"Freedom fries"

[LeslieAGD]

The Daily Mirror is supposedly a very left-wing, anti-U.S. rag in the United Kingdom. But one of their top journalists, Tony Parsons, wrote moving articles about America on Sept. 11, 2002 and again on Feb. 3, 2003 after Columbia crashed. Now he has written this:


The Daily Mirror. London
March 17, 2003
FRENCH DISSING IN THE U.S.A
By Tony Parsons

I hope that the continent of Europe never again needs help from the United States of America.

I hope that there's never some murderous little tyrant - another Hitler, another Milosevic - that Europe needs help in taming.

I hope that there's never some economic catastrophe that requires American dollars to make it right, as they did at the end of the Second World War.

I hope that the Euro experiment works. I hope that all those peace-loving souls in Belgium, Germany and France can somehow muster an army to protect themselves.

I hope that the continent I live on never again needs to go cap in hand to the Americans.

Because if that black day ever comes, I have the feeling that America might just tell Europe where to go.

On the eve of war, there is a tangible anger in America. But surprisingly not all of it of it is directed against the Saddam Hussein and his regime. It is the French and their government who are detested by the Americans.

"This is all about oil," the Brits hear all the time. And Americans think there is some truth to it being "all about oil" too. In this case - the $50 billion worth of oil contracts that France has with Iraq. In American eyes, that is why the French are so keen to avoid a war to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime in Iraq.

Anti-French feeling in the United Kingdom is rarely any more than a passing fancy, a jokey bit of "hop-off-you-Frogs" banter. This is currently NOT true in America. Their anti-French feeling is no joke or passing fancy.

The cafeteria in the House of Representatives no longer serves French fries - chips to you and me, guvnor. Now they sell something called "freedom fries". That sounds nuts - and of course it is. But that is a small example of the growing feeling in America that France has no respect for the U.S.

But when a furious Congresswoman presents a "bring home our dead" bill demanding that the 75,000 American men and boys who died in France during two world wars be dug up and brought home, you definitely realize that this is more than "hop-off-you-Frogs" banter.

Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite says, "The remains of our brave servicemen should be buried in patriotic soil, not in a country that has turned its back on the U.S. and on the memory of Americans who fought and died there."

That's the difference between the British and the Americans. We do not feel that the British casualties in two world wars died to liberate the French. We believe that we were fighting for our nation's survival. Just like the Russians.

It is different for Americans. Throughout the 20th century, through two world wars and one Cold War, America gave all the blood and money Europe needed to keep it free.

They feel that the current crisis has proved that Europeans are, when all is said and done, an ungrateful bunch of Euro bastards who do not give a flying baguette about the 75,000 American graves in Europe. This is a very serious matter, not to be taken lightly.

Anti-European feeling in the U.S. goes right across the board of public opinion, even among the thousands of Americans who are passionately against attacking Iraq. America is united in feeling betrayed by Europe. America is finally starting to understand that - to Europe's eternal shame - there is a European opinion that 9/11 was America's comeuppance.

Secretaries and waiters leaping from the top of the burning twin towers --- The fault of American arrogance???

A terrified four-year-old girl cowering at the back of a hijacked plane --- Blame it on America's support for Israel???

A stewardess with her throat slit by a carpet cutter --- One in the eye for American imperialism???

Those 3,000 dead, murdered on live television --- Europe blames America???

When 9/11 happened, you might have expected to see Palestinians dancing in the street --- but who would have expected the grim look of satisfaction on the faces of old Europe???

Those Americans who are against the war admire Britain because we had a peace march where a hundred thousand people filled the streets of England.

Those millions of Americans for the war admire Britain because Tony Blair has been a true friend to America. And although the average man on the English street might make jibes about Blair being a "poodle," among American hawks, our Prime Minister is seen as strong-willed. He is seen as strong willed by the Americans - and we English should be bloody glad of it!

