IRAN FOR BUSH!!

[America the Beautiful]

http://fuckfrance.com/read.html?postid=863502&replies=8&page=1

Iran prefers Bush over Kerry
20/10/2004 12:16 - (SA)

Iran - United States President George W Bush made Iran a charter member
of his axis of evil, accuses it of sheltering al-Qaeda and leads the
charge to thwart Tehran's nuclear ambitions but still got an Iranian
endorsement on Tuesday over Democrat John Kerry.

Historically, Democrats have harmed Iran more than Republicans, said
Hasan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top
security decision-making body.

"We haven't seen anything good from Democrats," Rowhani told state-run
television in remarks that, for the first time in recent decades, saw
Iran openly supporting one US presidential candidate over another.

"We should not forget that most sanctions and economic pressures were
imposed on Iran during the time of Clinton," Rowhani said. "And we
should not forget that during Bush's era, despite his hard-line and
baseless rhetoric against Iran, he didn't take, in practical terms, any
dangerous action against Iran."

Though Iran generally does not publicly wade into US presidential
politics, it has a history of preferring Republicans over Democrats, who
tend to press human rights issues.

"We do not desire to see Democrats take over," Rowhani said when asked
if Iran was supporting Kerry against Bush.

On the US campaign trail, both candidates' camps responded coolly to
Rowhani's comments.

No to endorsement

"It's not an endorsement we'll be accepting anytime soon," said Bush
campaign spokesperson Scott Stanzel, who called on Iran to "stop its
pursuit of nuclear weapons."

Kerry spokesperson Allison Dobson played down Rowhani's comments,
saying, "it is telling that this president has received the endorsement
of member of the axis of evil."

The United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran after militants
stormed the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage
for 444 days. Iranian clerics were crucial in determining the fate of
the 1980 US election: Republican Ronald Reagan won mainly because
Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter was unable to secure the hostages'
release.

The hostages were freed as Reagan was inaugurated.

The United States supported Iraq in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, but by
the late 1990s, US-Iranian relations were somewhat better. They
plummeted again after Bush accused Iran of being part of the "axis of
evil" with North Korea and pre-war Iraq.

The Bush administration also accuses Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons
and sheltering operatives of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network.
Still, Iran is happy to see Bush destroy two big regional enemies: the
Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Iran, along with Syria, has been widely speculated regionally to be a
future US military target. However, Rowhani appeared to dismiss that
prospect.

[waggg]

And the link w/ France is ?

Gallic Wars - Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of
French history, France is conquered by, of all things, an Italian...

Inform yourself, and you will understand that there nothing really
humiliating in that. The Gauls Won many battles and almost won but
caesar was decidedly a great and strong-willed stratege and helped by
germanic tribes cavalry (BTW there were gauls in the roman legions too
at this time). It was mainly the inter-gallic disputes that caused their
defeat finally, and some strategical mistakes at Alesia.their
opponent was Julius Caesar, a man that the name was used as a
title 2000 yrs later (kaiser, tsar ...). See what I mean ?
BTW the gauls in the past invaded, ransacked and burnt Roma, founded
Belgrad on their way to conquer lands, ransacked delphia (Greece) and
invaded turkey (hence the Galatians).

Hundred Years War - Mostly lost, but saved at the last minute by a Female
schizophrenic who inadvertantly creates The First Rule Of French Warfare;
"France's Armies Are Only Victorious When Not Led By A Frenchman"...

Hundred Years War (1337-1453)
(what about the first war against the english (Franco-angevine war:
1159-1299),
the one in which Richard Lionheart was killed by a french arrow from a
crossbow, in the eyes ...)

Some battles were won, some battles were lost, finally the stuff was
going bad (about 100 yrs later - yeah, ever wondered why it lasted
116 yrs, wiseass ? The truth is that at the beginning the english had
many defeats - do some research about a guy named Bertrand Du Guesclin)
anyway the english had some 'french allies (burgundians) at this time
and the knights and soldiers fighting the english/burgundians were french,
Jehanne d'arc (Joan of Arc) didn't fight the intruders alone ...
(and BTW Joan of Arc led the french army a very little time)
What the english gained with difficulty in about 100 yrs was regained in
very few years by the french though The french king made mistakes that
made the war lasting some more years ...
(oh ... and about the Crecy and Agincourt battles the french have nothing
to be ashamed of on the level of courage they've shown - check why and
how they lost !)
The French had to undergo the worst of the war since it was on their soil.
The only real tough stuff for the english king was that after his defeat,
He lost a part of his credibility in the mind of his people.
The war was definitely won by the french, so what's the problem ?

You should remeber what is at the origin of this conflict : in 1066 the
Duke of Normandia (France) invaded England and won at Hastings, what
explains that the french language was the official language of the
english court at least 2 centuries, and that explains that TODAY, you're
talking in a huge part in old french your whole day (in fact almost
everytime that you open your mouth) - BTW nowadays the motto of the
English monarchy is : "Dieu et Mon Droit" ( french ) and the motto of
the Most Noble Order of the Garter, which was founded in 1348 by King
Edward III as a noble fraternity consisting of the King, the Prince of
Wales (or heir-apparent to the throne) and 24 Knights Companion is
"Honni soit qui mal y pense".

Plantagenêts is neither saxon nor angles ...

Oh, BTW, a lot of your military terms and ranks are from France
(sergent, lieutenant, general, soldier (old french term for 'soldat' :
solde = money that fighters were paid) corp, regiment, division, army
is obviously derivated from armee, platoon from peloton, squad from
escouade, batallion from bataillon, garrison from garnison, even
warrior and war is derivating from 'guerrier' and 'guerre' some
old french words starting by 'g' were changed the'g' becoming
a 'w' in english (see : william : guillaume, warden : guardien,
wasp : Guespe (modern french : guêpe), to waste : gaster
(the old term for 'gater' (gâter pour les non ASCII 7 bits !) )
Some other words were taken to the french but they were taken by the
french from other countries : captain, colonel, cannon, battle etc...
so it's a little different.
'fleet' came from 'flotte' (french) that came from 'flotti' (old
scandinavian) that came from the old french 'flote' that meant "troop,
big bunch of persons", so I suppose this one counts anyway ;-)
Oh, and the bayonet was invented by the frenchmen (the name
comes from the name of the city named Bayonne)...

"a lot of your military terms and ranks are from France" ...
What could this be meaning ... hmm ... let's see . Well I let you search
by yourself (a clue ? war is not a so unknown thing to these swishy
frenchies ... maybe ?)

Italian Wars - Lost. France becomes the first & only country ever to lose
two wars when fighting Italians...

More precisions needed we won some wars VS italians, with françois the
1st ! We brought back Leonardo da Vinci from those wars. Read about the
Bayard knight BTW.
Are you talking about war VS Charles Quint (the 5th) because you should
be informed that it is a lot more difficult to win when you're fighting
a mega-power and that you're not one yourself ....

Wars Of Religion - France goes 0-5-4 against the Huegonots...

? ? ? anyway it's Huguenots. Well more precisions needed, for what I
know we won and in fact even if at one moment english were implied, they left
before fighting AFAIK. If i'm wrong highlight it.
Oh BTW, the Huguenots were French.

Thirty Years War - France is technically not a participant, but manages to
get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually, the other
participant began ignoring her...

Wrong ! we were implied from 1635 to 1648 and it was rather a favorable
upshot AFAIK.

Sheesh ! what about the Franco-Spanish war that we totally won (gaining
territories) wise-ass !
Strangely enough, your memory seems selective !;-)

War Of Devolution - Tied...
The Dutch War - Tied...

No. We won AFAIK. We won many territories and cities.

I strongly suggest you to read it :

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761572792/Louis_XIV.html

The War Of Spanish Succession - Lost...

Lost ? I don't think so ... it's not that simple (see below).
Anyway it's a Bourbon (french dynasty) on the Spanish throne,
isn't it ?

