…I’m talking about the forgery of the Niger uranium documents that caused such a flap last year… Of course, I knew it wasn’t my friend Michael, although his enemies tried their tawdry best to pin it on him. I guess they’ve given up on that, but lately it has been the Italian intelligence service, “slavishly” at the behest of us “evil” ‘murricans, that was supposedly the culprit. Now, however, it appears that the Italians are not taking this calumny lying down. Accoring to the Daily Telegraph, Italy blames France for Niger uranium claim.
Who’d a thunk it? The French couldn’t have a motive for crafting those “papers” which were so obviously forged, could they? Here’s the Telegraph:
They say that France’s intelligence services used an Italian-born middle-man to circulate a mixture of genuine and bogus documents to “trap” the two leading proponents of war with Saddam [the US and UK] into making unsupportable claims.
They have passed to The Sunday Telegraph a photograph which they claim shows the Italian go-between, sometimes known as “Giacomo” – who cannot be identified for legal reasons – meeting a senior French intelligence officer based in Brussels. “The French hoped that the bulk of the documents would be exposed as false, since many of them obviously were,” an Italian official said.
“Their aim was to make the allies look ridiculous in order to undermine their case for war.”
According to an account given to The Sunday Telegraph, France was driven by “a cold desire to protect their privileged, dominant trading relationship with Saddam, which in the case of war would have been at risk”.
(via Barcepundit)
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28 Comments
1. PeterUK:Ah! La Belle France,still unfaithful after all these years.
Sep 5, 2004 - 1:48 pm 2. Terrye:Why does this not surprise me?
My understanding is that the information has been ultimatley shown to be true, but the
French did succeed in confusing the issue.
It is getting harder and harder for Americans who like the French to justify their actions. Except of course to draw a line between the French government and the French people who are stuck with it.
Sep 5, 2004 - 1:54 pm 3. Kalroy:Wowsa, registration finally worked for me. Of course it’s at a time when I don’t have much to say.
Sep 5, 2004 - 2:43 pm 4. TmjUtah:The end of the Old Economy of thugs and mullahs in the mideast would put france on a level playing field with the rest of the world as far as commerce and especially weapons sales is concerned.
Hard to make the sale when the newly-free populations remember who propped up the thugs…
Sep 5, 2004 - 2:49 pm 5. DennisThePeasant:Kalroy-
Many of us are surprisingly untroubled when faced with that problem. Don’t sweat it.
All-
I wonder if John Kerry has noticed this?
Probably too busy giving us another photo op of him out hunting tigers with bow and arrow in a flowery Speedo while on a surfboard or something…
Not that he’d care even if he did notice it.
Sep 5, 2004 - 2:58 pm 6. Barry Dauphin:Weel the Kerry jokes started this week. Leno asks the audience if they saw the picture of Kerry windsurfing this week. Audience responds. Leno says, “Gee, even John Kerry’s hobby depends on which way the wind is blowing.”
So we have further French perfidy. No, Kerry will pay no nevermind to hurricane France; he’ll try to windsurf in it.
Sep 5, 2004 - 3:06 pm 7. Barry Dauphin:oops- well, not weel
Sep 5, 2004 - 3:07 pm 8. Terrye:Kalroy:
When all else fails trash someone, works for the rest of us.
I had to change my browser and my internet provider to sign in.
Roger thought he could get rid of me, well he thought wrong.
Sep 5, 2004 - 3:14 pm 9. Charlie (Colorado):Well, it kind of looks like both Chirac and Schroeder are in a world of hurt politically.
“Time wounds all heels” I guess.
“If you sit by the river long enough, you will watch the bodies of your enemies float by.”
“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
Okay, I admit it — I would gloat a little bit.
Sep 5, 2004 - 3:16 pm 10. PeterUK:I wonder if John Kerry has noticed this?
His French case officer will have pointed it out as not being Vietnam.
Sep 5, 2004 - 3:32 pm 11. Charlie (Colorado):New campaign slogan: Bush will fight war on terror; Kerry might.
From Tom Smith and too delicious to miss. An extended fisking/ridicule of Joe Klein.
Sep 5, 2004 - 3:34 pm 12. Dan Darling:Yes Roger, but do you figure that this’ll stop the usual suspects from continuing to claim that it was Ledeen?
Hell, we had Joe Wilson and the claims that the OSP doctored intel on Iraq shot straight to hell over the summer as a result of the SSIC report on pre-war Iraq intelligence nearly two months ago and people are still repeating it.
