Forum

Une analyse autour de la présence de spécialistes privés à la prison d’Abu Ghraib, leurs liens éventuels avec Israël et tout le tintouin :
http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen05102004.html

May 10, 2004
The Israeli Torture Template
Rape, Feces and Urine-Dipped Cloth Sacks

By WAYNE MADSEN

With mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defense Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified “carve out” sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, one only needs to examine the record of abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel to understand what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meant, when referring to new, yet to be released photos and videos, he said, “if these images are released to the public, obviously its going to make matters worse.”

According to a political appointee within the Bush administration and U.S. intelligence sources, the interrogators at Abu Ghraib included a number of Arabic-speaking Israelis who also helped U.S. interrogators develop the “R2I” (Resistance to Interrogation) techniques. Many of the torture methods were developed by the Israelis over many years of interrogating Arab prisoners on the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself.

Clues about worse photos and videos of abuse may be found in Israeli files about similar abuse of Palestinian and other Arab prisoners. In March 2000, a lawyer for a Lebanese prisoner kidnapped in 1994 by the Israelis in Lebanon claimed that his client had been subjected to torture, including rape. The type of compensation offered by Rumsfeld in his testimony has its roots in cases of Israeli torture of Arabs. In the case of the Lebanese man, said to have been raped by his Israeli captors, his lawyer demanded compensation of $1.47 million. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel documented the types of torture meted out on Arab prisoners. Many of the tactics coincide with those contained in the Taguba report: beatings and prolonged periods handcuffed to furniture. In an article in the December 1998 issue of The Progressive, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb reported on the treatment given to a 23-year old Palestinian held on “administrative detention.” The prisoner was “cuffed behind a chair 17 hours a day for 120 days . . . [he] had his head covered with a sack, which was often dipped in urine or feces. Guards played loud music right next to his ears and frequently taunted him with threats of physical and sexual violence.” If additional photos and videos document such practices, the Bush administration and the American people have, indeed, “seen nothing yet.”

Although it is still largely undocumented if any of the contractor named in the report of General Antonio Taguba were associated with the Israeli military or intelligence services, it is noteworthy that one, John Israel, who was identified in the report as being employed by both CACI International of Arlington, Virginia, and Titan, Inc., of San Diego, may not have even been a U.S. citizen. The Taguba report states that Israel did not have a security clearance, a requirement for employment as an interrogator for CACI. According to CACI’s web site, “a Top Secret Clearance (TS) that is current and US citizenship” are required for CACI interrogators working in Iraq. In addition, CACI requires that its interrogators “have at least two years experience as a military policeman or similar type of law enforcement/intelligence agency whereby the individual utilized interviewing techniques.”

Speculation that “John Israel” may be an intelligence cover name has fueled speculation whether this individual could have been one of a number of Israeli interrogators hired under a classified contract. Because U.S. citizenship and documentation thereof are requirements for a U.S. security clearance, Israeli citizens would not be permitted to hold a Top Secret clearance. However, dual U.S.-Israeli citizens could have satisfied Pentagon requirements that interrogators hold U.S. citizenship and a Top Secret clearance. Although the Taguba report refers twice to Israel as an employee of Titan, the company claims he is one of their sub-contractors. CACI stated that one of the men listed in the report “is not and never has been a CACI employee” without providing more detail. A U.S. intelligence source revealed that in the world of intelligence “carve out” subcontracts such confusion is often the case with “plausible deniability” being a foremost concern.

In fact, the Taguba report does reference the presence of non-U.S. and non-Iraqi interrogators at Abu Ghraib. The report states, “In general, US civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc), third country nationals, and local contractors do not appear to be properly supervised within the detention facility at Abu Ghraib.”

The Pentagon is clearly concerned about the outing of the Taguba report and its references to CACI, Titan, and third country nationals, which could permanently damage U.S. relations with Arab and Islamic nations. The Pentagon’s angst may explain why the Taguba report is classified Secret No Foreign Dissemination.

The leak of the Taguba report was so radioactive, Daniel R. Dunn, the Information Assurance Officer for Douglas Feith’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Policy (Policy Automation Services Security Team), sent a May 6, 2004, For Official Use Only Urgent E-mail to Pentagon staffers stating, “THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED; DO NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY.” Considering Feith’s close ties to the Israelis, such a reaction by his top computer security officer, a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), is understandable, although considering the fact that CISSPs are to act on behalf of the public good, it is also regrettable..

The reference to “third country nationals” in a report that restricts its dissemination to U.S. coalition partners (Great Britain, Poland, Italy, etc.) is another indication of the possible involvement of Israelis in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners. Knowledge that the U.S. may have been using Israeli interrogators could have severely fractured the Bush administration’s tenuous “coalition of the willing’ in Iraq. General Taguba’s findings were transmitted to the Coalition Forces Land Component Command on March 9, 2004, just six days before the Spanish general election, one that the opposition anti-Iraq war Socialists won. The Spanish ultimately withdrew their forces from Iraq.

During his testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Rumsfeld was pressed upon by Senator John McCain about the role of the private contractors in the interrogations and abuse. McCain asked Rumsfeld four pertinent questions, “. . . who was in charge? What agency or private contractor was in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions that they gave to the guards?”

When Rumsfeld had problems answering McCain’s question, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Central Command, said there were 37 contract interrogators used in Abu Ghraib. The two named contractors, CACI and Titan, have close ties to the Israeli military and technology communities. Last January 14, after Provost Marshal General of the Army, Major General Donald Ryder, had already uncovered abuse at Abu Ghraib, CACI’s President and CEO, Dr. J.P. (Jack) London was receiving the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah’s Albert Einstein Technology award at the Jerusalem City Hall, with right-wing Likud politician Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski in attendance. Oddly, CACI waited until February 2 to publicly announce the award in a press release. CACI has also received grants from U.S.-Israeli bi-national foundations.

Titan also has had close connections to Israeli interests. After his stint as CIA Director, James Woolsey served as a Titan director. Woolsey is an architect of America’s Iraq policy and the chief proponent of and lobbyist for Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. An adviser to the neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, Project for the New American Century, Center for Security Policy, Freedom House, and Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Woolsey is close to Stephen Cambone, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, a key person in the chain of command who would have not only known about the torture tactics used by U.S. and Israeli interrogators in Iraq but who would have also approved them. Cambone was associated with the Project for the New American Century and is viewed as a member of Rumsfeld’s neo-conservative “cabal” within the Pentagon.