I quote (see link above about Louis XIV):

"The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) was the most
brutal and costly of Louis’s military endeavors.
For the first time in over a century, French armies
lost battles, most notably by John Churchill, 1st Duke of
Marlborough, at the Battle of Blenheim (in what is now Germany)
in 1704 and at Ramillies (in what is now Belgium) in 1706.
The fighting made it clear that France would not gain control of the Spanish
Netherlands (they were ultimately ceded to Austria). However,
it also revealed that the allies could not dislodge Philip
from the Spanish throne.

Realizing a stalemate, the warring nations worked to find
an acceptable formula for peace, which took nearly as long
as did the fighting. The Peace of Utrecht recognized
Philip as king of Spain but dismembered the Spanish inheritance
to balance power among France, Spain, Austria, and Great Britain.
It was also agreed that France and Spain would never be united
as one monarchy. Louis XIV died in 1715, just after the
war ended. He was succeeded by his great-grandson, Louis XV."

War Of The Augsburg League/King William's War/French And Indian War - All

The seven years war (aka french and indian war in north america):
humiliation, true !
(I want just highlight the fact that in north america in 1754, the
french were 85,000 in the "Nouvelle France" and the english people were
1,485,634 in New England...

"At first glance, it looked like a mismatch. English troops
outnumbered French troops almost 2-to-1. English colonies had
their own militias and produced their
own food. French settlements had to rely on soldiers hired by fur-trading
companies and food from the homeland."

IN 1763, we lost : India (bar 5 cities), Ohio, Canada,
left side of the Mississipi, Antilles (bar 3 islands)
and Senegal (that will have again later)

Anyway, check it out, i think it's not unuseful :-) :
(about the french and indians war - the basics)

http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/ushistory/frenchandindianwar1.htm
to
http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/ushistory/frenchandindianwar4.htm

Lost, but claimed as ties. Three ties in a row induces deluded Frogophiles
the world over to label this period as the height of French military
power...
American Revolution - In a move that will become familiar to future American
generations, France claims a win even though American colonists saw far More
action. This is later known as "The De Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to The
Second Rule Of Fench Warfare; " France Only Wins When America Does Most Of
The Fighting"...

http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/sfelshin/saintonge/frhist.html

read from the start to the end. Just do it, wiseass !
--
To understand the background of the Revolutionary War, it is necessary
to understand the history of the preceding twenty years, and especially
the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). The Seven Years’ War was fought by
the European colonial powers from Canada to the West Indies and from
Europe to far-flung colonial empires in India and the Phillippines. In
North America, we know the part of the Seven Years' war that was fought
here as the French and Indian Wars. The Seven Years' War was largely a
disaster for France and her allies. In the aftermath of the war, which
resulted in the loss of most French territory in North America and
India, the French instituted sweeping reform of the army and navy. The
French army that landed in Newport in 1781 was the product of this
thorough and fundamental reorganization.

The English victory, however, was dearly bought. The cost of fielding
the army that secured the safety of the English colonies was tremendous.
This expense, together with the continuing cost of protecting these
colonies after the war, led to English demands that the American
colonists contribute to the cost of their own protection. As a result, a
series of Acts of Parliament imposed a variety of taxes on the colonists
during the 1760s and early 1770s. For many colonists, the chains that
had linked them to Britain for almost 150 years became the chains of
servitude, foreign domination and unjust tyranny. These taxes ultimately
fueled the tensions and passions that burst into flames on Lexington
Green on April 19, 1775.

From the outbreak of armed rebellion in 1775, many in France sympathized
with the colonists. Young, idealistic French officers like the Marquis
de Lafayette volunteered their services and in many cases their personal

wealth to help equip, train and lead the fledgling Continental army. The
French government hoped to redress the balance of power that resulted
from the French humiliation in the Seven Years Wars, which gave
considerable economic and military advantages to Britain. While
maintaining formal neutrality, France assisted in supplying arms,
uniforms and other military supplies to the American colonists.

This clandestine assistance became open after the defeat of General
Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777, which demonstrated the possibility of
British defeat in the conflict and led to French recognition of the
colonies in February 1778. As a result of the victory of the Continental
forces at Saratoga, Benjamin Franklin, who had gone to Paris as
ambassador in 1776, was able to negotiate a Treaty of Amity and Commerce
and a Treaty of Alliance with France. From this point, French support
became increasingly significant. The French extended considerable
financial support to the Congressional forces. France also supplied
vital military arms and supplies, and loaned money to pay for their
purchase.

French military aid was also a decisive factor in the American victory.
French land and sea forces fought on the side of the American colonists
against the British. At the same time, British and French (and to a
lesser extent, Dutch and Spanish) forces fought for colonial wealth and
empire around the world. From 1778 through 1783 -- two years after the
defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown -- French forces fought the British in
the West Indies, Africa and India.

From the perspective of the American Revolution, however, the high point
of French support is the landing of five battalions of French infantry
and artillery in Rhode Island in 1780. In 1781, these French troops
under the command of Count Rochambeau marched south to Virginia where
they joined Continental forces under Washington and Lafayette.
Cornwallis, encamped on the Yorktown peninsula, hoped to be rescued by
the British navy. A French fleet under the command of Admiral DeGrasse
intercepted and, after a fierce battle lasting several days, defeated
the British fleet and forced it to withdraw. This left the French navy
to land heavy siege cannon and other supplies and trapped Cornwallis on
the Yorktown peninsula.

At that point, the defeat of Cornwallis was essentially a matter of
time. On September 14, 1781, the French and Continental armies completed
their 700 mile march and soon thereafter laid siege to the British
positions.
After a number of weeks and several brief but intense engagements,
Cornwallis, besieged on the peninsula by the large and well-equipped
French-American army, and stricken by dysentery, determined to surrender
his army.

On October 19, 1781, the British forces marched out between the silent
ranks of the Americans and French, arrayed in parallel lines a mile
long, and cast down their arms.

Abbé Robin, who witnessed the surrender, described the victorious
American and French forces present at the ceremony. "Among the
Americans, the wide variety in age -- 12 to 14-year old children stood
side by side with grandfathers -- the absence of uniformity in their
bearing and their ragged clothing made the French allies appear more
splendid by contrast. The latter, in their immaculate white uniforms and
blue braid, gave an impression of martial vigor despite their fatigue.
We were all astonished by the excellent condition of the English troops,
by their number -- we were expecting scarcely 3,000 and they numbered
more than 8,000 -- and by their discipline."

George Woodbridge summed up the Yorktown campaign in the following
words: "The strategy of the campaign was Rochambeau’s; the French fleet
was there as a result of his arrangements; the tactics of the battle
were his; the American army was present because he had lent money to
Washington; in total naval and military participants the French
outnumbered the Americans between three and four to one. Yorktown was
Rochambeau’s victory.

How strange it must have been for these French troops and their
new-found colonial allies, some of whom had fought each other as enemies
barely fifteen years earlier, to stand shoulder to shoulder in armed
conflict with France’s ancient enemy and the colonist’s blood kin! In
the end, these French soldiers became the hard anvil upon which the new
American nation was forged and the chains of British imperial domination
were finally broken.
--

this one is good too, read it !

http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1175%20%20&

--
Without the French assistance don't you think that your founding fathers,
Washington first, would have been hung by the british ?...
We owe you our survival, you owe us your succesful birth.

French Revolution - Won, primarily due to the the fact the opponent was
French...

Wrong (For instance : Jemmapes, Valmy, Fleurus, etc...) see later ...

The Napoleonic Wars - Lost. Temporary victories (remember The First Rule!)
due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British
footwear designer...

The french armies were composed of corsicans ?
We fought generally alone VS the whole Europe and we won, we possessed
almost the whole Europe during 15 yrs, Moscow burnt - who did this
things other than us ?
I know : who cares you're not here to be just, but to troll, sorry to
make you lose your sparetime making you quickly reading this.
Even at Waterloo, we were at some moments near to win against the
_ COALITION _. The anglo-dutch corp was in trouble at some moment, but
the prussians and Blücher definitively changed the things.

