Well this is to forget rather a lot of things, including the holocaust.

I think that despite the appauling death in the Vietnam war, and the wholsesale use of chemical weaponry, the key issue in the Vietnam case was what subsequently happened in Cambodia. This makes me very nervous indeed in the Iraq context today.

Your hatred of the French evidently stems from abysmal ignorance of French culture and history.

So, the French government was against the war in Iraq? Maybe it was because they have experience fighting wars they could not win because these were insurgency wars (Indochina, Algeria) as opposed to front-line wars.

In any event, you clearly harbor some insane hatred of French people. I bet that you have never been to France, that you have never had a conversation with an average French person, that you have no knowledge of French literature, culture, history,or any rudiments of the French language.

No wonder you have been lapping up the spin of the BushCo Administration. Your Dear Leader says that the world is black and white (you are either for us, or you are for the terrorists) and you goose-step along like the mindless drone that you are.

I made no assertion that Saddam had anything to do with the planning of 9/11. However, anyone with a bit of common sense would have to admit that is awfully convenient for Saddam that there was this terrorist group with stated goals that would benefit Saddam the most if the US caved in to them. Very little al Qaeda wanted would benefit the Saudi government or anyone else on the otherhand.

As for the 9/11 commission, that commission became worthless when they became hyperpartisan. And one member in particular should not have been on that committee, Jamie Gorelick, who was reponsible for aspects of anti-terror policy during the Clinton administration that weakened the ability to share intelligence between different agencies in the US government.

Anyway, would you agree that France walking away from patrolling the no-flyzones was fundamentally a pro-genocide move? Don’t you agree that it is fishy that France would receive contracts from Iraq soon afterwards? Wouldn’t a reasonable person view that as an act of betrayal when American and British pilots continued to patrol the no flyzones under fire from Iraqi forces?

Like your fellow rightnutters you are suffering from an acute case of personalitycultiismite. This translates into blind following of Dear Leader, and a singular alacrity to cheer on the dictator-du-jour and enthusiastically participate in its evil work.

Had your monstrosity of a President spent the humongous resources that Congress gave him after 9/11 to actually capture Bin Laden and destroy the various cells of Al-Qaeda and would-be Al-Qaeda, the U.S. and the world would be a lot safer. Had he spent some of these resources protecting our ports, tunnels, bridges, chemical and nuclear plants, we would be a lot safer. The former members of the 9/11 commission recently gave the Administration Ds and Fs for its abysmal incompetence at handling domestic security.

Your moronic war-monger of a President does no longer even offer a rationale for going into Iraq: no WMDs, no connections with 9/11 (unlike Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, our beloved “allies” and great beacons of democracy),no connection between Hussein and Bin Laden — as any half-wit would know since one was secular,the other,a religious fanatic –, nothing, nada, zilch!

As for Hussein, it was not that long ago that Rumsfeld was visiting him in Iraq, shaking his hand and supplying his regime with money and weapons to fight Iran in the Iraq-Iran war.

So, get off the Kool-Aid. And stop obsessing about the French. It’s people like you, deranged, stupid, unworldly, ill-informed, and bigoted, who give Americans a bad name.

Hopefully, the next few years will see the impeachment and the demise of the Bush-Cheney dictatorship. And people like you will finally crawl back into whatever stinking hole you came from.

As for no reason going after Iraq, you obviously have not truly understood. There is a very obvious reason for dealing with Saddam. One of the major reasons for al Qaeda targeting the US was to force an end of all aspects of containment of Iraq, including forcing the withdrawal of US (and eventually British) forces from SA (Islamists attacked those forces), ending interdiction operations that maintained sanctions that were intended to prevent Saddam from purchasing WMD materials and trading oil to gain access to hard currency (Cole bombing), and the ending of the no-flyzones that protected Kurds and Shi’ites (an al Qaeda group planned to attack the Inclirik airbase in Turkey at which aircraft flying the no flyzones were based, but found it difficult to penetrate, so they attacked British banks in Turkey instead). 9/11 and the embassy bombings in Africa were part of the plot to force Americans to change policy. The policy change would have to include the end of containment of Iraq and protection of the Kurds. 3000 dead Americans in numerous terrorist attacks over a decade is reason enough to end containment and deal with Saddam permanently.