It has been good to be British in America these past few weeks. For America has been reminded that Britain is the best friend it has in the world, joined by blood, language, history, instinct and culture.

When will the uninformed masses of British wake up from their pathetic little dreams of being Europeans and realize that we have been looking for our future in all the wrong places?

Who wants to be European today? Who wants to be an ungrateful, unprincipled, two-faced, pacifist, Euro-grasping, oil-hungry Lilliputian?

No matter what happens over the coming days and weeks, it is true what they say - the English Channel is far wider than the Atlantic.

[texas*princess]

Great article.. thanks for posting

[Kevin]

Excellent article! One has to wonder if it's yet another internet hoax. I poked around on the Mirror's website. I couldn't find that article. But I did find this:


From Gulf of Tonkin to Gulf War
By Ameen Izzadeen
Truth is the first casualty of war, goes the maxim. As far as modern day warfare is concerned, truth is killed even before war begins. With the truth being dealt a death blow, falsehood or deception becomes the basis or justification for war.


Iraq is lying, US hawks led by President George W. Bush and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld say at news conferences and public forums. They try to build up a case that Iraq is not telling the truth and is hiding information with regard to weapons of mass destruction that Baghdad is said to possess.


In the meantime, analysts say even the United States is lying. Who is telling the truth and who is uttering falsehoods are certainly questions of morality. But like truth, morality is also dealt a heavy blow by the aggressor. This does not mean, the aggressor is wicked. Rather he is guided by relative moralism which justifies the violation of a moral principle on the grounds that it will bring greater good to greater numbers. In other words, it is alright to cling on to falsehoods and lies for a noble cause -- the end justifies the means.


As far as the "upcoming" war on Iraq is concerned, the United States, is apparently guided by a "secret noble cause". So anything goes. Everything is fair in love and a war for a noble cause seems to be the philosophy of the Bush administration.


The lies of the Bush administration were exposed last week, but sadly, there was no hue and cry about it in the mainstream Western media. I was wondering how the Western media would have reported it if Iraq had been caught out in a lie.


Last Friday, at the United Nations Security Council meeting, Mohamed ElBaradi, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency and chief nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq, said the "proof" the United States had submitted to the IAEA was fake.


"Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded ... that these {US}documents, which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded," he said.


His statement certainly blew apart the US and British allegation that Iraq had tried to revive an ambitious atomic weapons programme that had been neutralised by the United Nations before inspectors left in December 1998.


When the United States claimed that Iraq had purchased 81mm Aluminum tubes for its nuclear project, ElBaradi said a team of international centrifuge manufacturing experts believed Baghdad had told the "truth" (emphasis added) about wanting them for rockets.


Going by ElBaradi's statement, Iraq had told the truth while the United States had tried to mislead the IAEA by offering it fraudulent documents. It is indeed an indictment against the world superpower, which, however, is not perturbed, apparently because of its belief in relative moralism.


ElBaradi's statement received only a mediocre coverage in the mainstream US media, though the Washington Post in a report said "the forgers had made relatively crude errors" in the documents which were first planted in September last year by British Prime Minister Tony Blair - and mentioned by Bush in his State of the Union address in January.


On Sunday, Secretary of State Colin Powell had this to say about the fake documents:


"With respect to the uranium, it was the information that we had. We provided it. If that information is inaccurate, fine."


There was no evidence of embarrassment in the Powell statement. This should cause little surprise given the fact that it was not the first time that the US-British coalition attempted to mislead the world.


It was only last month that the besieged Blair government was forced to admit that some of the material in a dossier on Iraq it had prepared had been simply copied from an article written by an Egyptian student and published in an academic journal, though the Blair government unashamedly claimed initially that its dossier was based on intelligence reports.


With the "coalition of the willing" resorting to lies and deception, allegations that Iraq is lying lose their moral clout.


Joining the coalition of the willing in a major way are the US TV channels. They first beat the war drums saying it was "Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda". But no sooner Bush turned his focus on Iraq than the letters in the war beat went through a major shuffle and emerged as "Saddam".