The Franco-Prussian War - Lost. Germany's first go around at playing the
drunk frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on Saturday night...

Crimea war (1854-55) won by the coalition (among them France that
had the most troopers among the allies).

Italy wars (or Austro-Franco-sarde war) won by Napoleon III in 1859 ...

Victory in China and Annexions in the future vietnam (186*).

The Franco-prussian war (1870-1871) : Lost.
But the german army was bigger and more modern (they were in a
war politic for some moment at this time ( victory VS denmark (1864),
VS Austria (Sadowa - 1867))
In France the Army was disorganized since the "war" in Mexico (*)
and our emperor Napoleon the IIIrd was ill (and not far of his death)

(*) (expeditionnary corp from 1862-1867. BTW, we can't really talk
of a real defeat on the battlefield, we did take Mexico)

Besides, The most remarkable military fact in the history of the
Foreign Legion is the battle of Camerone (Mexico, April 30th, 1863).
In that occasion 62 french "légionnaires" fought
against more than 2,000 enemies, resisting for about 10 hours.
Even today, the Legionnaires' year starts on "Camerone day".

The official monument says :
HERE, THEY WERE LESS THAN SIXTY AGAINST A WHOLE ARMY
ITS NUMBER CRUSHED THEM BUT LIFE RATHER THAN BRAVERY
LEFT THESE FRENCH MEN ON THE 30TH OF APRIL 1863.
TO THEIR MEMORY.
(Since, when the Mexican troops pass in front of
the monument, they "show their weapons"(?) - a honoring salute)

World War I - Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United
States. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep

Wrong. and not tied, asshole - so, you're a propagandist ...

1913 :
----------
Population :

Germany : 67 millions
France : 39.6 millions (only country of those 4 countries that will be
devastated by the war)
UK : 46 millions
USA : 95 millions

Germany : 1,700,000 dead soldiers
wounded : 4,216,000 soldiers

France : 1,500,000 dead soldiers (maybe underestimated for political
propaganda reasons)
wounded : 3,600,000 soldiers

UK : 740,000 dead soldiers
wounded : 2,090,000 soldiers

USA : 116,000 dead soldiers

Italy : 700,000 dead soldiers
Austria-Hungary : 1,500,000 dead soldiers
Russia : 1,700,000 dead soldiers

The plans of the germans was to crush the french before Russia have
mobilized all its army (germany at this time was reputated being the
most powerful army)
Result : We stood untill the victory, on the contrary of the
Russians ...
BTW Greece stood (and so the blockade) because of the French
troops over there IIRC.

1914-1918 : The French army was the major military actor on the Western
front for 4 years. The British took a very active part on that front for
4 years too. The allies under Marechal Foch's French command eventually
won the war. The American troops massively arrived on the front only 4
months (July 1918) before the end of the war (November 1918).

Western front March 1918 : 174 allies divisions : 99 French + 58 British
+ 12 Belgian + 3 US + 2 portuguese.
Western Front November 1918 : 211 Allies divisions : 104 French + 60
British + 30 US + 12 Belgian + 2 portuguese + 2 Italian + 1 Polish.

After the war, the French were universally saluted as the country that
saved democracy and the victor amongst all the Allies (and especially in
the US) and their international prestige was very high, just like that
of the US in 1945. It just seems like history is no longer taught in the
US now.

Stop spitting on the graves of the 1,500,000 dead French soldiers TIA.

The USA that entered the war at the end of the war refused to hear
about the agreements that the Europeans made before :
The result : Because of the versailles' treaty as wanted by the USA
(that won't finally be recognized by the USA), the italians that had
about 700,000 dead soldiers,
didn't have the territories that was promised to them
in secret agreements made in London in 1915. The Italians were totally
torqued and thought they were deceived,
what were indirectly one of the vectors causing the birth of the fascism
in 1919.

BTW USA and Uk pledged that they will help France in case of a German
agression, pledge that will be abandoned in 1919 by both.

It recalls me the fact that G. washington didn't honor his treaty
with the French in 1794 for trade advantages with The UK that was at war
with the French. Maybe because we were surrounded by the whole europe
wanting our end. Ingrates !

I add that The UK made many unconditional concessions to Germany with
the agreement of the French, since France almost abandoned its
diplomatic sovereignty to the UK from 1923 till WWII (why, will you say
? Because we needed them to face Germany. We needed allies. I add that
France was dependant of UK for oil (90 % of our oil was coming from the
UK companies - no oil at will, no offensive war).

Chamberlain said "yes" to the nazis about the rebuilding of the of the
german war fleet in 1935.

France wanted to respond to the German army's reoccupation of the
Rhineland in 1936, but the UK opposed the idea giving thereby Hitler the
greenlight for what he had in mind. They said that the remilitarization,
of the Rhineland wasn't a threat to our vital interests... you
understand what it means in diplomatical language, don't you ? ;-)

No plants destroyed in Germany (unlike France), no rebuilding in some
parts of the country ... in regions that have some economic importance
(mines, steel industry, etc ...) Though The USA and the UK made us go
away from the Ruhr in 29 and abandon all german money for war
reparations (US plan named Young)...
but we were always in debts towards the allies (US mainly)

with a winner, but one who doesn't call then "Fraulein". Sadly, widespread
use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French
gene pool...

A moronic insult to your country since with such sentences , you make look
the US dudes like degenerated conceited jerk-offs.

World War II - Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States &
Britain, just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song...

We lost after 6 weeks because of BIG STRATEGICAL mistakes, ( I
insist on this because of the eternal "cheese eatin' surrender monkeys"
coming from posts from your charming country) and a less efficient army
- BTW blitzkrieg was partly inspired to Guderian by a book from De Gaulle
(so all french generals are not sorta genetically incompetents like you
guys seem to think.) you knew it I suppose since you're so learned !
The french army was in fact defeated because of a strategy of
encirclement that seemed impossible to realize for our gernerals, the
german armored divisions pass thru the Ardennes (highlands and woods)
that was reputated impossible to pass ! from the moment where the front
was cut and that we were encircled in our biggest part, it was lost !
it's easy to understand !
Our old supreme generals were still with old conceptions and a
thinking about a static war (their last reference was the WWI in which
we managed to resist the most powerful army in the world - with help
of course but we were less numerous than the german in population anyway).
It didn't help them to change their mind
BTW, 130,000 French soldiers died in this "lost for the beginning
battle" from the 10th may to the armistice 6 weeks later (allowing to
the english soldiers to go back to england though french were put into
pieces by bombing stukas and german tanks ! (see at the end))

BTW, 1 month after the beginning of the attack against France by the
Germans, Mussolini wanted his part of the cake and attacked France that
was already in a total skedaddle ! His troops entered France and was
stopped and repelled in Italy by the few French soldiers that were
there.

French : 150,000 (casualties : killed : 38 / wounded : 42 /
disappeared : 180 )

Italians : 500,000 (casualties : killed 631 / wounded : 3,400 / captured
: 1140 )

He was more successful in bombing the civilians fleeing on the roads !
Mussolini has to sign an armistice with France the 24th june (2 days
after the one with the germans) !!!
Italy attacked France the 10th june ... (isn't that more humiliating
considering the situation of France in June 1940 ?)

Oh BTW... just a little digression ... England is an island (without any
frontiers with another state, and a powerful, very populated state
like Gremany), TIA to notice it !