Another person considered by Pentagon insiders to have been knowledgeable about the treatment of Iraqi prisoners is U.S. Army Col. Steven Bucci, a Green Beret and Rumsfeld’s military assistant and chief traffic cop for the information flow to the Defense Secretary. According to Pentagon insiders, Bucci was involved in the direction of a special covert operations unit composed of former U.S. special operations personnel who answered to the Pentagon rather than the CIA’s Special Activities Division, the agency’s own paramilitary group. The Pentagon group included Arabic linguists and former members of the Green Berets and Delta Force who operated covertly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. Titan also uses linguists trained in the languages (Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, and Tajik) of those same countries. It is not known if a link exists between Rumsfeld’s covert operations unit and Titan’s covert operations linguists.

Another Titan employee named in the Taguba report is Adel L. Nakhla. Nakhla is a name common among Egypt’s Coptic Christian community, however, it is not known if Adel Nakhla is either an Egyptian-American or a national of Egypt. A CACI employee identified in the report, Steven Stephanowicz, is referred to as “Stefanowicz” in a number of articles on the prison abuse. Stefanowicz is the spelling used by Joe Ryan, another CACI employee assigned with Stefanowicz to Abu Ghraib. Ryan is a radio personality on KSTP, a conservative radio station in Minneapolis, who maintained a daily log of his activities in Iraq on the radio’s web site before it was taken down. Ryan indicated that Stefanowicz (or Stephanowicz) continued to hold his interrogation job in Iraq even though General Taguba recommended he lose his security clearance and be terminated for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

In an even more bizarre twist, the Philadelphia Daily News identified a former expatriate public relations specialist for the government of South Australia in Adelaide named Steve Stefanowicz as possibly being the same person identified in the Taguba report. In 2000, Stefanowicz, who grew up in the Philadelphia and Allentown areas, left for Australia. On September 16, 2001, he was quoted by the Sunday Mail of Adelaide on the 911 attacks. He said of the attacks, “It was one of the most incredible and most devastating things I have ever seen. I have been in constant contact with my family and friends in the US and the mood was very solemn and quiet. But this is progressing into anger.” Stefanowicz returned to the United States and volunteered for the Navy in a reserve status. His mother told the Allentown Morning Call in April 2002 that Stefanowicz was stationed somewhere in the Middle East but did not know where because of what Stefanowicz said was “security concerns.” His mother told the Philadelphia Daily News that her son was in Iraq but she knew nothing about his current status.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He served in the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Reagan administration and wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of “America’s Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II.” His forthcoming book is titled: “Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops, and Brass Plates.”

Madsen can be reached at:

Il y a 50 ans, le 7 mai 1954, à 17H30, Dien Bien Phu tombait.

Alors que les mémoires deviennent sélectives, il est bon de rappeler quelques points :

1- La garnison de Dien Bien Phu a fait taire les armes, sur ordre du Commandement en Chef de Hanoï ; elle ne s’est pas rendue. Des rumeurs sur un soit disant drapeau blanc ont courues ça et là. Véhiculée par la propagande communiste, ce mensonge n’en était qu’un de plus. Il est vrai que de nombreux tissus blancs (des parachutes) jonchaient la zone mais certains ont voulu voir dans ces voiles blanches flottant au gré du vent, le signe d’une reddition.
2- Nos morts ne sont pas morts pour rien, comme on peut aussi l’entendre. Nos morts ont accomplis leur devoir jusqu’au bout et se sont battus pour plusieurs raisons, et cela malgré l’incurie des politiques d’alors et l’incapacité de Généraux nommés par les premiers. L’honneur du drapeau et de l’Empire, la camaraderie, la foi, une certaine idée du service et de la mission, furent pour nos soldats autant de raisons de se battre et de mourir. 
3- Dien Bien Phu fut une bataille perdue, mais une bataille seulement. L’Armée Française n’avait que moins de 15% de ses forces dans cette bataille, le reste étant toujours opérationnel ailleurs sur le territoire de l’Indochine. Certes, les meilleurs de nos soldats se trouvaient à Dien Bien Phu (Légionnaires, Parachutistes, Infanterie Coloniale, Tirailleurs, etc.) ; mais vu les pertes causés à l’ennemi par rapport à celle endurées, nos soldats n’ont vraiment pas à rougir du combat mené pendant 57 jours.
4- Vo Nguyen Giap ne gagna pas tout seul « sa » bataille… La victoire des Bo-Doï avancée par certains ignorants ou complices, comme celle des « combattants aux pieds nus », « en guenilles », « transportant leur ravitaillement sur des bicyclettes », « tirant à bout de bras les canons sur les crêtes », relève plus de la propagande et du mythe que de la réalité. En 1954, l’armée du Vietminh utilisait des centaines de camions Molotova de l’armée rouge de Mao Tsé Toung et des officiers et soldats de Pékin encadraient et aidaient les forces Vietminh.
5- Sur les 11 000 prisonniers, plus de 8 000 disparaîtront dans les camps Vietminh ; un pourcentage bien supérieur à celui des camps allemands pendant la seconde guerre mondiale. De Dien Bien Phu, tous nos soldats, blessés ou non, durent faire plus de 700 kilomètres à pieds avant d’être parqués – pour ceux qui survécurent à la marche forcée – dans des camps de la mort lente. C’est dans ce genre de camp que s’illustrèrent des traîtres comme Georges Boudarel, alors officier politique du Vietminh. Mauvais traitements, lavage de cerveaux à la méthode communiste, maladies (dysenterie, malaria, paludisme, Béri-béri, etc.) furent le lot quotidien de nos prisonniers.
6- Au moment où Dien Bien Phu agonisait, Pierre Mendès-France négociait à Genève avec les délégation russe, chinoise, vietminh, anglaise, américaine. Ce que Mendès avançait comme une solution « honorable » (retrait de la France en deçà du 17ème parallèle) relevait cependant plus d’une déculottée que d’autre chose. Pham Van Dong lui-même, alors Ministre plénipotentiaire du Nord Vietnam, avouait à Kroutchev qu’il n’avait jamais espéré tant de la France et que les forces armées du Vietminh étaient exsangues ; toutes leurs forces avaient été lancées dans la bataille de Dien Bien Phu et Giap n’avait plus aucune réserve. Les menaces du même Mendès sur l’envoi du Contingent si un accord n’était pas conclu rapidement, furent une vaste mascarade ; à aucun moment cette solution ne fut envisagée concrètement. Par ailleurs, pour tenir son fameux « pari » (obtenir un accord avant une date et une heure précises) Mendès fit reculer les aiguilles des horloges… C’est tout dire sur le personnage et son honnêteté.
7- Alors que la France quittait le Nord du Vietnam, commençait la tragédie des Boat-people vietnamiens, fuyant le territoire « libéré » par les communistes pour rejoindre le Sud du pays, encore hors de portée du Vietminh.
8- Alors que la guerre d’Indochine finissait, une autre allait commencer en novembre 1954, en Algérie. Une autre tragédie, une autre trahison, une autre histoire…

