frachon, deputy editor of
Le Monde , the leading daily, noted for its antipathy to Chirac. But, he
said, in the past ten years France's involvement with Iraq has "continually
diminished. Last year, for example, there was only $600 million in French
trade with Iraq--that's small change, really." As for the passport story, "I
don't believe it," Frachon said. "When Saddam's son Uday secretly sought
French treatment after he was hit by thirty bullets in an assassination
attempt, we knew about it right away. But we have no indication" the
passport story is true.
Claude Angeli, dean of French investigative journalists and veteran editor
of the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné (which has broken more Chirac
scandals than the rest of the press combined), says the fact that de
Villepin--Chirac's chief of staff before he became foreign
minister--personally stepped up to deny the passport story tells us a lot.
De Villepin, after years in Chirac's shadow, has a new-found public
popularity as France's spokesman against the war and "now sees himself as a
future prime minister or president," Angeli told me. De Villepin "would
never have denied [the passport story] if it happened, because it would be
too risky," not just for Chirac but for his own political future.
Jean Guisnel authoritatively covers military and intelligence matters for
the center-right newsweekly Le Point . On the passport story, Guisnel is
categorical: "My military and intelligence sources all tell me it's
absolutely not true."
In his May 25 Washington Post column, that paper's ombudsman, Michael
Getler, cited the French-baiting episode in his critique of major stories
based on anonymous sources and politicized intelligence, concluding that
"reporters aren't probing hard enough against the defenses of an
administration with an effective, disciplined, and restrictive attitude
toward information control." In other words, most of the US press is falling
down in exposing the White House use of the Big Lie technique--or, worse, is
a willing partner in it.
While Bush, when asked in an interview with France3 TV if he'd forgive
France for its antiwar stance, casually responded "Sure," he was being
disingenuous. As CNN White House correspondent John King put it during the
Évian summit, "Bush's aides say he'll never forget." The Washington Times ,
favorite paper of the White House, promises another installment on the
passport story "soon."
Jun 8th 2003 | 4:57 am
#2
Guest
Posts: n/a
Re: Update on the French passports for fleeing Iraqis
On Sun, 08 Jun 2003 17:43:50 +0200, Earl Evleth
wrote:
>The big lie technique is working well in America right now
>and wonder if some sort of reaction will occur?
Reaction in the US, or reaction in France? I doubt anyone in the US
will seriously be called to account - France simply is too unpopular
right now for any major politicians to risk coming to their defense.
wrote:
>The big lie technique is working well in America right now
>and wonder if some sort of reaction will occur?
Reaction in the US, or reaction in France? I doubt anyone in the US
will seriously be called to account - France simply is too unpopular
right now for any major politicians to risk coming to their defense.
Jun 8th 2003 | 12:26 pm
#3
Guest
Posts: n/a
Re: Update on the French passports for fleeing Iraqis
On Sun, 08 Jun 2003, Earl Evleth wrote:
> Baiting the French
>
> comment | Posted June 5, 2003
> Baiting the French
> by Doug Ireland
Where is this article from?
--
Yves Bellefeuille , Ottawa, Canada
Francais / English / Esperanto
Esperanto FAQ: http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq.html
Rec.travel.europe FAQ: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/travel/europe/faq
> Baiting the French
>
> comment | Posted June 5, 2003
> Baiting the French
> by Doug Ireland
Where is this article from?
--
Yves Bellefeuille , Ottawa, Canada
Francais / English / Esperanto
Esperanto FAQ: http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq.html
Rec.travel.europe FAQ: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/travel/europe/faq
Jun 8th 2003 | 1:54 pm
#4
Guest
Posts: n/a
Re: Update on the French passports for fleeing Iraqis
Yves Bellefeuille wrote:
> Earl Evleth wrote:
>> Baiting the French
>>
>> comment | Posted June 5, 2003
>> Baiting the French
>> by Doug Ireland
> Where is this article from?
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3...0623&s=ireland
miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Maldives, Dubai and Vietnam
> Earl Evleth wrote:
>> Baiting the French
>>
>> comment | Posted June 5, 2003
>> Baiting the French
>> by Doug Ireland
> Where is this article from?
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3...0623&s=ireland
miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Maldives, Dubai and Vietnam
