SwiftVets.com

[CandiM]

[God and Country]

bsjracing, thanks for the e-mail address.

I already have it, I normally e-mail to those suckers once a month.

I even got a e-mail back from them calling me a stupid American.

The French still sucks.


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Conservative and proud

[CandiM]

And yet another quote from one of my favorite latter-day Conservative political pundits, Dennis Miller, who said

[Snipe]

My Grandfather got his butt out of Hesse over a hundred years ago
so he wouldn't be drafted into the Prussian Army. There is ablolutly
no reason that I would want to visit Europe in general and France in
particular. If I do go overseas to have a fun vacation, it will be to
Austrailia where I can just sit back and have a good time. Hopefully,
the surf will be up.


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Tin Can Sailor

[God and Country]

Snipe, I am with you.

The French still sucks.


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Conservative and proud

[Paul R.]

[wwIIvetsdaughter]

The only part of France I'd visit and I'd urge members of this forum to visit is Normandy. From everything I've heard, America is appreciated there and the sacrifice of Americans on D-Day remembered.

[Arty Guy]

Your point about Normandy is well taken.

Nevertheless my personal boycott extends to the full Axis of Weasels: Germany, France, and Belgium.

[sround]

And remember, the French think Pepe Le Pew's a cat!


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Mission Accomplished!!

[gerson]

As if our opinion of the French were not low enough:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1318972,00.html

Britons secretly kept in postwar French camps

After the liberation De Gaulle's government held on to internees from many countries in officially closed centres to hide collaboration

Jon Henley in Paris
Monday October 4, 2004
The Guardian

The government of Charles de Gaulle held hundreds of foreigners, including at least three Britons, in an internment camp near Toulouse for up to four years after the second world war, according to secret documents.
The papers, part of a cache of 12,000 photocopied illegally by an Austrian-born Jew, reveal the extent to which French officials collaborated with their fleeing Nazi occupiers even as their country was being liberated. They also show that, when the war was over, France went to extraordinary lengths to hide as much evidence of that collaboration as possible.

The documents are in a mass of registers, telegrams and manifests which Kurt Werner Schaechter, an 84-year-old retired businessman, copied from the Toulouse office of France's national archives in 1991. They are uniquely precious: under a 1979 law most of France's wartime archives are sealed for between 60 and 150 years after they were written.

"This is an untold story of the dark side of France's liberation 60 years ago," Mr Schaechter, a former musical instruments salesman, said at his home in Alfortville, a Paris suburb. "French functionaries were involved in a national scandal that continued until 1949: the despicable treatment of allied and neutral civilians interned during the war."

Mr Schaechter's activities - last year he used some of the papers to try to force the French railway SNCF to admit its responsibility in shipping 76,000 Jews to Nazi death camps - have infuriated some French historians, who say their privileged access to classified archives has been compromised. But others have backed the campaign for freer access to documents relating to a part of France's past that it has long preferred to ignore.

By far the most awkward of his recently unearthed documents are those that appear to show that Noé camp, 25 miles south of Toulouse, continued to function secretly for several years after the war. Noé was one of 300 camps set up after 1939 to hold Jews, communists and other "anti-French" militants, Gypsies, common criminals and enemy aliens.

Many of its inmates were quickly shipped out as France was progressively liberated in the summer of 1944. But, said Mr Schaechter, not everyone could be got out in time: "Allied bombing of the railway lines, and intensified fighting on the ground, meant many simply could not be moved."

Officially, the only camps still open after 1945 were a handful housing Romanies, stateless persons and French collaborators. But Mr Schaechter says his documents indicate that a "special section" of Noé was active until at least 1947.

Among the papers is a letter dated February 23 1946 from the camp's director to the prefect in Toulouse. It seeks to "draw urgent attention" to Noé's "increasingly delicate financial situation", adding that sums seized from those "sheltered" in the camp "are no longer adequate to meet the costs of maintaining it, or of feeding [the inmates]". The camp's accounts show that inmates were still being forced to pay for their "lodging" in September 1947.

There are also letters between the interior ministry's inspectorate of internment camps and the prefecture querying the number of "administrative internees" held in the département's camps. They are dated March 5 and March 29 1949 - three years after the last internment camp in mainland France was officially closed.

Photocopies of the camp's registers from 1945, 1946 and 1947 show that Noé's postwar inmates, along with citizens of Switzerland, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Brazil, included three Britons: Abdul Hussan, born in 1901 in Port Louis, Mauritius; Leonard Wynne, born in London in 1891; and Alfred Smith, born in Manchester in 1888.

Mr Schaechter believes they were not released at the end of the war because it would have been too embarrassing.

"The last thing De Gaulle wanted, when he was trying to build up France's image as victor and hero," he said, "was to reveal the true extent of its collaboration by freeing neutral and allied internees held in French camps by French guards."

The papers also show that officials continued to deport inmates of all nationalities to a near-certain death in Germany even as France was being liberated.

A neat register shows that, in March 1944, Noé contained inmates of 25 nationalities, including three Americans and 13 Britons aged between 21 and 55, and one other Briton aged over 55.

On June 24 1944, two weeks after the allies landed on the beaches of Normandy, the camp commandant wrote to the Toulouse prefecture. "I have the honour to inform you," he said, "that on the 22nd of this month nine British citizens were transferred to this camp." Their names include William Rogerson, born in Manchester in 1874; Edward Josephs, London, 1898; and Walter Slack, Hull, 1891.

On June 26 the commandant informed the prefecture that he had four American "guests": Moore Sumner Kirby, born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1895; Herbert Lespinasse, Stamford, 1884; Gerald McLanghin, Detroit, 1898; and James Smith, Los Angeles, 1904.