With such a hammering, humiliating and "downcasting" defeat (and more than
half of the country lost), the people needed a bright figure to give
them back hope and a slight confidence. It's a national hero from
1914-1918 that took power, P. Pétain - 84 years old. He was renowned
to have been kind with the troopers in WWI and he was the Verdun winner..
He set a sort of regime near fascism to get the nation up (BTW some of
the government was people hating French revolution and wanting to give
back some old values to the people, pro-facists, cynic go-getters, and
antisemitic men.)
The first thing Petain had in mind was the survival of France (weird, eh
?) what implied collaboration with the threatening, more powerful
germans - and Nazis, btw.
Oh I forgot : "France the collaborator", eh ? What about the free french
and De Gaulle, the 2nd DB (Koufrah, Bir Hakeim), General Leclerc, Jean
Moulin, FFI, 1st army of De Lattre, Monte Cassino (general Juin) etc...

In 1939, after Germany and USSR invaded Poland, We tried some military
operations in Norway (France & UK) we wanted to helped Finland but
Norway, denmark and sweden (IIRC) didn't wanted us to pass their strait
to go help the finns ... Yeah we didn't attack directly when Poland was
invaded...
Attacking at this occasion would have mean attacking germany and USSR ...
It was not a little affair... And BTW what you have to know is that the
germans had a "maginot line", the Siegfried line (even longer than ours)

and guess what : there were divisions in there, so ...
was it the good plan to go to the slaughterhouse without a better way
to act since the german divisions busy in Poland would have had the time
to come back on us in a not so long time ....

_Oh ,BTW where were the USA ?_
Obviously not fighting the Nazis ...

In UK and France the horrid and frightening memory of WWI was a
cold shower for anybody (look at the stats I put above and) and I
add that we were with belgium the only western country to be devastated,
the moon landscape left after the war would have make ponder anybody (in
2003 we always find shells from WWI !) the young generation was in big
proportion decimated ... the north - north-east was an important
economical industrial joint ... the germans before leaving drowned our
mines too ...
So yes, we were less eager as a peaceful democracy with a trauma to go
to war than the pumped brain-washed nazi war-machine ... it's a fact ...
But when the war started after a moment the combativity appears more
strong and the more the situation was bad the more decided was the
soldiers (see dunkirk)
At some place French soldiers stopped the german thrust and opposed an
harsh resistance (well, of course, those kind of thing
happen in almost any war ... but it means that there were some
sufficiently ballsy and combative soldiers ...)
I add that after that Belgian surrended unconditionnally, after the
english left, after the big nunmber of prisonner in dunkirk and
elsewhere, the french soldiers kept on fighting outnumbered till the
armistice though it was pretty clear that all was lost !
They stopped when the marechal (Marshall) Petain demanded them to stop.

Before the war, France was a democracy though the biggest part of Europe
were autocracies (often for the 20's) and you despise France for what
happened and the way it acted !?!
It's easy to brag and give lessons when you never have been and probably
will never be in such a huge crisis. we will never see you in this kind
of situation, pure noble son of the USA, "in god you trust" : you can,
you are living in a hyperpower, wise-ass ! (and far from any real direct
danger)
You are / were an hyperpower and you, despite this fact, dare make
comments on the weakness of the others and their attitude !
How cheeky !

You came also because you could and had to earn and because
Germany and Italy declared war to you. I thank and respect
the US soldiers that came and freed us, but as I said in other
circumstances, how being sure that you would have come -
it relativizes the "gallant white knight icon", guy !

The US had official links (embassy and all that)
with the nazis until they were bombed by the Japs and that Hitler and
Mussolini declared war to them ? What they were doing until the dawn of
1942 ? Selling for cash only (cash and carry law)... No wonder they had
3/4 the gold reserve of the world after WW2, they surely knew how to
take advantage of Nations fighting against nazism... And by the way, the
US had links with illegitimate government of Vichy far into the war, and
recognized De Gaulle's government just few days before the Liberation.
--
BTW :

According to classified documents from Dutch intelligence and US
government archives, President George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott
Bush made considerable profits off Auschwitz slave labor. :
www.clamormagazine.org

Nasty Nazi Business - Corporate Deals with Nazi Germany :
www.ranknfile-ue.org

http://www.hereinreality.com/familyvalues.html

http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm

The 1941 affaire : When Washington was at war with the FREE FRENCH and
backed the VICHY REGIME :
www.st-pierre-et-miquelon.com

http://www.miquelon.org/history.html
--
BTW The French Fleet was under the Vichy's government control .... In
1942 when the german invaded the 'free' territory of France they
directed quickly towards the French Fleet at Toulon (South of France)
The French admiral gave the order to scuttle all the fleet in order that
the germans don't take it...
According to De Gaulle that lived in England at this time, England had
very few troops on their soil and if the germans had taken the french
fleet, they could have succeeded in invading England.
In a way, maybe this admiral changed the future of the war ?....

population in 1939 :
------------------

France : 41.9 millions

germany : 79.5 millions

UK : about 48 millions (?)

Italy : 43.1 millions

USA : 131.67 millions (1940)

USSR : more than 150 millions (?)


casualties :

France :
dead soldiers : 211,000 to 213,300
dead civilians : 330,000 to 350,000

USA :
dead soldiers (on 2 fronts) : 292 to 298,000
civilians : negligeable - almost none.

UK :
dead soldiers : about 245,000
dead civilians : 92,700 to 150,000

Japan :
dead soldiers : 1,220,000 to 1,300,000
dead civilians : 672,000 to 700,000 (and some due to 2 nuking on
japanese cities)

Germany :
dead soldiers : 3,500,000 to 3,850,000
dead civilians : 780,000

USSR :
dead soldiers : about 7,500,000 to 11,000,000
dead civilians : about 7,000,000 to 10,000,000

Italy :
dead soldiers : 230,000 to 242,200
dead civilians : 150,000 to 153,000

China :
dead soldiers : about 1,310,200
dead civilians : 10,000,000

As you can see France (and others) suffered more of the war than USA ...
so pack back your lessons ...

War In Indochina - Lost. French forces claim illness, take to bed with the
Dien Bien Flu... (sic)

1946-1954 , I thought that you didn't do better but you dare to brag
about it... that's pretty cheeky, wise-ass.

http://wrc.lingnet.org/viethist.htm

"Dien Bien Phu. "The newly appointed commander of French forces
in Vietnam, General Henri Navarre, decided soon after his arrival
in Vietnam that it was essential to halt a Viet Minh offensive
underway in neighboring Laos. To do so, Navarre believed it was
necessary for the French to capture and hold the town of
Dien Bien Phu, sixteen kilometers from the Laotian border."

"Viet Minh strategists, led by Giap, concluded that a successful
attack on a French fortified camp, timed to coincide with the peace
talks, would give Hanoi the necessary leverage for a successful
conclusion of the negotiations.

Accordingly, the siege of Dien Bien Phu began on March 13,
by which time the Viet Minh had concentrated nearly 50,000
regular troops, 55,000 support troops, and almost 100,000
transport workers in the area.
Chinese aid...reached 1,500 tons per month by early 1954.

The French garrison of 15,000, which depended on supply
by air, was cut off by March 27, when the Viet Minh artillery
succeeded in making the airfield unusable. An elaborate system
of tunnels dug in the mountainsides enabled the Viet Minh to
protect its artillery pieces by continually moving them to prevent
discovery. Several hundred kilometers of trenches permitted the
attackers to move progressively closer to the French encampment.

In the final battle, human wave assaults were used to take the
perimeter defenses, which yielded defensive guns that were
then turned on the main encampment. The French garrison
surrendered on May 7, ending the siege that had cost the lives of
about 25,000 Vietnamese and more than 1,500 French troops."
(Country Study, Vietnam, pp. 57, 58.)"

In the same situation even the USA would have certainly lost this battle.
The US didn't help militarily, France left Vietnam split in 2, the Northern
part being communist. The US left Vietnam reunited under communist
rules, doesn't look to be a better job...
(The USA came a long time later after the french in viet nam and they
came cause they decided to apply their "dominoes' theory")

Algerian Revolution - Lost. Loss marks first defeat by a western army by a
Non-Turkic Muslim force since The Crusades, and produces The First Rule Of
Muslim Warfare; "We Can Always Beat The French". This rule is identical to
the First Rules of the Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish,
and Vietnamese...

