The French involvement in the Rwandan genocide in 1994 has been something about which the chattering classes have been largely indifferent, much to the annoyance of many Rwandans. The Rwandan government recently unceremoniously threw out the French embassy, and any French institutions with links to the French state, after a court in France issued arrest warrants against several leading Rwandans (including the president) for assassinating former President Habyarimana, whose death was the event that sparked the genocidal murder of 800,000 Tutsi. That was rather like France in 1956 calling for the arrest of the few surviving conspirators behind the (sadly failed) plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler in 1944.
I cannot escape the suspicion that if somehow, however tangentially, the USA was involved then articles about Rwanda would be a far more common thing in the media. That said, I have no doubt that someone, somewhere has concocted a conspiracy theory that it was the CIA, rather than France, who was backing the Bad Guys in 1994, supplying the Interahamwe with machetes from a secret Halliburton machete factory in somewhere in Texas.
“That said, I have no doubt that someone, somewhere has concocted a conspiracy theory that it was the CIA, rather than France, who was backing the Bad Guys in 1994,”
Really, why, the very idea that the CIA would make common cause with genocidal war criminals! It’s madness, madness, I say!
Well there’s cwiminals and criminals
Sweet Mary
When you have the mock up of
The Perfect World
Please get back to us
We are interested , believe me.
But till then, Market forces will have to do.
Now back to Paul Jones blues prog…
Ah who were the Vichy French backing again?
If ya want to play history!!
MAR, I reckon you’ve just stepped into the trap that was set for someone. No doubt the C.I.A’s backed some wicked people but a great many can’t seem to see wickedness anywhere without the C.I.A. being there somewhere, a mentality that the likes o’ that blino Mitterrand profit from greatly. Yeah, evil’s a funny thing, t’aint really evil less the Yankee government’s involved and if the Yankee government ain’t involved, who cares what happens to anyone, aye?
MAR, funny thing about your link. It doesn’t mention a single genocidal war crime. About the only WW2 related thing in there that could be considered criminal was his participation in “treason” on July 20, 1944.
While a violation of the law as it stood at the time, it was not a crime, not a war crime, and not an act of genocide.
MAR, let me try to explain something to you:
The CIA recruits people as agents because the prospective agents have access to something of value. Some eighteen year old draftee who doesn’t want to be on the eastern front and who’s this close to deserting anyway isn’t much of a source: he simply doesn’t have information that we need.
Ask your local cop what kinds of informants he wants. Technically, anybody who provides information to police is a police informant. Now, the bored suburbanite, who calls us every time three Mexicans drive through the neighborhood because she assumes three minority people in one car is automagically a drug deal or drive-by about to happen, is worthless. A dirtbag, on the other hand knows what other dirtbags are doing. Talking to some do-gooder won’t find me the pimp who likes to make his women disappear. To find the pimp, one must speak to the prostitute. To find the guy cooking meth, one must talk to the people who buy it from him.
In other words, to find out what the German High Command is planning, one must recruit generals or aides who will likely be members of the Nazi party. We can either haave the information needed to prevail, or we can have your notions of ideological purity.
Noting your habit of apologizing for mass murderers, however, I can try to sympathize with your sorrow that your side lost WWII. Or, is there another reason for you to bash someone involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler?
Gehlen “worked extensively on the Eastern Front”.
And what was going on there? Lots of Jews and other innocents were exterminated.
But Gehlen, why, he had nothing to do with THAT, I’m sure.
I swear, you doctrinaire Randroids provide hours of kneejerk fun.
Do some research on “Operation Paperclip”. It wasn’t ALL Von Braun and his crew that got snuck into the US by the back door.
Can you prove he participated, MAR?
(Silly question, though. If you could show me a single scrap of evidence, you would have already rather than ask a silly question)
What was Gehlen doing there? Well, he was learning and recording as much as he could about the Soviet armed forces. I can’t help but think that a man who could do this so well would be employed to do this, rather than join mass shooting squads.