Some of these Britons and Americans "regrouped" in Noé on the eve of the liberation were wealthy residents of the Côte d'Azur; Sumner Kirby had married Leonida, Princess Bagration-Muhranskaja - later the wife of Vladimir, a grand duke of the Romanovs - in Nice in 1934. Others, such as Joseph Edwards and Thomas Berridge, were farmers or agricultural labourers.

Many, without doubt, were on the last transport of aliens to leave Noé-Longages station on July 30 1944. This "transfer" is referred to in a telegram from the camp commandant on August 28 - two days after a million cheering French men and women thronged the Champs-Elysées in Paris for Charles de Gaulle's victory parade. Mr Schaechter believes most of them ended up in Dachau; Sumner Kirby is known to have died in the Leau concentration camp near Bernberg, Germany, on April 7 1945.

But what happened to those, many elderly and infirm, who stayed? Some are marked "transferred". Others were moved in 1947 to Pithiviers or Rivesaltes camps, both officially closed. Some are marked: "Agreed with Mr Casse - to be lost". And what that means, no one knows.

[Knighthawk]

This is from March 2003........


Iraq strengthens air force with French parts
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.m4radio.com/main/messageboard/40.html

A French company has been selling spare parts to Iraq for its fighter jets and military helicopters during the past several months, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The unidentified company sold the parts to a trading company in the United Arab Emirates, which then shipped the parts through a third country into Iraq by truck.
The spare parts included goods for Iraq's French-made Mirage F-1 jets and Gazelle attack helicopters.
An intelligence official said the illegal spare-parts pipeline was discovered in the past two weeks and that sensitive intelligence about the transfers indicates that the parts were smuggled to Iraq as recently as January.
Other intelligence reports indicate that Iraq had succeeded in acquiring French weaponry illegally for years, the official said.
The parts appear to be included in an effort by the Iraqi military to build up materiel for its air forces before any U.S. military action, which could occur before the end of the month.
The officials identified the purchaser of the parts as the Al Tamoor Trading Co., based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. A spokesman for the company could not be reached for comment.
The French military parts were then sent by truck into Iraq from a neighboring country the officials declined to identify.
Iraq has more than 50 Mirage F-1 jets and an unknown number of Gazelle attack helicopters, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
An administration official said the French parts transfers to Iraq may be one reason France has so vehemently opposed U.S. plans for military action against Iraq. "No wonder the French are opposing us," this official said.
The official, however, said intelligence reports of the parts sale did not indicate that the activity was sanctioned by the French government or that Paris knows about the transfers.
The intelligence reports did not identify the French company involved in selling the aircraft parts or whether the parts were new or used.
The Mirage F-1 was made by France's Dassault Aviation. Gazelle helicopters were made by Aerospatiale, which later became part of a consortium of European defense companies.
The importation of military goods by Iraq is banned under U.N. Security Council resolutions passed since the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Nathalie Loiseau, press counselor at the French Embassy, said her government has no information about the spare-parts smuggling and has not been approached by the U.S. government about the matter.
"We fully comply with the U.N. sanctions, and there is no sale of any kind of military material or weapons to Iraq," she said.
A CIA spokesman had no comment.
A senior administration official declined to discuss Iraq's purchase of French warplane and helicopter parts. "It is well known that the Iraqis use front companies to try to obtain a number of prohibited items," the official said.
The disclosure comes amid heightened anti-French sentiment in the United States over Paris' opposition to U.S. plans for using force to disarm Iraq.
A senior defense official said France undermined U.S. efforts to disarm Iraq last year by watering down language of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 that last fall required Iraq to disarm all its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
France, along with Russia, Germany and China, said yesterday that they would block a joint U.S.-British U.N. resolution on the use of force against Iraq.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told reporters in Paris on Wednesday that France "will not allow a resolution to pass that authorizes resorting to force."
"Russia and France, as permanent members of the Security Council, will assume their full responsibilities on this point," he stated.
France has been Iraq's best friend in the West. French arms sales to Baghdad were boosted in the 1970s under Premier Jacques Chirac, the current president. Mr. Chirac once called Saddam Hussein a "personal friend."
During the 1980s, when Paris backed Iraq in its war against Iran, France sold Mirage fighter bombers and Super Entendard aircraft to Baghdad, along with Exocet anti-ship missiles.
French-Iraqi ties soured after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait that led to the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
France now has an estimated $4 billion in debts owed to it by Iraq as a result of arms sales and infrastructure construction projects. The debt is another reason U.S. officials believe France is opposing military force to oust Saddam.
Henry Sokolski, director of the private Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said French transfers of military equipment to Iraq would have "an immediate and relevant military consequence, if this was done."
"The United States with its allies are going to suppress the Iraqi air force and air defense very early on in any conflict, and it's regrettable that the French have let a company complicate that mission," Mr. Sokolski said.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell last month released intelligence information showing videotape of an Iraqi F-1 Mirage that had been modified to spray anthrax spores.
A CIA report to Congress made public in January stated that Iraq has aggressively sought advanced conventional arms. "A thriving gray-arms market and porous borders have allowed Baghdad to acquire smaller arms and components for larger arms, such as spare parts for aircraft, air defense systems, and armored vehicles," the CIA stated.
Iraq also has obtained some military goods through the U.N.-sponsored oil-for-food program.
A second CIA report in October on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction stated: "Iraq imports goods using planes, trains, trucks, and ships without any type of international inspections — in violation of UN Security Council resolutions."
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Regards,
Brian

Beware of the lollipop of mediocrity! Lick it once and you'll suck forever.

If guns kill people, then I can blame misspelled words on my pencil.

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