We won in Algeria but De Gaulle gave up for personal political reasons,
what proves your overt lack of knowledge - thanx.

Talking about the crusades, we often won and founded christian realms
(Jerusalem Realm) that lasted 2 centuries (Jerusalem Kings from 1099 to 1291 -

though in the end they weren't french anymore IIRC) despite the fact that
the muslims were more numerous.
Have you ever heard about the Templars (A french knight order), BTW ?
After the IVth crusade there were even french emperor of Constantinople and
of the byzantine empire ...

http://www.mathematical.com/briennejean1195.html

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/earlyblazon/nation/constantinople/constantinople.htm

War On Terrorism - Keeping in mind it's history, France surrenders to

The 12/26/1994 the GIGN (our SWAT) stopped algerian islamists to crash a
plane on Paris (Possibly on the Eiffel tower)

http://www.specialoperations.com/Counterterrorism/gign.html

The Germans and Muslims. Just to be safe, they attempt to surrender to
Vietnamese Ambassador, who takes refuge in a McDonalds...

Trolling is forbiden by the Geneva Convention...
As it is forbidden to have photographed sexual spree with prisonners
or to kill them ...

Q. How many French troops does it take to defend Paris?
A. Who knows? They've never tried.

wrong : 1870-71 and against the vikings in 885 and 910...
I suppose we can add 1914 though Paris wasn't besieged but saved
during a battle in movemement.

(BTW, yes, nearly fifty times in two hundred years the lands of
the Franks were invaded by the vikings and we were sometimes attacked
on the southwest by the Saracens of Spain, and on the northwest by
the Norsemen). The magyars also invaded the country (33 raids from
899 to 935) and the rest of Europe committing horrendous crimes.

Your historical knowledge is thin ... some of your examples are true
but a lot are incomplete or totally wrong, and you "strangely" forgot
to talk about some of our victories, sometimes wonderful, like when we stood
alone VS the whole Europe and won - BTW in the revolutionnaries war we
fought also VS other countries' armies and we won though our country
was broke (without money I mean), and without good officers ! (since in the
past th officers had to be nobles, so after the revolution ... well, I don't
need to make you a drawing, eh ...) - For an example of french
victory VS a foreign army, check the end and read the summing up of Fleurus.

What about the Franco-Gallic emperor Charlemagne (769-814) and
his big European Empire ? (also a vector of christianisation in Europe)
Talking about Christianisation, the famous Saint Patrick studied the
bible (in Nice and Auxerre) and was made bishop in France before
going to evangelise the Irish - France was a center of knowledge
in these dark times.

What about Clovis(465-511) (first king of France (Merovingian Dynasty)
[Louis, Ludwig, Lewis, Lodwick, Luis, luigi, Ludovic, are names coming
from the name "Clovis"]) that will conquer almost all the Gaul and is
the ONLY reason of the survival and the re-propagation
of the official catholic doctrine.in Europe (the other "germanic
tribes" at this times were arians (christian heretics (cf. Arius))
or heathen - What explains that France was also known as "the oldest
daughter of the Church". Clovis was the only catholic king of Europe
and is the one that won against all the others !

What about Charles Martel (The Hammer) that Stopped the muslim expansion
in 732 and 739 (the Wisigothic Spain was invaded since 711)
His son Pippin of Heristal (Pippin the short(?) - father of charlemagne)
that became king, is the one that gave at the Pope the embryo of his
pontifical states that Lasted till 1870 ...

France was a powerful realm.
Mathew paris an english chronicler qualified Saint Louis [1226-1270]
(aka Louis the IXth - and yes, this is the very same Saint Louis from
who the name of the big city in Missouri is taken) as "the King of the
King".
Louis the IXth was become the arbiter of the Christian Europe.
His fame had gone beyond the western Europe. The mongols proposed him to
take the Turks in the back in the near orient (This proposition is kept
nowadays, in the "Archives Nationales" in Paris.
[BTW, the Russians were still vassals of the mongol horde at this time,
IIRC]

At the beginning of the XIVth century, the italian poet, Dante,
was complaining that "the Capetian" (king of France - at this time
"Philippe IV le Bel"(1285-1314)) was extending his shadow upon all the
christiannity and was thinking about being crowned as Emperor like
Charlemagne.
Everywhere, between th XIVth and XVth century, "The Realm" (or The Big
Realm) or "The King" (or the Big King) designated the King of France
that was seen as the archetype of the King.
At the beginning of the XVIth century, the King of France was seen as
the ideal to reach. Machiavel, the politic theorizer, was admirative of
the institutions of the realm of France.

You want a great french victory : in 1124, when the german emperor
invaded the Champagne region (France), the only fact that the french
king Louis the VIth deployed his army of knights, forced the emperor to
go away without any fight ...
Oh and do you know Bouvines (1214) ?
French realm against a coalition (england, saint roman germanic empire
(german emperor otton IV) and also the count of flanders
and count of Boulogne...
Guess what, the COALITION lost
(though they were about 3 times more numerous).

http://xenophongroup.com/montjoie/bouvines.htm

see the map at :
http://bataille.bouvines.free.fr/plans/plangen.php3?np=09

The Magna Carta (1215) was imposed to the king of England by
his barons because he was weakened after the battle
of Bouvines that _WE WON_ ...

Napo during the campaign of Italy in 1796, won against 80,000
well-equiped professional Austrian soldiers, though his soldiers were
starved withouth good clothes, without any artillery ... and were
40,000...
(At this time France, its population and its army was
in a pitiful state, there were no more money, we were broke)

I could talk about many of the napoleonic battles (Jena and
Austerlitz comes to mind).

"Austerlitz, Dec. 1805: You always hear about Austerlitz as "Napoleon's
Greatest Victory," like the little guy personally went out
and wiped out thecombined Russian and Austrian armies.
The fact is, ever since the Revolution in 1789, French armies
had been kicking ass against everybody. They were
free citizens fighting against scared peasant and degenerate mercenaries,
and it was no contest. At Austerlitz, 65,000 French troops took on 90,000
Russians and Austrians and destroyed them.
Absolutely annihilated them. The French lost only 8,000,
compared to 29,000 of the enemy. The tactics Bonaparte used
were very risky, and would only have worked with superb
troops: he encouraged the enemy to attack a weak line, then brought up
reinforcements who'd been held out of sight. That kind of tactical plan
takes iron discipline and perfect timing--and the French had it."

BTW, France is the biggest European country by the size (Russia and
Ukraine apart what is kinda special you will admit !) is this just
by chance ? (of course Germany was amputated after WWII but ...)
Nowadays France is the 4th economical power too.

---
Fleurus
26 June, 1794

An important battle in deciding the fate of the infant French republic,
Fleurus is also noted for being one of the first battles to include aerial
reconnaissance.
It occurred when a sizeable Austrian army under the Prince of Saxe-Coburg
moved to attack a French army pushing into the Netherlands.
Saxe-Coburg's 52,000 regulars took on General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's 75,000
troops, many of them conscipts, and found the going tough.
His poorly coordinated attacks were quickly countered by Jourdan who was
able to observe the Austrian moves from several military balloons.
The battle, which lasted about six hours, was a major reverse for the
First Coalition and ended Austrian control over the Netherlands.
French losses have been put at about 4000, while the Austrians suffered
2300 casualties.
---
Dunkerque : 26/05/1940 - 04/06/1940

"Lord Gort, Commander of the British Expeditionary Force, (240,000
troops) saw that he could not complete his orders to retreat to the
Somme. On May 25, he indicated to Churchill that he could not link up
with Weygand's forces and he was creating a perimeter around the town of
Dunkerque on the Pas de Calais. From May 27-30, the BEF consolidated
around Dunkerque, along with half of the French First Army. Five French
Divisions set up a roadblock at Lille, where they held out for four days
against seven German Panzer divisions. This allowed the British and the
French in Dunkerque to set up a defensive perimeter and wait for
evacuation.

