France helped Iraqis escape

oooohhhh.....

Re: France helped Iraqis escape
If I may just go on a rant about today's media:

What I find strange about this story is that basically, if I'm getting this right, you have

- various American "intelligence officials" - all anonymous - saying France really acted with this improbable degree of unscrupulousness;
- and a named French spokeswoman denying the allegations and explicitly calling them rumors.

Apparently, no evidence was provided, and noone outside the US government apparatus has confirmed the story. That doesnt in itself mean it's untrue, of course - it could still be - it just means that at the moment the status of the story is mere allegation.

Now I would expect a story like that, therefore, to be all "would" and "is said to", carrying a headline like "France alleged to have helped Iraqis escape", or "France helped Iraqis escape, US sources say". Nothing overly anal about that - that's how newspapers write. Report facts, opinions and suspicions, and make clear which is what and what it all could mean.

Instead, the Washington Times headlines the story as fact, opens the story with "The French government secretly supplied fleeing Iraqi officials with passports", and even after the denial continues unconditionally with "The French passports allow the wanted Iraqis to move freely among 12 EU countries". As if describing mere fact. Not, "If the story is true, it would mean wanted Iraqis can now travel freely throughout Europe", or, "The French government would have secretly supplied fleeing Iraqi officials [etc]", no - fact. All this without a single named source or any supplementary evidence to back up the anonymous allegations.

This question really goes down to the nature of journalism, to journalistic integrity, or perhaps to where American journalism has ended up. I mean, let's get back to the story. The French say it's gossip, nothing more. That makes it the journalist's challenge to dig up the real story, right, to come up with the incriminating stuff, embarass some high-placed people with irrefutable evidence of their wrong-doing? The whole Nixon tape glamour? Because hey, if there's really a story there, do go into it, find out about it, nail those French bastards. Be a journalist. But what is this? Since when has serious journalism - the WT is a respected mainstream newspaper, right? - degenerated into funnelling through any rumour Washington decides to spread - as fact - and leave it at that?

Because governments do try to spread rumours - of course they do, it's part of their job. Bolster support for their causes, discredit their enemies, etc - they wouldnt be effective governments if they didnt. One can object to the proportions this practice has taken on, but it's pretty much the nature of the beast. But that's the very reason you have journalists. They are there to gather info from all sides, and filter meaningful fact from all the fog, rumor and outright lies the world's various governments emanate. It's one thing when a politician goes to the UN and makes his case, overstating when necessary, refusing to provide evidence if its not in his nation's or party's interest. But it's quite another for journalists to just repeat the act. What lack of critical sense have we arrived at when a newspaper

a) doesnt seem to see the need to look beyond the anonymous official sources of its government or the need to doublecheck or otherwise underpin the story these provide, only to

b) transform what was Beltway rumor into "fact" by describing it as such - with a hundred local, regional and foreign newspapers and radio stations transmitting the story on with the introductory line, "as the Washington Times today reported,".

<shakes head>. Never before must governing the country have been this easy. Blessed be the President ...

DYSLEXIA CONFIRMS BUSH PLANTED WoMD IN IRAQ. UNNAMED SOURCES NAME BUSH AND RUMSFELT AS CO-CONSPIRATORS IN PLOT TO OVERTHROW US CONGRESS. SEN FRIST DENIES ALLEGATIONS.

Nimh, it is impossible to provide proofs when the latter are obtained through intelligence sources: such an action will expose and endanger the latter. IMO, France cooperated with the top brass of the toppled regime for only purpose: these people know too much about French deals with Saddam's regime in circumventing the UN sanctions, and no one in Paris wants them to be interrogated by the U.S. counterintelligence investigators. These people, IMO, will not survive for a long time: the French special services will get rid of them one by one, attributing their assassination to Iraqi diaspora or to Mossad (the latter, together with the country that employs it, is the favorite scapegoat of the "Old European" media).

Boycot French food and drink.

To Nimh
Nimh, your points are all target.

I hesitated before posting this article because it comes from the Washington Times, a Moonie-owned newspaper, which makes it suspect.

But the gist of the article seems reasonably possible because of France's history of duplicity re Iraq.