Lest you think this is some sort of “Neo-con Republican Facist” rationalization, former Senator Bob Kerrey from Nebraska, a Democrat, said soon after the USS Cole bombing that the US should get rid of Saddam because al Qaeda is justifying its attacks on the US partly on the basis of containment.

In fact, the French have, over the years, coopted a lot of American culture. They admire American society for its dynamism; they love American music, and, yes, they love McDonald!

What the French — and the rest of the world — do not like are the middle-finger, F… you policies of the Bush Administration.

The French went along without a murmur with the war in Afghanistan. They are still there.

They balked — along with Russia, Germany, and Mexico — at going to war with Iraq because there were no good reasons (as many of us long suspected, and as we all now definitely know) to go to war with Iraq. There was not one Iraqi in sight among the 9/11 terrorists. In fact, most of them were Saudis. We should have gone to war against Saudi Arabia, but of course, it was not possible, given that the Bush and Cheney families are oilmen with tight relationships with the Saudi oil monarchy!

So, why are the French demonized and not the Russians or the Mexicans? This is just prejudice.

The French — and the rest of the world — are disgusted by the arrogant and imperialistic attitude of the Bush Administration and its corollaries: total disregard of old allies (the Rumsfeld’s comment about “Old Europe”); total disregard for the Geneva Convention and other international laws; total disregard for sovereignty by kidnapping people on foreign soil for rendition purposes…

Stop blaming the French. They like Americans. They hate our current government. So do many Americans, anyway.

Pierre-Henri Bunel: Could have gotten 15 years, ended up with 2 years (+ 3 years suspended sentence), only served ten months. So you are right that the sentence was for 2 years, but he only served ten months.

Herve Gourmelon: known to have met with war criminals, but French deny he leaked information. Calling his actions “inappropriate”, he was immediately recalled to France when his possible involvement in tipping off Kardazic was discovered.

In 2002, another French army officer deliberately wrecked a Nato attempt to capture Karadzic. Telephone records were printed in newspapers, but the French officer was never identified, as far as I can tell.

When you couple this with the fact that the French military has been unable to capture a single war criminal in the entire time they have been in Bosnia, it looks worse and worse.

I don’t think you can deny that the French military has been effectively shielding war criminals in Bosnia from capture. Why do you think they do that? Is it because they are so committed to preventing genocide?

Edward : “there is some evidence of an ‘anomaly’ in the operation of the French state, and in particular of issues relating to the defence industry and foreign policy, issues which can often lead to being complicit in human rights abuses.

In this, once more, France is not dis-similar to the United States.”

Absolutely. We’ve gone full circle here.

Hektor : “I’ll agree that French policy is not uniformly pro-genocide. But it is clear that human rights abuses in general are sublimated to other political goals by the French government.”

Sadly, I don’t think that France is alone there. That characterization could be used to describe any country. Though I’d say that, among Western countries, the French governement is not particularly at the top of the league when it comes to defending human rights abroad. Remember what Chirac said in Tunisia?
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/13/tunisi9801.htm

“French pressure was one main reason that there was no substantial European effort on Bosnia until the Americans became involved.”

IIRC, a lot of things changed when Chirac replaced Miterrand in 1995. I’m not (at all) a Chirac fan, but at least he was willing to adopt a much stronger position than Miterrand in Bosnia.

“Part of the reason the Serbs are so angry with the French is that they considered them their allies and protectors, and expected them to fulfill this role to the end.”

Yeah sure. That’s what I was saying all along. Now can we agree that France was not “always pro-Serb”?

“The neo-colonialist actions of the French military in Africa are pretty amazing, and in many cases seem to proceed without much oversight by the French parliament.”

Agreed. Foreign policy has traditionnaly been considered as the “domaine reservé” of the Président de la République. When a lack of oversight meets neo-colonialist tendencies, the result is not often pretty.

“There are actually two cases”

You’re moving the goalposts here. Two guys suspected, just one conviction. We’re still two convictions shy of the three you announced.

“Bunel himself claims that he was following the orders of higher-ups.”

You really wouldn’t thought he would have tried that line of defense if it wasn’t true, do you?

“It is also quite interesting how lenient his sentence actually ended up being: only 10 months.”

2 years, actually.