The US TV channels, some of which have already started playing martial music, keep repeating the allegations with such frequency that the allegations have now been etched in the people's minds as fact. Without solid evidence, Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld and other US hawks link Iraq with Al-Qaeda. Though they could not sell this story to the rest of the world, the average US citizen has been bought over.


According to a CNN-Time poll conducted last month, 76 percent of Americans surveyed felt Saddam provided assistance to al-Qaeda. Another poll released last month asked, "Was Saddam Hussein personally involved in the September 11 attacks?" Although it is a claim the Bush administration has never made and for which there is no evidence, 72 percent said it was either very or somewhat likely. {Source: CNN.com}.


New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is quoted as saying in a CNN website article that he thinks the TV networks' news coverage has helped sell the Saddam-al Qaeda connection. "Suddenly, it was Osama, Osama, Osama ... Saddam, Saddam, Saddam ... and the networks -- the broadcast media -- simply picked that up [and] transferred our feelings of alarm and anger from one villain to another."


Howard Kurtz, Washington Post media critic and co-host of CNN's "Reliable Sources" is quoted as saying in the same article: "I think the administration has used the media very successfully to make the case against Saddam as the chief evildoer of the moment."


So much for the US free media.


Vietnam war
Lies and deception are nothing new to the US hawks. Thirty years ago, the United States started its Vietnam War on a charge that North Vietnamese vessels had attacked a US warship for a second time in the Gulf of Tonkin.


But war historians have now proved beyond any doubt that there was no such second attack.


Syndicated columnists Jeff Cohen and Norman Soloman in an article published in the July 1994 issue of Media Beat said that by reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam war.


"A pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on by pliant mass media...leading to over 50,000 American deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties.


“The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an 'unprovoked attack' against a U.S. destroyer on 'routine patrol' in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 2, 1964 -- and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a 'deliberate attack' on a pair of U.S. ships two days later. The truth was very different.


"Rather than being on a routine patrol Aug. 2, the U.S. destroyer Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers -- in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force," the two journalists said.


President Lyndon Johnson ordered US bombers to retaliate in an address to the nation. But the very same president a year later commented: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there {Gulf of Tonkin}."


The article by Cohen and Solomon quoted columnist Sydney Schanberg as warning journalists on the eve of the first Gulf War not to forget "our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident."


Blaming not only the media but also "the apparent amnesia of the wider American public," Schanberg said: "We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth."


With the US moves to unleash an unjust war on Iraq facing a treble veto in the Security Council and Washington's staunchest ally, Britain, caught between popular anti-war sentiments and loyalty to its transatlantic cousin, trying its best to cling on to a moral justification, an incident similar to the Gulf of Tonkin affaire cannot be ruled out.


An attack could be staged on a US target, giving the so-called coalition of the willing the legitimacy it is so desperately looking for to launch the war against Iraq.


After all, lying is part and parcel of political realism and acceptable and justifiable under the norms of relative moralism.


If Saddam is ousted and the US takes control of the West Asian region, the Bush administration claims and the American people believe that the Iraqi people will be liberated, oil prices will plummet, democracy will prevail over West Asia and, most importantly, Israel, the country of God's chosen people, will be secure. This week, a Democratic Party Representative accused the Jewish lobbies in the United States of being in the forefront of pushing the war against Iraq. He was not alone, former Presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan also strongly believes that the upcoming war is not in the greater interest of the United States, but of Israel. Perhaps it is the Israeli factor that gives the rightwing Christian and pro-Zionist US hawks the moral legitimacy and imperative to wage the upcoming war.

[Optimist Prime]

Here is my opinion of Israel. They're a bunch of glorified Nazis. Not all of them, but a lot. There is a politacal party in Israel that is not like this but they didn't win the elections. They want (as do I) a seperate Palestinian state. I think Israel should have the north, and Palestine the south.