Steissd also makes a good point. I've already posted my opinion as to why France opposed Bush's war at the UN: to prevent France's sales involvement with Iraq in conflict with UN resolutions, etc.

----BumbleBeeBoogie

Translated from Dutch, today in the paper (NRC): watch the part after the '[..]'.

Ol' Rumsie's intelligence sources told him that the Iraqis had WMDs too.

Even if this is true, can anyone explain to me why I should care about this.

The war is over, we won. Even if these allegations are true, France hasn't done anything against international law as far as I know. These former Iraqi beaurocrats hardly present any current real threat.

We do not have a very good record at following international law when we capture "Enemy combatants". I don't know why any self-respecting human being would want to cooperate with the US propaganda machine. Saving any human being againt the nebulous fate of "enemy combatants" seems the humane thing to do.

This "Complete Victory (but not as defined by the Geneva conventions so we can go on holding prisoners)" is getting silly.

There, I am going to go eat a croissant.

It's important because of what it says if it ISN'T true, ebrown. I think nimh's points about "real" journalism say it all.

People are influenced by what they see in the media. People in the government know this - they can (and do - it seems) use the media to sway public opinion. It's called propaganda.

That article reads like propaganda.

And we *all* know propaganda is bad.

stasia

Everybody, Cheney, hide - ebrown's on the war path! <grins>

Question is - can you get any good ones, over there?

It is my personal conviction that if proper croissants, with the consistency and taste of real croissants, were easier to get by abroad, France wouldnt have been getting half as much flak as it is now.

<nods>

ifeelacravingcomingon


I'm really annoyed by the writing in that article. It seems like you can say anything anymore.

Hm ... maybe my prospects as a writer are looking up.

Well if the quality of journalism at the NYTimes is anything to go by, yes you CAN say anything these days.

Back to the topic. Seems to have died a natural death, not true perhaps??

<g> OfCOURSE it isn't true - that's why some french official was able to deny it. (of course - that's conjecture on my part, since I have no idea if it's true or not)

yeah - I mean, dying a natural death is one thing - why do half-truths have to eb put out in the first place? that's the thing I don't understand.

It's like people go, "OK, we'll try this deception and see if it works - if it works, GREAT! Our ends have been met - if they find us out ... well, that won't matter anyway.

There's no accountability, it seems.

Anastasia - it's because when other nations make big decisions about who they should trust they won't throw their lot (and spare cash) at those sneaky French, or Germans, or Italians, or New Zealanders, whoever. The name of the game is hegemony, influence with that part of the world that has cheap labour, unlimited resources - they need to know that the USA is the one to 'trust'. That is the ultimate name of the game - the taxpayer pays for the war, but the entrepenuer (did you know the French DON'T have a word for that?!) reaps the profits. It's nothing personal, just business.

I looked it up in our petit larousse, a french dictionary

entrepreneur: either he/she who undertakes a work or task for a client or the director of a company - industrial or artisan.

the french word for "company", by the way, is "entreprise"

I was wondering if you didn't mean that the intent of the word "entrepreneur" was different - but it doesn't seem so.

My feeling is that America *isn't* the country to trust, and they (the administration, I mean, of course) keep proving that over and over. And it's just made clear in this article - blatantly obvious, if you look right. <winks>

The graves of thousands of people that were murdered by Saddam's regime are being disclosed in Iraq. Some of the former Iraqi "bureaucrats" may have direct connection to it (cf., Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler were also bureucrats and not combat officers, but they are responsible for mass murder). France allegedly helped them escape justice.
Besides this, the people mentioned may know where really is the Iraqi WMD. It may be hidden somewhere in- or outside Iraq and be waiting its hour to be used (for example, by terrorists).

steissd

You seem to be one of two or three people, who still believe in the existence of WMD's in Iraq.


[BTW: Eichmann was a SS Lieutenant-Colonel, Himmler 'Reichsführer SS' (=General Fieldmarshal; in 1933 he was a colonel).
Source: Wistrich, Robert S. Who's Who in Nazi Germany]

para-military organization, with ritual side resembling this of the army.