The plan had called for 48,000 men to be removed. By the evening of May
30, 120,000 were rescued. Among these only 8,000 were French; this
worried Churchill greatly. He asked for more French soldiers to be
evacuated. "So few French have got out so far.......I will not accept
further sacrifices by the French."

On June 4, the last day of Operation Dynamo, over 26,000 French troops
were returned to England. The remaining 40,000 French troops were left
on the beaches and were taken by the German Army that very day.

The evacuation owed much to the unstinting bravery of the French First
Army fighting at the Dunkerque perimeter and to the RAF. 340,000 troops,
more than 100,000 of them French, could be evacuated to England to fight
again another day

Most of the French went back to fight in France, but the rescue of the
BEF gave heart to the British public all out of proportion to the defeat
it suffered."

--
I guess all that allow me to call you a stupid untaught god-fearing
flag-waving
strafing monkey, eh ?... You must be the king of the jerks.

[waggg]

http://www.exile.ru/2003-October-02/war_nerd.html

The French,

By Gary Brecher


The new big thing on the web is all these sites with names like "I Hate
France," with supposed datelines of French military history, supposedly
proving how the French are total cowards. Well, I'm going to tell you guys
something you probably don't want to hear: these sites are total bullshit,
the notion that the French are cowards is total bullshit, and anybody who
knows anything about European military history knows damn well that over the
past thousand years, the French have the most glorious military history in
Europe, maybe the world.
Before you send me more of those death threats, let me finish. I hate Chirac
too, and his disco foreign minister with the blow-dry 'do and the snotty
smile. But there are two things I hate more than I hate the French: ignorant
fake war buffs, and people who are ungrateful. And when an American mouths
off about French military history, he's not just being ignorant, he's being
ungrateful. I was raised to think ungrateful people were trash.
When I say ungrateful, I'm talking about the American Revolution. If you're
a true American patriot, then this is the war that matters. Hell, most of
you probably couldn't name three major battles from it, but try going back
to when you read Johnny Tremaine in fourth grade and you might recall a
little place called Yorktown, Virginia, where we bottled up Cornwallis's
army, forced the Brits' surrender and pretty much won the war.
Well, news flash: "we" didn't win that battle, any more than the Northern
Alliance conquered the Taliban. The French army and navy won Yorktown for
us. Americans didn't have the materiel or the training to mount a combined
operation like that, with naval blockade and land siege. It was the French
artillery forces and military engineers who ran the siege, and at sea it was
a French admiral, de Grasse, who kicked the shit out of the British navy
when they tried to break the siege.
Long before that, in fact as soon as we showed the Brits at Saratoga that we
could win once in a while, they started pouring in huge shipments of
everything from cannon to uniforms. We'd never have got near Yorktown if it
wasn't for massive French aid.
So how come you bastards don't mention Yorktown in your cheap webpages? I'll
tell you why: because you're too ignorant to know about it and too dishonest
to mention it if you did.
The thing that gets to me is why Americans hate the French so much when they
only did us good and never did us any harm. Like, why not hate the Brits?
They're the ones who killed thousands of Americans in the Revolution, and
thirty years later they came back and attacked us again. That time around
they managed to burn Washington DC to the ground while they were at it. How
come you web jerks never mention that?
Sure, the easy answer is because the Brits are with us now, and the French
aren't. But being a war buff means knowing your history and respecting it.
Well, so much for ungrateful. Now let's talk about ignorant. And that's what
you are if you think the French can't fight: just plain ignorant.
Appreciation of the French martial spirit is just about the most basic way
you can distinguish real war nerds from fake little teachers'pets.
Let's take the toughest case first: the German invasion, 1940, when the
French Army supposedly disgraced itself against the Wehrmacht. This is the
only real evidence you'll find to call the French cowards, and the more you
know about it, the less it proves. Yeah, the French were scared of Hitler.
Who wasn't? Chamberlain, the British prime minister, all but licked the
Fuhrer's goosesteppers, basically let him have all of Central Europe,
because Britain was terrified of war with Germany. Hell, Stalin signed a
sweetheart deal with Hitler out of sheer terror, and Stalin wasn't a man who
scared easy.
The French were scared, all right. But they had reason to be. For starters,
they'd barely begun to recover from their last little scrap with the
Germans: a little squabble you might've heard of, called WW I.
WW I was the worst war in history to be a soldier in. WW II was worse if you
were a civilian, but the trenches of WW I were five years of Hell like
General Sherman never dreamed of. At the end of it a big chunk of northern
France looked like the surface of the moon, only bloodier, nothing but
craters and rats and entrails.
Verdun. Just that name was enough to make Frenchmen and Germans, the few who
survived it, wake up yelling for years afterward. The French lost 1.5
million men out of a total population of 40 million fighting the Germans
from 1914-1918. A lot of those guys died charging German machine-gun nests
with bayonets. I'd really like to see one of you office smartasses joke
about "surrender monkeys" with a French soldier, 1914 vintage. You'd piss
your dockers.
Shit, we strut around like we're so tough and we can't even handle a few
uppity Iraqi villages. These guys faced the Germans head on for five years,
and we call them cowards? And at the end, it was the Germans, not the
French, who said "calf rope."
When the sequel war came, the French relied on their frontier fortifications
and used their tanks (which were better than the Germans', one on one)
defensively. The Germans had a newer, better offensive strategy. So they
won. And the French surrendered. Which was damn sensible of them.
This was the WEHRMACHT. In two years, they conquered all of Western Europe
and lost only 30,000 troops in the process. That's less than the casualties
of Gettysburg. You get the picture? Nobody, no army on earth, could've held
off the Germans under the conditions that the French faced them. The French
lost because they had a long land border with Germany. The English survived
because they had the English Channel between them and the Wehrmacht. When
the English Army faced the Wermacht at Dunkirk, well, thanks to spin the
tuck-tail-and-flee result got turned into some heroic tale of a brilliant
British retreat. The fact is, even the Brits behaved like cowards in the
face of the Wermacht, abandoning the French. It's that simple.
Here's a quick sampler of some of my favorite French victories, like an
antidote to those ignorant websites. We'll start way back and move up to the
20th century.
Tours, 732 AD: The Muslims had already taken Spain and were well on their
way to taking the rest of Europe. The only power with a chance of stopping
them was the French army under Charles "the Hammer" Martel, King of the
Franks (French), who answered to the really cool nickname "the Hammer of
God." It was the French who saved the continent's ass. All the smart money
was on the Muslims: there were 60,000 of them, crazy Jihadis whose cavalry
was faster and deadlier than any in Europe. The French army was heavily
outnumbered and had no cavalry. Fighting in phalanxes, they held against
dozens of cavalry charges and after at least two days of hand-to-hand
combat, finally managed to hack their way to the Muslim center and kill
their commander. The Muslims retreated to Spain, and Europe developed as an
independent civilization.
Orleans, May 1429: Joan of Arc: is she the most insanely cool military
commander in history or what? This French peasant girl gets instructions
from her favorite saints to help out the French against the English
invaders. She goes to the King (well, the Dauphin, but close enough) and
tells him to give her the army and she'll take it from there. And somehow
she convinces him. She takes the army, which has lost every battle it's been
in lately, to Orleans, which is under English siege. Now Joan is a nice
girl, so she tries to settle things peaceably. She explains in a letter to
the enemy commanders that everything can still be cool, "...provided you
give up France...and go back to your own countries, for God's sake. And if
you do not, wait for the Maid, who will visit you briefly to your great
sorrow." The next day she put on armor, mounted a charger, and prepared to
lead the attack on the besiegers' fortifications. She ordered the gates
opened, but the Mayor refused until Joan explained that she, personally,
would cut off his head. The gates went up, the French sallied out, and Joan
led the first successful attack they'd made in years. The English
strongpoints were taken, the siege was broken, and Joan's career in the
cow-milking trade was over.
Braddock's Defeat (aka Battle of Monongahela) July 1755: Next time you're
driving through the Ohio Valley, remember you're passing near the site of a
great French victory over an Anglo-American force twice its size. General
Edward Braddock marched west from Virginia with 1,500 men--a very large army
in 18th-c. America. His orders were to seize French land and forts in the
Valley--your basic undeclared land-grab invasion. The French joined the
local tribes to resist, and then set up a classic ambush. It was a
slaughter. More than half of Braddock's force--880 men--were killed or
wounded. The only Anglo officer to escape unhurt was this guy called George
Washington, and even he had two horses shot out from under him. After a few
minutes of non-stop fire from French and Indians hidden in the woods,
Braddock's command came apart like something out of Nam, post-Tet. Braddock
was hit and wounded, but none of his troops would risk getting shot to
rescue him.
Austerlitz, Dec. 1805: You always hear about Austerlitz as "Napoleon's
Greatest Victory," like the little guy personally went out and wiped out the
combined Russian and Austrian armies. The fact is, ever since the Revolution
in 1789, French armies had been kicking ass against everybody. They were
free citizens fighting against scared peasant and degenerate mercenaries,
and it was no contest. At Austerlitz, 65,000 French troops took on 90,000
Russians and Austrians and destroyed them. Absolutely annihilated them. The
French lost only 8,000, compared to 29,000 of the enemy. The tactics
Bonaparte used were very risky, and would only have worked with superb
troops: he encouraged the enemy to attack a weak line, then brought up
reinforcements who'd been held out of sight. That kind of tactical plan
takes iron discipline and perfect timing--and the French had it.
Jena, Oct. 1806: just a quick reminder for anybody who thinks the Germans
always beat the French. Napoleon takes on the Prussian army and destroys it.
27,000 Prussian casualties vs. 5,000 French. Prussian army routed, pursued
for miles by French cavalry.
You, guys might want to remember that the French under Napoleon are still
the only army ever to have taken all of continental Europe, from Moscow to
Madrid. I could keep listing French victories till I had a book. In fact,
it's not a bad idea. A nice big hardback, so you could take it to the
assholes running all the anti-French-military sites and bash their heads in
with it.