Philippe RAGGI
Membre du Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement (CF2R).

Tout le monde ne possedera pas le même genre de F35. Il semble que le Pentagone entende protéger ses technologies quoi qu’il en coûte: Un F16-79 bis en quelque sorte.

http://www.janes.com/defence/air_forces/news/idr/idr040416_1_n.shtml

By Bill Sweetman

Up to US$1 billion of the projected cost overrun on the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is attributable to the development of ‘anti-tamper’ (AT) technology to protect stealth features on the JSF, together with a ‘sanitized’ and probably less stealthy export configuration of the fighter.

Some of this overrun is reflected in a supplemental contract awarded to Lockheed Martin in November 2003, valued at US$603 million and covering the development of an “international partner version” for the JSF.

Building export JSFs with less sensitive - and less effective - low observable (LO) features is practicable because the primary structure of the JSF is conventional, with most of the LO systems being added at the end of the assembly line. The program office has consistently declined to clarify US policy on this issue, and people close to the program have made conflicting statements.

Most recently, however, a JSF program official said that the export versions “would look the same” - implying that materials under the surface might be different. Another source says that “all JSFs will have stealth features” but will not confirm that all of them will be identical in LO performance. The November contract’s reference to an “international partner version” also suggests that such an approach is being taken. The value of the contract would reflect the need to conduct a separate radar cross-section (RCS) validation program.

The clear implication is that the ‘international’ JSF would have a larger RCS than the US version, would be easier to detect by hostile radars and would consequently be more susceptible to attack. That, in turn, would have consequences for the overall effectiveness of the fighter. Like other LO aircraft, it does not carry active jamming equipment or a towed decoy, and it cannot use high-off-boresight air-to-air missiles when in stealth mode.

JSF is the first US stealth aircraft to be offered for export. Rules on the export of stealth technologies, as well as of dual-use technologies that are important to stealth, are not made by the JSF program office, but by senior Pentagon leaders, who define disclosure policy with the help of the Low Observables Executive Committee (LO-EXCOM). The EXCOM includes representatives from the services, intelligence agencies and all major stealth programs, including ‘black’ or unacknowledged programs.

The use of less sensitive materials on export JSFs is likely to be accompanied by a range of new AT measures, an area that has received increasing attention since 11 September 2001. The objective is “to protect critical technologies in US weapon systems that may be sold to foreign governments or that could possibly fall into enemy hands”.

436 of 1,338 words

[End of non-subscriber extract.]

Plus loin dans l’article, une source (anonyme) suggère qu’il y aurait deux types de maintenance suivant que les réparations sont à effectuer sur des systemes critiques ou non:
les clients finaux vont certainement apprecier à sa juste valeur cette nouvelle humiliation

Après le départ discret de troupes US, la traversée belge ... :

German troops to end guard duty outside US bases
 
ISN SECURITY WATCH - German Defense Minister Peter Struck said in
an interview on Sunday that Germany would stop guarding US
military bases in the country at the end of 2004 and would not
contribute forces to a NATO force in Iraq. Struck told the Welt am
Sonntag weekly that the government wanted to “put an end to the
German army’s protection of American installations by the end of
the year”. The German Defense Ministry said the arrangements for
ending the guard service were still under negotiation, and that
talks had been going on since the beginning of 2004. US
installations in Germany were established when the country came
under Allied occupation after World War II, and stayed for the
duration of the Cold War, when US forces were stationed along the
“Iron Curtain” against the Warsaw Pact’s armies in the east. The
US army still has about 70’000 troops in Germany, but has said it
may move up to half of them to new bases in Romania or Bulgaria.
This redeployment will be part of a major realignment of US forces
across the globe, with the Pentagon aiming to establish small,
low-maintenance bases that could quickly be brought to full
operability if required. Some 2’500 soldiers of Germany’s
Bundeswehr have protected US installations since the beginning of
2003, when a large part of the US contingent was sent to take part
in the invasion of Iraq. Struck excluded the possibility that
Germany would participate in any future NATO force in Iraq. Struck
said he considered it “highly uncertain” whether NATO would be
asked for support, and when. “Whatever the case, Germany will not
take part in it. The army will only provide special aircraft to
transport wounded if this proves necessary.” In other news,
Spain’s Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos announced on
Monday that Spain would not participate in any future security
force in Iraq after 30 June, even if it had the approval of the
UN. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Sunday that he
expected the Security Council to authorize a multinational force
in Iraq. However, Moratinos said that such a move would not meet
Spanish demands that full sovereignty of Iraq be handed to Iraqis
or to the UN.

Info d’AFP du lundi 3 mai.
Un autre aspect du déclin américain….