I mean, any idiot, crank, drunkard, or psycho can do extermination work, so obviously Germany would employ one of its most talented intelligence officers on extermination work, rather than gathering, recording, and analysing intelligence.
What else was going on there (the Eastern Front), well there were one or two little squabbles between the Russians and the Germans.
Mary Ayn Rand posts extensively on the internet.
And what was going on there? Lots of teenagers are enticed, raped, and occasionally killed.
But Mary Ayn Rand, why, she had nothing to do with THAT, I’m sure.
Gehlen? Of all the shady folks the CIA have dealt with, why pick Gehlen? It’s highly questionable he was involved with ODESSA (he was former Wehrmacht, not SS), but the claim he was one of the conspirators in the plot assassinate Hitler has much more to back it up. That was an own-goal, Mary.
The way this thread has digressed, I’d say your right. Rwanda… it’s not “off topic” anymore.
It’s not just Rwanda. Note how the French want the US to wait for UN approval to invade other countries, but sure don’t do the same when their commercial interests are threatened (Ivory Coast in 2004). And if you are going to criticize the CIA for how it operates, how about the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in NZ in 1985 by the DGSE? In spite of the denials printed in the LA Times in 2004 by Jean-David Levitte (French Ambassador to the US), who can deny the work of Claudia Rosset proved that former French ambassador to the UN and to Morocco, Jean-Bernard Mérimée received vouchers from the Iraqi government to purchase oil? The Quai d’Orsay is every bit as corrupt and immoral as the Americans are accused of being (and wrongly so I might add).
I suppose that if there were any notice taken of French involvement in genocide and atrocity, there would have to be yet another denial and conspiracy industry created. Imagine:
1. Some American crackpot would write a book – let’s call it The Horrifying Fraud as a working title – to point out that the supposed massacres were not caused by bloodthirsty thugs with machetes, axes, hammers, and gasoline bombs, but by clever top-secret CIA weapons designed to mimic the effects of garden implements applied against human flesh. The book would be a top seller; the film rights alone would make the author irretrievably rich.
2. Tedious people would appear on TV and radio interviews claiming that the French are too stupid to have pulled off such a large operation. It could only have been Mossad.
Let’s all save ourselves the pain and trouble, shall we? If something bad happens anywhere, it’s the Yanks’ fault.
At the time I remember a cartoon in Le Canard Enchaine that had a French soldier in Operation Turquoise telling a Hutu Soldier ‘ T’a bien fait, comme on vous a apris” and then complaining about having to bury people he had not killed.
France had pitifully few commercial interests in Rwanda, but it was partof French speaking Africa. If the Tutsi exiles won it would become part of English speaking Africa, a fate worse than death.
According to Foccart’s memoirs. France kept the Biafran war going in Nigeria in the late 60s in order to destroy a big Anglophone country in West Africa. Which as we all know is destined by God to be French. And God, or the French Government which is much the same thing, will kill anyone who gets in the way.
Awwww, c’mon; let’s get this show on the road (with a bit of judicious editing): “It was the CIA, rather than France, who was backing the Bad Guys in 1994, supplying the Interahamwe with machetes from a secret Halliburton machete factory in somewhere in Texas.”
As a small aside I’m sure I read at the time of the Rawandan genocide, that sombody had pieced together the SAM which sparked off the festivities and it came from a batch liberated from the Iraqi’s by the FRENCH at the time of the first gulf war. It was a long time ago I realise but did any one else pick this up,it was in some ridiculously obscure military type magazine
Retards Damocles
The French laughed and supplied lyrics to the killing songs that were played on the radio as the “work” began. “The graves are still half empty!” , cried the announcers day after day. As a government, France has long whored itself out to any terrorist group that came along, believing that feeding the crocodile will make you be the last one eaten.
Clinton had already made a wreakage of the CIA by that time, especially after the outrage in Somalia. They were castrated and could do nothing, like the U.N. soldiers who were reduced from 2500 to 250. “I could have save 1 million people with 2500 men”, the commander at the time had said. God save us all.