[waggg]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1848576

Polls Suggest Media Failure in Pre-War Coverage

By Ari Berman

Published: March 26, 2003

NEW YORK Opinion

Thousands of American soldiers have marched into Iraq, bombs are falling,
and oil fields are ablaze. After the shooting stops, press attention probably
will focus on our pursuit of Saddam Hussein's henchmen, our search for hidden
stocks of weapons of mass destruction, and our "securing the peace" for a
democratic Iraq. But when the war dies down, editors and media analysts
should catch their breath and ask themselves: How much did press coverage
(or lack of coverage) contribute to the public backing for a pre-emptive
invasion without the support of the United Nations?

When it came down to crunch time, the American people -- as evidenced by
opinion polls conducted after President Bush's ultimatum to Saddam on
March 17 -- supported the attack by about a 2-to-1 margin. Some of this
reflected the usual rallying 'round the flag that accompanies every war,
but the truth is, Bush always had strong (if nervous) popular support.

This support in the polls long perplexed ardent critics of U.S. policy,
who pointed out that the public rallied to the war even though, according
to the most-recent surveys, a vast majority of our citizens believed that
the attack would increase, not decrease, the terrorist threat and would hurt,
not help, our economy.

So, what motivated Americans to back their president throughout the winter
of discontent -- when much of the rest of the world strongly disagreed with
the need for war now?

Of course, there were many reasons, ranging from partisan politics to genuine
hatred and fear of the evil Saddam. But there was another key factor: Somehow,

despite the media's exhaustive coverage of the post-9/11 world and the Saddam
threat, a very large segment of the American public remained un- or
misinformed
about key issues related to the Iraqi crisis. Let's look at a few recent
polls.

In a Jan. 7 Knight Ridder/Princeton Research poll, 44% of respondents said
they thought "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were Iraqi
citizens. Only 17% of those polled offered the correct answer: none.
This was remarkable in light of the fact that, in the weeks after 9/11,
few Americans identified Iraqis among the culprits. So the level of awareness
on this issue actually plunged as time passed. Is it possible the media failed

to give this appropriate attention?

In the same sample, 41% said that Iraq already possessed nuclear weapons,
which not even the Bush administration claimed. Despite being far off base
in crucial areas, 66% of respondents claimed to have a "good understanding"
of the arguments for and against going to war with Iraq.

Then, a Pew Research Center/Council on Foreign Relations survey released
Feb. 20 found that nearly two-thirds of those polled believed that U.N.
weapons inspectors had "found proof that Iraq is trying to hide weapons
of mass destruction." Neither Hans Blix nor Mohamed ElBaradei ever said
they found proof of this.

The same survey found that 57% of those polled believed Saddam Hussein
helped terrorists involved with the 9/11 attacks, a claim the Bush team
had abandoned. A March 7-9 New York Times/CBS News Poll showed that 45% of
interviewees agreed that "Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks," and a March 14-15 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found this
apparently mistaken notion holding firm at 51%.

The significance of this is suggested by the finding, in the same survey,
that 32% of those supporting an attack cited Saddam's alleged involvement
in supporting terrorists as the "main reason" for endorsing invasion.
Another 43% said it was "one reason."

Knowing this was a crucial element of his support -- even though he could
not prove the 9/11 connection -- the president nevertheless tried to bolster
the link. Bush mentioned 9/11 eight times during his March 6 prime-time news
conference, linking it with Saddam Hussein "often in the same breath,"
Linda Feldmann of The Christian Science Monitor observed last week.
"Bush never pinned the blame for the [9/11] attacks directly on the Iraqi
president,
" Feldmann wrote. "Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression
that persists among much of the American public."

Carroll Doherty, editor of the Pew Research Center, told me last week:
"It's very rare to find a perception that's been so disputed by experts
yet firmly held by the public. There's almost nothing the public doesn't
believe about Saddam Hussein."

The question, again, is: Did the press do a solid enough job in informing
the public about the key contested issues? "If the U.S. war against Iraq
goes well, then the Bush administration is likely not to face questions
about the way it sold the war," Feldmann conceded. "But if war and its
aftermath go badly, then the administration could be under fire." Newspapers
could be, too.

Now that the prewar march is behind us, let's hope the press does a better job
of
informing Americans in a post-Saddam world.
---
E&P welcomes letters to the editor: ***@editorandpublisher.com.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ari Berman is a reporter for E&P.
==
http://www.charleston.net/stories/061503/ter_15poll.shtml

Story last updated at 9:25 a.m. Sunday, June 15, 2003

Poll: Americans misinformed about Iraq, 9-11
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON--A third of the American public believes U.S. forces found weapons
of
mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll, and 22 percent said Iraq

actually used chemical or biological weapons.

Before the war, half of those polled in a survey said Iraqis were among
the 19 hijackers Sept. 11, 2001.

But such weapons have not been found in Iraq and were never used. Most of
the Sept. 11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. None were Iraqis.

How could so many people be so wrong about life-and-death information that
has dominated news coverage for almost two years?

These poll results startled the pollsters who conducted and analyzed the
surveys.

"It's a striking finding," said Steve Kull, the director of the Program
on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, which
asked the weapons questions during a May 14-18 poll of 1,256 respondents.

He added, "Given the intensive news coverage and high levels of public
attention, this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be
avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."

That is, having their beliefs conflict with the facts.

Kull said the data showed that the belief that weapons of mass destruction
had been found "is substantially greater among those who favored the war."

Pollsters and political analysts see several reasons for the gaps between
facts and beliefs: the public's short attention span on foreign news,
fragmentary or conflicting media reports that lacked depth or skepticism,
and White House efforts to sell war by oversimplifying the threat.

"Most people get little whiffs and fragments of news, not in any organized
way," said Thomas Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution,
a centrist-liberal think tank. "And there have been a lot of conflicting
reports on the weapons."