“WASHINGTON (AFP) - Les Etats-Unis ont commencé à perdre leur prédominance mondiale dans certains domaines importants des sciences et des inventions, cédant parfois la première place à des pays tiers, notamment asiatiques, écrit lundi le New York Times.
Citant des experts gouvernementaux et privés, le journal indique que les performances étrangères dans la recherche fondamentale égalisent ou surpassent désormais souvent celles des Etats-Unis, peu conscients de ce phénomène et de ses conséquences pour l’emploi, l’industrie, la sécurité nationale ou encore le niveau de la vie intellectuelle et culturelle du pays.
“Le reste du monde rattrape le retard”, a résumé John Jankowski, éminent analyste de la Fondation nationale de la science. “La supériorité scientifique n’est plus le domaine des seuls Etats-Unis”, a estimé cet expert cité par le New York Times.
Selon le journal, certains analystes américains préoccupés par cette évolution admettent qu’elle pourrrait revigorer la lutte contre des maladies, le developpement de nouvelles sources d’énergie et la recherche de solution à des problèmes environnementaux.
Cependant les Etats-Unis doivent affronter une concurrence dans l’engagement de scientifiques de talent et dans l’accès à des publications pour présenter les fruits de leur recherche, poursuit le journal.
Le nombre de brevets d’inventions américaines est toujours très élevé, mais ce pourcentage est en baisse au profit des étrangers, notamment des Asiatiques, devenus plus actifs et qui sont désormais en tête dans certains domaines, ajoute le journal.
La part américaine dans les brevets industriels des Etats-Unis, en chute constante, est tombée à 52%, souligne le quotidien.
Le déclin américain dans le domaine scientifique est également palpable dans les publications, selon le New York Times.
Ainsi la publication spécialisée Physical Review a recensé que les articles de physiciens américains parus dans les revues prestigieuses de science sont tombés à 29% en 2003, contre 61% en 1983, souligne le journal.
Le New York Times cite Martin Blume, le redacteur en chef des revues de l’Amercian Physical Society, indiquant que la Chine a ainsi soumis plus de mille articles scientifiques l’année dernière.”

Communique | Le Congrès des Serbes d’Europe (CSE) lance un appel | 20.03.04
Fecha Saturday, 20 March a las 11:27:50
Tema Коммюнике

CONGRES DES SERBES D’EUROPE 5 Rue de Nemours,75011 Paris FRANCE
PRESIDENT DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANCAISE
Monsieur JACQUES CHIRAC
Le Congrès des Serbes d’Europe (CSE) lance un appel :

• au Conseil de l’Europe,
• au Gouvernement de la Fédération de Russie,
• au Gouvernement de la Serbie-Monténégro et aux Gouvernements des différentes Républiques, de l’ex-Yougoslavie,
• au Gouvernement Français,
• au Gouvernement Allemand et aux Gouvernements des différents pays de l’Union Européenne,

POUR SOUTENIR L’INITIATIVE DE LA FEDERATION DE RUSSIE ET DU PRESIDENT VLADIMIR POUTINE, LANCEE EN 2001 POUR L’ORGANISATION D’UNE CONFERENCE INTERNATIONALE POUR LES BALKANS, CONNUE SOUS LE NOM D’« INITIATIVE RUSSE POUR LES BALKANS ».

Le projet en question demandait l’examen de la définition internationale du statut politique de chaque entité constitutive de la région des Balkans et l’Initiative russe avait été acceptée par la République de Croatie et la FYROM (République de Macédoine) tandis que les réponses de la République Fédérale de Yougoslavie (RFY) et de la République de Slovénie étaient en attente. Mais au bout du compte cette initiative prometteuse avait été rejetée sous la pression de l’administration étatsunienne.

Le Congrès des Serbes d’Europe (CSE) entend s’impliquer dans toutes les recherches de solutions tendant à faire sortir la région des Balkans de l’insécurité, du terrorisme et du marasme consécutifs aux années d’embargo et de guerres. Il estime qu’il est dans l’intérêt de la Grande Europe d’empêcher que les Balkans ne s’installent dans les divisions entretenues et le statut de zone grise qui (au Kossovo) pourrait devenir le centre des resaux terroristes du XXI siecle.

Le Congrès des Serbes d’Europe (CSE) considère qu’aucun problème de l’Europe du Sud-Est, partie intégrante de l’Europe, ne saurait être résolu sans la participation de la Russie. A la faveur du renforcement des liens bilatéraux entre Paris, Berlin et Moscou (porteurs de vues voisines sur la guerre en Irak), le CSE estime que le moment est venu pour que l’Initiative russe pour les Balkans, lancée en 2001, soit prise en considération et devienne une Initiative Paneuropéenne. Il devrait au moins revenir au « premier noyau de l’Europe » d’en réexaminer le détail.

Le CSE considère que les difficultés actuelles dans la région des Balkans sont en partie la conséquence du refus de la « communauté internationale » de prendre naguère en considération l’Initiative de la Fédération de Russie. Répétons-le, cette initiative s’inscrit dans la volonté d’entamer le processus de stabilisation effectif et de paix durable dans les Balkans.

Le CSE se félicite du degré grandissant de coopération de la France et de l’Allemagne avec la Fédération de Russie, et ceci à tous les niveaux (diplomatique, militaire, économique et culturel). C’est pourquoi il voit dans l’Initiative russe pour les Balkans une bonne façon d’aborder les principaux points de litige dans la région, dans la perspective d’une paix revenue et d’une Union Européenne en voie l’élargissement mais qui ne sera complète qu’avec l’adhésion des pays de l’ex Yougoslavie. Pour que l’Europe devienne elle-même et pèse de tout son poids dans la balance de l’histoire, il lui faut éviter plus que jamais une balkanisation outrancière qui conduit à la pulvérisation. A ce sujet, le CSE fait sien le concept géopolitique français de lutte contre la « prolifération étatique ».

Le CSE lance un appel solennel aux centres de décision et aux instances européennes du « premier noyau » (celui qui, en attendant que d’autres le rejoignent a su faire valoir sa différence) pour qu’il prenne en considération l’Initiative russe pour les Balkans dont le but est la redéfinition du statut politique et du contours étatique des différentes entités constitutives de la région (et en particulier ceux de la Serbie) afin qu’un processus véritable de stabilisation, de rénovation et de développement de l’Europe du Sud-Est puisse être réellement mis en œuvre.

