"In December 2002, during your visit to Lebanon accompanied by Elie Hatem, you expressed your fears concerning an American intervention in Iraq, and later you expressed opposition to this action, like most other French politicians. What is your present position in regard to this conflict, and what sets you off from the other candidates in the election on this matter?
I have an excellent memory of that visit, during which I was warmly received by the Lebanese. I also received very sympathetic letters from the political and religious authorities. On that occasion, more precisely during my press conference at the headquarters of the Journalists’ Association, your own premises, I alerted international public opinion on the real intentions of Mr. Bush’s Administration: the general destabilization of the Middle East, its regression on the political, social, economic and cultural levels, the dislocation of national models so as to plunge the region into an imbroglio that would promote the emergence of fundamentalism and confessionalism and, in consequence, the creation of weak confessional and theocratic states and the strengthening of the American grip on the petroleum.
I was the first French politician to unmask and condemn Bush’s real intentions: the objective of the American intervention in Iraq was the “Lebanization” of that country and the provoking of a civil and inter-communal war, not the destruction of the so-called prohibited weapons or the setting up of a democratic regime. With hindsight, you will see that my prediction has come to pass. Mr. Bush’s genocidal policy has succeeded in sowing trouble not only in Iraq but also throughout the region. Contrary to what is being said, the objective of George Bush has thus been achieved, and his operation has well and truly succeeded!"
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