Move right along folks, nothing to see here …
Sep 5, 2004 - 3:39 pm 13. papertiger:I’m waiting for the “Yes, No, Maybe. Bowl of Mush” bumpersticker.
Ya’ll get on that now. Ya hear?
Sep 5, 2004 - 5:06 pm 14. richard mcenroe:You know, if we were the kill-crazy cowboys that, say, Woodrow Wilson was, this would make a pretty good casus belli… Zimmerman Letter, anyone?
Sep 5, 2004 - 5:12 pm 15. Barbara Skolaut:Ya’ think?
Sep 5, 2004 - 5:15 pm 16. jdwill:Charlie
Scrumpti-delicious posts on Chirac, Shroeder. The piece on Klein, ehh, Klein is self Fisking, so any added text seems to suffer.
But gloating, while karmically dangerous, can be fun. If only I had had the foresight (and wit) to post this on July 29, 2004.
and it goes on and on.
Sep 5, 2004 - 5:35 pm 17. Keith:I blame the French people as much as the goverment. The reports that I have read are that the French people are willing participants as long as it supports their socialists welfare state.
So as for me, I put the people in the same ‘Crap Bucket’ that I put the government.
Sep 5, 2004 - 5:41 pm 18. DennisThePeasant:His [Kerry's] French case officer will have pointed it out as not being Vietnam.
Could be Cambodia, though.
Sep 5, 2004 - 6:40 pm 19. Emory:At last. A story with possible campaign impact that the American MSM cannot bury. The Italian and French and British press will have other fish to fry besides beating Bush. Even the NYT will have to cover this. Well maybe not.
Sep 5, 2004 - 6:53 pm 20. DennisThePeasant:Far from simply conceeding foreign policy and national security issues to the Republicans, the Kerry Campaign has issued a press release stating that the photo op given to the press of Kerry shooting a shotgun (see Drudge) was to highlight the fact that it was a weapon system he approved of.
Well, maybe…kinda.
Sep 5, 2004 - 7:32 pm 21. ambisinistral:His target of choice seems to be his foot.
Definitely.
Sep 5, 2004 - 7:35 pm 22. Barry Dauphin:“They have passed to The Sunday Telegraph a photograph which they claim shows the Italian go-between, sometimes known as “Giacomo” – who cannot be identified for legal reasons – meeting a senior French intelligence officer based in Brussels.”
That’s funny, Michael Ledeen doesn’t look Italian :>).
Sep 5, 2004 - 7:50 pm 23. Rick Ballard:Barry,
Ah, but Michele Ledino AKA “Giacomo” has always been known as an international man of mystery. All photos of him seem contradictory, somtimes tall, sometimes short, with either long blond hair or a jet black buzz cut, icy blue eyes or or soulful brown, an incredible master of disguise slipping through the twilight mist while working unceasingly for the establishment a new world order directed from the offices of the AEI.
Sep 5, 2004 - 9:00 pm 24. Sandy P:This rumor was out there right after the fiasco.
Rantburg probably has it in the archives.
Wouldn’t be surprised if it were true.
Rasmussen had taken a poll, (I know I posted it here before) where 27% of Americans thought frogistan was an enemy and 48% thought it was somewhere inbetween – 75% had some suspicions.
And the froggies have no clue……
Sep 5, 2004 - 10:43 pm 25. thibaud:The concept of the “West” and “Western civilization” no longer has any real meaning in the foreign policy sphere.
The Anglosphere is still more or less a coherent, unified cultural and political entity, but as regards the region that will determine whether the US survives this century as a prosperous, confident democracy, France is on the other side. Forced to choose between the US and the pro-jihadist muslims, France is pursuing the Eurabian option.
The same is true for the vast majority of Spaniards, Greeks, and Swedes and a comfortable majority of Italians and Germans. Even a majority of Britons would probably follow the French/Eurabian approach if we were to take aggressive measures to box a nuclear Iran.
We need to recognize that Russia’s success is now as important to us as Musharraf’s. If Russia fails, we fail. End of story.
Sep 6, 2004 - 6:08 am 26. richard mcenroe:Rick Ballard ñ I now have this image of Michael Ledeen hunched over his word processor, bashing out his column for NR and braying “Do I make you horny, baybee?” Thank you ever so.
Sep 6, 2004 - 5:11 pm 27. richard mcenroe:On a happier note ó Shawn Macomber’s Back on Straight Time
Sep 6, 2004 - 6:24 pm 28. 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