CONGRES DES SERBES D’EUROPE Siege du CSE: 5 Rue de Nemours,75011 Paris France

[Présent dans douze pays, le Congrès des Serbes d’Europe (CSE), porte-voix de la Diaspora Serbe, a sollicité son adhésion de partenariat au Mouvement Eurasien International (MIE), basé à Moscou,sous la direction d ALEXANDRE DOUGINE avant les élections présidentielles de Russie le 14 mars 2004] President: Dr. Mraovic Sima Vicepresidente: Dr. Aleckovic Bataille Mila France, 75011 Paris, Siege du CSE: 5 Rue de Nemours

Este artнculo proviene de http://evrazia.org

La direcciуn de esta noticia es: http://evrazia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1722

————————————————————————————————————————
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wilson30_apr30,1,5078788.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
THE NATION
Ex-Diplomat Whose Wife Was Outed at CIA Is Next to Throw Book at Bush
By Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writer

April 30, 2004

WASHINGTON — Adding to a growing bookshelf of critiques of the Bush administration, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV says in an account being published today that two top White House officials played roles in retaliating against him and his wife for criticizing administration war plans.

But the question of who leaked the name of his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, to journalist Robert Novak remains a whodunit, Wilson said in an interview Thursday, admitting that he does not know who provided the information to Novak.

The leak is the subject of a federal grand jury investigation. It is illegal to disclose the identities of CIA operatives.

In a book he described as part memoir, part political attack, Wilson says that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, helped organize a March 2003 meeting to start gathering dirt on Wilson.

The planning, which the book asserted also may have involved the vice president and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), came after Wilson publicly questioned now-discredited statements by President Bush that Iraq was attempting to purchase nuclear-weapons materials in Africa.

The “work-up,” as Wilson described it, laid the groundwork for a political and public relations attack that the White House launched against him and his wife in July after he further detailed his concerns in a New York Times opinion column — which ultimately led to the outing of his wife by Novak.

Wilson also said he discussed how Bush political chief Karl Rove called journalists and others after publication of the Novak column in an effort to discredit him.

But Wilson said he did not identify Rove as the perpetrator of the initial leak.

Wilson entertained questions in a series of interviews with a handful of reporters Thursday as part of a highly orchestrated publicity campaign for the official release of his book, “The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity.” The launch included leaking the book itself to the New York Times on Thursday, a flurry of TV appearances, a nationwide book tour and a possible speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in Boston this summer, his publicist said.

Asked to respond to the allegations involving Rove and Libby, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan declined comment Thursday, except to say: “Joe Wilson has said his primary objective is a political agenda to defeat the president. I don’t intend to promote or review a book of someone whose primary objective is grounded in a political objective.”

A spokesman for Gingrich denied that the former speaker had any role in the affair. “The allegation that Newt attended any meeting ever to discuss Joe Wilson is completely false,” the spokesman said.

Wilson said he didn’t identify his sources in the book, which based on his description Thursday appeared to be largely a compendium of assertions and claims that have swirled around the episode for months.

As described by Wilson, the book recounted his tenure in charge of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War, where he was the last U.S. diplomat to meet with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He includes a photograph of himself in the Oval Office with the President George H.W. Bush, and a copy of a note from the former president thanking him for his government service.

The balance of the work was an indictment of the administration of the current president, whom Wilson said he has never met.

Wilson became a lightning rod after challenging a statement by Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium “yellowcake” from Niger.

Wilson had been commissioned by the CIA to assess the claim the year before, and concluded that it lacked merit. Ultimately, he detailed his concerns in the July 2003 New York Times article.

The White House later acknowledged it was a mistake to include the statement in the speech.

Wilson said his book details a White House meeting involving Libby as early as March 2003 in which officials discussed responding to his attacks. He said he believes that Libby was the “driving force” behind the effort whose ultimate aim was to smear Wilson by unmasking his CIA wife and suggesting that his CIA-sponsored trip to Niger was an act of nepotism.

The book, he said, recounted an episode where Libby was heard to describe Wilson as a “playboy.” He said the book also reported that Rove “pushed the [Novak] story” for a week in discussions with journalists, among others.

He said around that time he got a call from MSNBC talk-show host Chris Matthews, who said Rove had told him that “Wilson’s wife is fair game.” Matthews declined to comment.

Wilson said Rove decided to stop hawking the story when newspaper stories began to question whether whoever unveiled Plame’s identity may have violated a federal law protecting CIA operatives.

Wilson said he also asserted that Rove and Libby had an argument about who should bear responsibility for any fallout from the episode.

In December, the Justice Department named U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago to examine whether laws were broken in connection with the disclosure of the occupation of Plame.

A grand jury in Washington has been investigating the case, and heard testimony from several White House officials earlier in the year. Among other materials, the grand jury subpoenaed telephone records from Air Force One, and minutes of a White House working group on Iraq whose members included Rove and Libby.

The law prohibiting disclosure of CIA operatives’ identities has been rarely used in part because journalists getting the tips are disinclined to reveal their sources and the people leaking the information are disinclined to come forward on their own.

A spokesman for Fitzgerald declined to comment about the status of the investigation this week.

unez dépêche AFP qui fait le bilan des scandales récents de la presse US, et qui aborde la question de la confusion de plus en plus pregnante entre réalité et fiction, problème fondammental de la société US dans son ensemble, voir de l’Occident.

NEW YORK (AFP) - La presse américaine plus habituée à révéler des scandales qu’à les créer a vécu 12 mois difficiles qui ont sérieusement écorné sa crédibilité et qui se sont traduits par le départ de plusieurs dirigeants de journaux.

Ce 1er mai marquera le premier anniversaire de la démission d’un jeune journaliste du New York Times, Jayson Blair, qui a “inauguré” une série de scandales.

Reconnu coupable de plagiats et de “fabrication” d’information dans ses reportages, Blair a secoué la rédaction du journal new-yorkais, considéré comme un des quotidiens les plus prestigieux des Etats-Unis. Quelques mois après, le rédacteur en chef Howell Raines et son adjoint, emportés par le scandale, démissionnaient.

A peine le cas Blair révélé, d’autres affaires du même genre ont éclaté. Un autre journaliste du NYT—Rick Bragg gagnant du prix Pulitzer—a été forcé à la démission pour avoir utilisé des informations sans source appartenant à des collaborateurs pigistes non identifiés.

Ensuite, ce fut le tour d’un reporter de l’agence Associated Press, Christopher Newton, prié de quitter ses fonctions après avoir été incapable de prouver l’existence d’une quarantaine de personnes citées dans ses papiers et d’une dizaine d’organisations dont il avait utilisé les témoignages.

