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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skywatcher who wrote (3880)	6/13/2005 3:32:27 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 9838

France refuses to explain hostage release Monterey Herald ^ \| 6/13/05 \| Jamey Keatan - AP PARIS - France, which denied it paid a ransom to win the release of French journalist held in Iraq, refused Monday to give any details that led to winning freedom for the reporter and her Iraqi guide after five months of captivity. Florence Aubenas and Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, who were freed Sunday, had been missing since Jan. 5, when they were seen leaving Aubenas' hotel in Baghdad. French officials have never identified the kidnappers, although authorities in both France and Iraq suggested they were probably seeking money rather than pressing a political agenda. Despite mounting calls for the government to explain how the releases were achieved, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy refused to identify the captors, because he said they are still holding other people. "I can say absolutely nothing about that," Douste-Blazy said on RTL radio. "There are still some hostages in the place of detention where Florence and Hussein were a few hours ago." Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said France paid no ransom. "There was absolutely no request for money," Cope said on Europe-1 radio. "No ransom was paid." Former Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, who worked the case until leaving the government this month, also said there was no ransom. But questions persisted. "Now the time of joy is over, the time for explanations has come," said Annick Lepetit, a spokeswoman for the main opposition Socialist Party. "The public authorities, the president, the government must explain themselves." Upon returning to France, Aubenas said she had been bound and blindfolded while captive. She thanked all those who supported her. The guide was reunited with his family in Baghdad. Liberation director Serge July, in an editorial Monday, called the captors "professionals in kidnapping, who hold an important - if not central - role in the atrocious market for hostages" in Iraq. He did not elaborate. July, a Liberation co-founder who shuttled to and from the Middle East during the hostage crisis, joined many others in praising Aubenas' tenacity. Aubenas, 44, is "an incredible fighter, with a considerable psychological resistance, who in many ways simply didn't crack," he said on France-Inter radio. Al-Saadi, in an interview published Monday in daily Le Monde, described the hostage-takers as Sunni Muslims from Iraq's Salafist movement, and said they did not mistreat him, but said he lost nearly eight pounds because he had no appetite. "When you're too sad, you don't eat," he said, saying his separation from his wife and four children "was too hard for me." A former Iraqi fighter pilot who learned the French language and how to fly French-made Mirage jets in France in the mid-1980s, al-Saadi said his captors didn't seem to care that he was a Shiite, as long as he opposed "the American occupation of Iraq." Terms of the release were not clear, although Liberation suggested that some sort of trade may have taken place. One article had the headline: "Why we will never know if a ransom was paid."

To: Skywatcher who wrote (3880)	6/13/2005 3:36:39 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 9838

miquelon.org

To: Skywatcher who wrote (3880)	6/13/2005 7:49:59 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9838

NYT: Prewar British Memo Says War Decision Wasn't Made New York Times ^ \| June 13, 2005 \| DAVID E. SANGER A memorandum written by Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet office in late July 2002 explicitly states that the Bush administration had made "no political decisions" to invade Iraq.... "A postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise," warned the memorandum, prepared July 21.... It also appeared to take as a given the presence of illicit weapons in Iraq - an assumption that later proved almost entirely wrong - and warned that merely removing Saddam Hussein from power would not guarantee that those weapons could be secured.... The White House has insisted that Mr. Bush did not make the decision to invade Iraq until after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented the administration's case about Iraqi weapons to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003.... While the latest memorandum appears to have been written by a British intelligence official after a visit to Washington, the central fact reported - that the American military was in the midst of advanced planning for an invasion of Iraq - was no secret.... Still..., the memorandum says that "...Further work is required to define more precisely the means by which the desired endstate would be created, in particular what form of government might replace Saddam Hussein's regime and the timescale within which it would be possible to identify a successor." On unconventional weapons, the memorandum also discloses doubts - but not that they existed. "U.S. military planning unambiguously takes as its objective the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime, followed by elimination of Iraqi W.M.D. It is however, by no means certain, in the view of U.K. officials, that one would necessarily follow from the other. Even if regime change is a necessary condition for controlling Iraqi W.M.D., it is certainly not a sufficient one." nytimes.com