Also, what is different between Arab, Assyrian, Turkmeinian, and Kurd.

Also, we should step into Austria.

[LeslieAGD]

Originally posted by Optimist Prime
Also, we should step into Austria.

Why?

[Kevin]

Originally posted by Optimist Prime
Here is my opinion of Israel. They're a bunch of glorified Nazis. Not all of them, but a lot. There is a politacal party in Israel that is not like this but they didn't win the elections. They want (as do I) a seperate Palestinian state. I think Israel should have the north, and Palestine the south.

Also, what is different between Arab, Assyrian, Turkmeinian, and Kurd.

Also, we should step into Austria.

Are they providing open support to terrorists?

[Optimist Prime]

Originally posted by ktsnake
Are they providing open support to terrorists?

Who are you referring to? Israel if so, then yes and no. They openly support several groups (non offical military) who act out in violence against various groups. Not just Palestinians, but other opposition groups as well. They support them not so much by giving them money, etc. but by basically let them get off lightly if/when they are ever arrested. That's not the same as suicide bombings, but it is desgined to scare people. Scare tactics play on fear, fear is another word for terrorist, so ergo, they are terrorists. If you meant Austria, then I will quote the post above yours and you can read that for an explination. I'm not saying that I don't think Israel should be a country, I really think every people have a right to a homeland. Israel is no differnt and should exist. However, I believe Palestine has the same right. Also, I am leary of any nation that uses religion as a basis for governing its people.

[Optimist Prime]

Originally posted by LeslieAGD
Why?

The leading political party in Austria, which I'm not represents the majority of people because of how their government works, althought it might be, is, to put it diplomaticaly, quasi-fascist. They are called the Freedom Party (Freiheit, in German). The founder of the Freedom Party was a high ranking Nazi offical when Germany annexed Austria during WWII. There has never been a group of more bloodthirsty terrorists than the Nazis.


I would like to take this opprotunity to recant something I said a long time ago that I read off a sign. Bush is not Hitler. He may lean very far to the right, but conservative does not equal fascist and liberal does not equal communist.

[Kevin]

Originally posted by Optimist Prime
Who are you referring to? Israel if so, then yes and no. They openly support several groups (non offical military) who act out in violence against various groups. Not just Palestinians, but other opposition groups as well. They support them not so much by giving them money, etc. but by basically let them get off lightly if/when they are ever arrested. That's not the same as suicide bombings, but it is desgined to scare people. Scare tactics play on fear, fear is another word for terrorist, so ergo, they are terrorists. If you meant Austria, then I will quote the post above yours and you can read that for an explination. I'm not saying that I don't think Israel should be a country, I really think every people have a right to a homeland. Israel is no differnt and should exist. However, I believe Palestine has the same right. Also, I am leary of any nation that uses religion as a basis for governing its people.

Since the 6-day war I think Israel has had the right and duty to defend itself through whatever means possible. They believe they have a homeland (whether you think it's legitimate or not) and it's their duty to defend it.

I actually agree with you that they should cede some territory to Palestine and that there does need to be a Palestinian state. The only troubling thing to me is that many Palestinian leaders have openly stated that they will not be satisfied until there is no Israel. I think it's the chief concern of Israel's leaders that if they do cede territory will that satisfy Palestinians or will it just provide a safer haven for them to perform terrorist operations?

Groups like Hamas have operated for so long that for many it's not a fight for freedom, it's a way of life, a means to stay in power over others. Would they really give all that up if Israel was to cede land to them? Or would they continue their activities (or even increase them) since now they have a soveriegn state to operate out of?

It's not a simple situation by any means. Makes me happy that I live all the way over here in Oklahoma, USA. In my mind there is a difference between Israel who knows they must 'play nice' or lose the support of the US which would be VERY dangerous for them and Arab terrorist groups who are willing to strap bombs to themselves and explode themselves deliberately targeting civilians.