Les journalistes de la presse écrite ne sont toutefois pas les seuls dans la tourmente.

En avril 2003, le Los Angeles Times a licencié un de ses photographes travaillant en Irak pour avoir manipulé électroniquement une photo montrant un soldat britannique obligeant des civils irakiens à se protéger durant des coups de feu.

Plus récemment, en mars, USA Today, le quotidien national le plus vendu aux Etats-Unis, a reconnu, suite à une enquête interne, qu’un de ses reporters vedette, Jack Kelley, avait fabriqué de nombreux reportages, en particulier à l’étranger, pendant plus d’une décennie. La rédactrice en chef du quotidien Karen Jurgensen a démissionné la semaine dernière.

Alors que certains observateurs estiment que cette série de scandales se résume à une “annus horribilis” pour la presse américaine, d’autres interprètent ces dérives comme symptomatiques d’un profond malaise culturel à un moment ou la confiance du public américain a déjà été mise à rude épreuve avec les scandales financiers et avec les doutes sur les motifs de l’entrée en guerre de leur pays en Irak.

“La frontière entre la fiction et la réalité n’a jamais été aussi ténue qu’aujourd’hui”, a souligné Mark Miller, un professeur de communication à l’université de New York.

“Nous vivons à l’époque des reality-show (émissions de télé-réalité) qui en fait n’ont rien à voir du tout avec la réalité”, explique-t-il, ajoutant que l’éthique des journalistes a également souffert des mouvements de concentration et des rachats de medias par de grands groupes.

“On attend des chaînes d’information qu’elles rapportent autant d’argent que les chaînes de divertissement, et les journalistes d’information sont soumis aux mêmes pressions”, a ajouté M. Miller.

Les scandales secouant la presse américaine ne sont toutefois pas nouveaux. Avant l’affaire Blair, le cas le plus célèbre est celui d’une journaliste du Washington Post, Janet Cooke, qui a gagné le prix Pulitzer en 1981 pour une histoire concernant un jeune drogué de 8 ans dont elle avait inventé l’existence. “Et il y en a encore, avant”, a indiqué Richard Wald professeur de journalisme à l’université de Columbia.

“La différence, dit-il, est que maintenant les gens sont découverts”.

nous ne garantirons pas ici la qualité de la source, mais tout étant une question d’ambiance :

(Fair use, etc. : Newsmax
Monday, April 19, 2004 2:50 p.m. EDT

FBI Agent: 2004 Will Be Remembered as ‘Summer of Terror’

Today on “Fox News Live,” former FBI Special Agent Harold Copus said that the summer of 2004 will be remembered as the “Summer of Terror.”

Anchor Gregg Jarrett told agent Copus that Tom Ridge said special attention will be focused on stopping terror attacks on rail, air, hazmat shipment, chemical facilities and the electrical grid. He asked if all of those were vulnerable.

Copas said, “They certainly are.”

“For the last six months or so ... we keep hearing chatter and information that’s filtering down ... you should really be concerned about some of the things you’ve discussed.”

Jarrett also mentioned that outgoing Spanish President Aznar told President Bush to beware of possible pre-election bombings in the U.S., and Condi Rice seconded that concern yesterday. He asked, “Will that happen?”

Agent Copus said: “Let’s hope not. But I suspect that we will see activity.” He added, “We’ve continually underestimated them, now it’s time for us to go on the offensive, and let’s go look for these guys.”

Jarrett said: “I’m still stunned by what you said ... Summer of Terror. Can we stop it?”

Agent Copus replied: “I’m not sure that we can always stop it. We’re wide open as a country, we still continue to need to be that way, and want to be and should be. Because of that, we allow ourselves to be open to an attack.”

He also thinks another opportunity for an al-Qaida attack will be this summer’s Olympiad, in Greece.

April 23, 2004
Pentagon Ban on Pictures of Dead Troops Is Broken
By BILL CARTER
he Pentagon’s ban on making images of dead soldiers’ homecomings at military bases public was briefly relaxed yesterday, as hundreds of photographs of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base were released on the Internet by a Web site dedicated to combating government secrecy.

The Web site, the Memory Hole (http://www.thememoryhole.org), had filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year, seeking any pictures of coffins arriving from Iraq at the Dover base in Delaware, the destination for most of the bodies. The Pentagon yesterday labeled the Air Force Air Mobility Command’s decision to grant the request a mistake, but news organizations quickly used a selection of the 361 images taken by Defense Department photographers.

The release of the photographs came one day after a contractor working for the Pentagon fired a woman who had taken photographs of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait. Her husband, a co-worker, was also fired after the pictures appeared in The Seattle Times on Sunday. The contractor, Maytag Aircraft, said the woman, Tami Silicio of Seattle, and her husband, David Landry, had “violated Department of Defense and company policies.”

The firing underscored the strictness with which the Pentagon and the Bush administration have pursued a policy of forbidding news organizations to showing images of the homecomings of the war dead at military bases. They have argued that the policy was put in place during the first war in Iraq, and that it is simply an effort to protect the sensitivities of military families.

Executives at news organizations, many of whom have protested the policy, said last night that they had not known that the Defense Department itself was taking photographs of the coffins arriving home, a fact that came to light only when Russ Kick, the operator of The Memory Hole, filed his request.

“We were not aware at all that these photos were being taken,” said Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times.

John Banner, the executive producer of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” said, “We did not file a F.O.I.A. request ourselves, because this was the first we had known that the military was shooting these pictures.”

The Pentagon has cited a policy, used during the first Persian Gulf war, as its reason for preventing news organizations from showing images of coffins arriving in the United States. That policy was not consistently followed, however, and President Bill Clinton took part in numerous ceremonies honoring dead servicemen. In March 2003, the Pentagon issued a directive it said was established in November 2000, saying, “There will no be arrival ceremonies of, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from” air bases.

While critics have charged that the administration is seeking to keep unwelcome images of the war’s human cost away from the American public, the Pentagon has said that only individual services at a gravesite give proper context to the sacrifices of soldiers and their relatives.

“The president believes that we should always honor and show respect for those who have made the ultimate sacrifice defending our freedoms,” Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said last night.