Before the war, the U.S. media often reported as fact the assertions by the
Bush administration that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of illegal weapons.
CBS News in December reported how Bush officials were "threatening war against

Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction."

During and after the war, reports of weapons discoveries were often trumpeted
on front pages, while follow-up stories debunking the "smoking gun" reports
received less attention.

Bush has described the preemptive attack on Iraq as "one victory in the war
on terror that began Sept. 11." Bush officials also claim that Iraq sheltered
and helped al-Qaida operatives.

"The public is susceptible to manipulation, and if they hear officials
saying there is a strong connection between Iraq and al-Qaida terrorists,
then they think there must be a connection," Mann said.

"Tapping into the feelings and fears after Sept. 11 is a way to sell a
policy," he added.

[waggg]

http://home.thirdage.com/Military/the4th23infmec/vnlb.html

During the Civil War, at the Battle of Bull Run, the entire Union
Army panicked and fled the battlefield. Nothing even remotely
resembling that debacle ever occurred in Vietnam.

In WWII at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, elements of the
US Army were overrun by the Germans. In the course of that battle,
Hitler’s General Rommel (The Desert Fox) inflicted
3,100 US casualties, took 3,700 US prisoners and captured
or destroyed 198 American tanks. In Vietnam no US Military
units were overrun and no US Military infantry units or tank
outfits were captured.

WW II again. In the Philippines, US Army Generals
Jonathan Wainwright and Edward King surrendered themselves
and their troops to the Japanese. In Vietnam no US generals,
or US military units ever surrendered.

Before the Normandy invasion ("D" Day, 1944) the US Army
(In WW II the US Army included the Army Air Corps which
today has become the US Airforce) in England filled its
own jails with American soldiers who refused to fight and
then had to rent jail space from the British to handle the
overflow. The US Army in Vietnam never had to rent jail space
from the Vietnamese to incarcerate American soldiers who
refused to fight.

Desertion.

Only about 5,000 men assigned to Vietnam deserted and just 249
of those deserted while in Vietnam. During WW II, in the European
Theater alone, over 20,000 US Military men were convicted of
desertion and, on a comparable percentage basis, the overall
WW II desertion rate was 55 percent higher than in Vietnam.

During the WW II Battle of the Bulge in Europe two regiments
of the US Army’s 106th Division surrendered to the Germans.
Again: In Vietnam no US Army unit ever surrendered.

As for brutality:

During WW II the US Army executed nearly 300 of its own men.
In the European Theater alone, the US Army sentenced 443 American
soldiers to death. Most of these sentences were for the rape and or
murder of civilians.

In the Korean War,

Major General William F. Dean, commander of the 24th Infantry Division,
was taken prisoner of war (POW). In Vietnam no US generals, much less
division commanders, were ever taken prisoner.

During the Korean War the US Army was forced into the longest retreat
in its history. A catastrophic 275 mile withdrawal from the Yalu River
all the way to Pyontaek, 45 miles south of Seoul. In the process they
lost the capital city of Seoul. The US Military in Vietnam was never
compelled into a major retreat nor did it ever abandon Saigon to the
enemy.

The 1st US Marine Division was driven from the Chosin Reservoir
and forced into an emergency evacuation from the Korean port of
Hungnam. There they were joined by other US Army and South Korean
soldiers and the US Navy eventually evacuated 105,000 Allied troops
from that port. In Vietnam there was never any mass evacuation of
US Marine, South Vietnamese or Allied troop units.

[waggg]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10874-2003Apr11?language=printer

The Ghosts of 1991

By Peter W. Galbraith
Saturday, April 12, 2003; Page A19


Can it be that the events of 2003 in Iraq have finally dispelled the ghosts of
1991? The answer may not be quite as obvious as the welcoming throngs make it
seem.

Just 12 years ago, the Shiite Muslims who constitute a majority in Iraq and in
the city of Baghdad were betrayed by the United States -- an act that may have
cost them as many as 100,000 lives. That recent history -- of which the
Shiites are understandably a good deal less forgetful than we -- explains why
the Shiites in the south initially greeted invading American and British
forces with a good deal more reserve than expected. And as the continuing
turmoil in southern towns and cities makes clear, building a democratic state
in Iraq over the long term will depend to a large degree on how strong and
lasting a trust we can build among these people.

The spontaneous Shiite uprising of 1991 consumed the southern part of Iraq
right up to the approaches to Baghdad. Rebels came to U.S. troops, who were
then deployed in the Euphrates Valley, begging for U.S. intervention. The
Shiite political parties sent emissaries to the few Americans who would see
them. To this day, I am haunted by the desperation in the appeals made to me
by one group, as they realized time was running out for their countrymen.

Many of the problems we face now and in the future with Shiites likely have to
do with the way the first Bush administration responded to those appeals. On
Feb. 15, 1991, President George H.W. Bush called on the Iraqi military and
people to overthrow Saddam Hussein. On March 3, an Iraqi tank commander
returning from Kuwait fired a shell through one of the portraits of Hussein in
Basra's main square, igniting the southern uprising. A week later, Kurdish
rebels ended Hussein's control over much of the north.

But although Bush had called for the rebellion, his administration was caught
unprepared when it happened. The administration knew little about those in the
Iraqi opposition because, as a matter of policy, it refused to talk to them.
Policymakers tended to see Iraq's main ethnic groups in caricature: The
Shiites were feared as pro-Iranian and the Kurds as anti-Turkish. Indeed, the
U.S. administration seemed to prefer the continuation of the Baath regime
(albeit without Hussein) to the success of the rebellion. As one National
Security Council official told me at the time: "Our policy is to get rid of
Saddam, not his regime."

The practical expression of this policy came in the decisions made by the
military on the ground. U.S. commanders spurned the rebels' plea for help. The
United States allowed Iraq to send Republican Guard units into southern cities
and to fly helicopter gunships. (This in spite of a ban on flights,
articulated by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf with considerable swagger: "You fly,
you die.") The consequences were devastating. Hussein's forces leveled the
historical centers of the Shiite towns, bombarded sacred Shiite shrines and
executed thousands on the spot. By some estimates, 100,000 people died in
reprisal killings between March and September. Many of these atrocities were
committed in proximity to American troops, who were under orders not to
intervene.

In recent years Baghdad has shortchanged the south in the distribution of food
and medicine, contributing to severe malnutrition among vulnerable
populations. Some 100 Shiite clerics have been murdered, including four senior
ayatollahs. Draining the marshes displaced 400,000 Marsh Arabs, destroying a
culture that is one of the world's oldest, as well as causing immeasurable
ecological damage.

The first Bush administration's decision to abandon the March uprising was a
mistake of historic proportions. With U.S. help, or even neutrality, the March
uprising could have succeeded, thus avoiding the need for a second costly war.
(Bush's defenders insist the United States had no mandate to carry the war to
Baghdad, but this is beside the point. The uprising started after the Gulf War
ended, and the United States was positioned to easily down Iraqi helicopters
and halt Iraqi tanks.)

The current President Bush cannot escape these ghosts. An American may
understand what happened in 1991 as carelessness -- inexcusable but not
malicious. An Iraqi Shiite saw a superpower that called for a rebellion and
then ensured its failure. Naturally, he assumed this was intentional. In the
months and years to come, many Shiites may take a lot of convincing about U.S.
motives and reliability.

President George W. Bush has done much right that his father did wrong. His
administration has been in constant contact with the Iraqi opposition.
Humanitarian supplies are being rushed to southern Iraq, and clear warnings
were issued against those who might have committed atrocities in the first
days of the invasion. Unfortunately, the president carries a national and
family legacy that many Iraqis associate with deadly betrayal. Overcoming that
legacy has only begun. It is one of the critical challenges that lie ahead.

The writer, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, is a professor at the
National War College. He was in rebel-held Iraq during the 1991 uprising.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company