A New York Times/CBS News poll taken in December found that 62 percent of Americans said the public should be allowed to see pictures of the military honor guard receiving the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq as they are returned to the United States. Twenty-seven percent said the public should not be.

Mr. Kick, who operates his Web site from Tucson, describes himself as “an information archaeologist.” He did not respond to phone calls to his home last night. But on his Web site, he said he had filed a request for “all photographs showing caskets containing the remains of U.S. military personnel at Dover A.F.B.”

After an initial rejection, Mr. Kick said, he appealed on several grounds “and to my amazement the ruling was reversed.” The request was granted by the Air Mobility Command, and the pictures of coffins on planes and at funeral services for slain servicemen were made available to him.

The Pentagon said the pictures had been taken for historical purposes. Lt. Col. Jennifer Cassidy, an Air Force spokeswoman, said at a briefing yesterday that the release had violated the Pentagon’s rules and that no further copies of the pictures would be distributed.

But news organizations widely took the pictures from the Web site last night, as they became one of the biggest news developments of the day. Two networks, ABC and NBC, made the availability of the pictures, along with the firing of Ms. Silicio, the lead item on their newscasts. Numerous newspapers said they planned to use one or more of the photographs on their front pages today, as The Times did.

Among the national television news organizations, only the Fox News Channel had no plans to use any of the photos or explore the issue of why they had been barred from use in the news media, a channel spokesman said.

Steve Capus, the executive producer of “NBC Nightly News,” said he had already considered the firing of Ms. Silicio a major news development and had sent a correspondent to Seattle on Wednesday night. Then the new pictures turned up on Mr. Kick’s Web site. He called the pictures “not in the least gory” but “poignant and responsible” and argued that using them was “a proper part of the national dialogue.” “It would seem that the only reason somebody would come out against the use of these pictures is that they are worried about the political fallout,” Mr. Capus said.

Jim Murphy, the executive producer of the “CBS Evening News,” said: “I don’t necessarily blame the military for trying to manage information in an information age. I just think when you are overzealous in trying to manage it, it serves no good to themselves or to the public.”

Jim Rutenberg in Washington and Mindy Sink in Denver contributed reporting for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/23/national/23PHOT.html?th

Il ne faut pas trop se leurrer sur ces declarations apocalyptiques. Et Condi Rice a tres rapidement compris que la carte de la diffusion de la peur pouvait remplacer elegament la peur du “rouge” ou elle s etait revelee une experte. Depuis la creation du ministere de la securite interieure (DHS) c est a qui mieux=mieux deploiera le parapluie pour se couvrir en cas de desastre national. Ce systeme d auto=protection a ete eleve - apres ces deux annees de vaines recherches de l ennemi interieur-  au niveau d un art.  Il n est pas de jour ou un responsable de l administration ou un politique n offre quelque idee dans le domaine de l innovation en matiere de protection: il s agit surtout d un jeux de fourbes et d hallucines de l Armagedon final ou la question de la responsabilite ultime est fondamentalement indeterminable. Dans ces cas quotidiens Et pour cause. Et ou tout un chacun crie “au loup !”. Le fin mot de la chose - aussi bien opour l administration que pour le Conmgres est de faire supporter par les industriels tous les couts lies a la mise en place des protections necesaires. Ce qu ils refusent et ont refuse depuis la dizaine d annees que la question a ete posee aux cours des reunions organisees par telle ou telle “think thank”.
Le tout est a qui ne portera pas le chapeau en dernier.

Avant de lire le livre de Bob Woodward il serait bon que chacun s impregne d une part de l idee fondamentale de Theodore Roosevelt : ” manifest destiny” en lisant ses quelques trente ou quarante ouvrages ou cet aspect de l ame americaine transpire* et que chacun se rappelle le livre - si peu connu - et pour cause - de Signmund Freud et de William Bullitt sur Woodrow Wilson.
A cote de ces ecrits fondamentaux la doctrine de Monroe est a mettre aux archives tout comme les monuments de la guerre de 14-18 car sans nous en apercevoir nous venons de franchir le fameux miroir d Alice au Pays des Merveilles

* sans oublier nienm sur son fameux discours a la Sorbonne en avril 1910 ou il avait ete decide d en faire unn jour commemoratif en France !!

    Tres-Tres bien.

  ...et exelent Cap.

    PalestinAfganistanIrak

    merci.
            epulev.

On le sentait venir depuis un moment, mais ça s’officialise si l’on en croit cette déclaration de Bill Kristol (pape des neo-cons):

“If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me, too,” he said.

Recalling a famous saying of his father, the neoconservative pioneer Irving Kristol, that a neoconservative was “a liberal who has been mugged by reality,” the younger Mr. Kristol joked that now they might end up as neoliberals — defined as “neoconservatives who had been mugged by reality in Iraq.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/19/politics/19CONS.html?ex=1082952000&en=3ead1edf3c2212dd&ei=5062

Un scoop!

Chirac’s War for Oil
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 16, 2004
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=13021
Frontpage Interview has the pleasure to have Kenneth Timmerman, author of the new book The French Betrayal of America, as its guest today.
A senior writer at Insight Magazine, Mr. Timmerman has spent twenty years reporting on Europe and the Middle East. He is also the author of Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America . Visit his website at http://www.KenTimmerman.com.

FP: Mr. Timmerman welcome back to Frontpage Interview, it is a pleasure to have you with us again.
Timmerman: Thanks, Jamie. Frontpage is one of the rare bright spots in today’s media, which is dominated by the centers of spin.
FP: President Bush’s critics say Iraq was a war for oil. You seem to agree, but in your new book, you claim that war was being waged by French president Chirac. Could you explain this to our readers?
Timmerman: If you read the French press, or the glowing accounts of Chirac’s opposition to the U.S. effort to build an international coalition to oust Saddam Hussein that appeared here in America, you might actually believe that the French were standing on principle.
I reveal that Chirac was defending something quite different when he sent his erstwhile foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, around the world to buy votes against America at the United nations. Chirac was determined to maintain Saddam Hussein in power so that two extraordinarily lucrative oil contracts, negotiated by the French, could go into effect. Very little has been written about this until now.
The deals were negotiated separately by CFP Total and by Elf Aquitaine during the mid to late 1990s. At the time, both companies were state-controlled. They have since been privatized and combined into the world’s second largest oil giant, TotalFinalElf.
Through my sources, I obtained a copy of one of these contracts. It spans 154 pages, and grants the French exclusive right to exploit one of Iraq’s largest oil fields at Nahr al-Umar for a period of twenty years. Under the deal, the French were given 75% of the revenue from every barril of oil they extracted – 75%! That is absolutely stunning. Not even during the pre-OPEC days were foreign oil operators granted such extravagant terms.
I discussed the contract with an independent oil analyst, Gerald Hillman, who estimated that during the first seven years alone, it would earn the French around $50 billion. Elf-Aquitaine negotiated a virtually identical deal with Saddam to expand the gigantic Majnoon oil field as well. Put together, those two deals were worth $100 billion to the French. That’s 100 billion good reasons for Mr. Chirac to keep Saddam in power.
FP: The contracts were dependent on Saddam?
Timmerman: That’s correct, although I am sure the French are trying to put pressure on the Iraqi Governing Council to honor these scandalously corrupt deals.
Because of the United Nations sanctions, the French were allowed to do some initial scoping out work on the oil fields, but they couldn’t begin actual production until the sanctions were lifted. So this was a clear quid pro quo. As Hillman told me, what the French were saying in this contract was very simple: “We will help you get the sanctions lifted, and when we do that, you give us this.” And that is precisely what the French were trying to do at the UN. I’ve called these $100 billion deals from Saddam to Chirac the largest bribe ever paid in history. It was Chirac’s War for Oil.
FP: Were there personal payoffs to President Chirac? Your book portrays him as shockingly corrupt, but what’s the proof?
Timmerman: Most American newspapers hardly ever write about France, so Americans have no idea that Mr. Chirac was on the verge of being indicted by an investigative magistrate in 1999 on corruption charges. Never before in French history had a sitting president been under such assault from the legal system, which traditionally has been under the boot of the ruling party.
That particular case involved Mr. Chirac’s alleged misuse of public funds during his 18 years as Mayor of Paris, where he established an extensive system of political patronage grafted to a national political party. Among the schemes that came to light, which I detail in my book, were kickbacks Chirac’s party demanded from contractors on virtually every public works contract – right down to maintenance contracts in the public schools!
Chirac’s party wasn’t alone in this; indeed, virtually everyone from the Communists to the Far Right benefited from similar schemes. But clearly, Mr. Chirac was deeply involved on a very personal level in organizing the clandestine financing of his political party.
There’s one great scene I describe in my book, which came to light during these court cases, where a visitor allegedly brings Chirac and his chief of staff a suitcase full of cash. Chirac is in his office in the palatial Paris town hall, and opens a door to reveal a safe built into the wall. It just so happens that the safe is located in the private toilet in his office. So Chirac flushes the toilet to cover the noise as he dials the combination to the safe, just in case some political opponent has planted a listening device inside his office.
There’s another scene I describe in the scene, where a well-known arms dealer arrives in Geneva from Baghdad, carrying the torn half of a $1 bill. Under instructions from Saddam Hussein, he meets with an Iraqi government employee, then goes down to the UBS bank, where they withdraw several million dollars in cash. Later, at a pre-arranged meeting place, an emissary for a prominent French politician arrives. “You’d never ask their name, they’d never ask you your name,” the arms dealer told me. “You have half of the dollar, and he has half of the dollar. You match the serial numbers and make the exchange. That was how it worked.”
There have long been rumors that Chirac financed his RPR party with cash from Saddam Hussein, but no one has ever come forward with material evidence to substantiate the claim. If my arms dealer source is accurate – and I believe he is – we now know why. Cash payments are by nature untraceable.
FP: Can the United States ever trust the French again—after all they did last year to muster an anti-American coalition vs. Saddam?
Timmerman: Mr. Chirac has shown through his behavior that France is no longer the ally that it once was. I am heartened by the change of foreign minister. Dominique de Villepin, whose theatrical silliness and weird obsession with Napolean I profile in the book, has gone on to greener pastures; as Interior Minister, he now runs the French counter-espionage service and their secret police. The new foreign minister, Michel Barnier, is much more low key, and will focus on Europe more than America.
He has stated that he will try to repair relations with the United States. But from all the U.S. diplomats and senior Bush administration people I’ve spoken with recently about this, I think the key phrase is “Trust, but verify.” The French have a lot of work to do to demonstrate that they won’t stab us in the back as they did last year at the United Nations.
This said, we don’t really need the French for much, unless the President decides he must return to the United Nations. Going to war without France is like going deer-hunting without an accordeon.
FP: What is it about the French do you think that makes them so predisposed to admiring anti-American dictators and mass-murderers like Saddam Hussein?

Timmerman: I think the problem, to paraphrase Condi Rice’s recent testimony, is structural. The French Socialist economy has spawned vast state-owned enterprises that are unable to compete in a free, fair market. To maintain the socialist welfare state, with its ten to twelve percent unemployment rates, the French desperately need to cut backdoor deals with dictators and authoritarian states. Hence, their current fondness for the mullahs in Tehran, and the Chinese communists.
Iraq was a special case. I was invited in the late 1980s to visit the Iraqi Army staff college, and was surprised when I saw a plaque donated to the college by visiting French general Pierre-Marie Gallois, the “father” of the French strategic nuclear force. Many in the French Gaullist elite saw in Saddam Hussein an Iraqi De Gaulle, a fellow spirit: someone willing to stand up to superpowers, and take his country on a “third way.” That third way, of course, led directly through Paris, in opposition to Washington.
One of our biggest problems as we go forward with France will be the safeguard of our nuclear weapons secrets. I tell the story in my book of our extensive nuclear weapons cooperation with France, and end with a question: should U.S. taxpayers continue to subsidize the French nuclear weapons establishment?
My answer is a clear, resounding: No.

FP: Mr. Timmerman, it was, once a again, a pleasure to speak with you.

Timmerman: And a pleasure to speak with you as well Jamie.

*

I welcome all of our readers to get in touch with me if they have a good idea/contact for a guest for Frontpage Interview. Email me at

.

Kenneth Timmerman