By RICH Pascal
Saturday October 16, 2004 (Release - 06:00)
Washington, of our correspondent
The journalist of the New York Times Magazine has go with John Kerry in a hotel of Santa Monica, California. There are water bottles of Evian on the table. The candidate sees them. Aïe! Evian... France... Not good. It hastens to ask its attached of press: "Can I have my water?", and specifies with the journalist: "I hate this trick, they stuff it minerals." The journalist, Matt Bai, request which water it prefers. "Of the good old woman American water 100 %", answer Kerry.
Country hooligan. Even if that does not jump to the eyes, France is present in the American election campaign. Into negative. The two candidates almost never pronounce the "word out of F", but they always have it at the head when they are inveighed on the foreign politics. When Bush shows Kerry to want to subject its decisions to the agreement of other countries, it is in France that it thinks. That has him even escaped at the beginning of the month, at the time of a meeting in Pennsylvania: "I will never subject our national safety to an international test. The use of the troops for the defense of America should never be subjected to the veto of country like France." The French ambassador Jean-David Levitte telephoned the White House "to announce his" surprise "".
In the spirits of many republicans, since the quarrel of at the beginning of 2003 on Iraq, France joined the rows of the "countries hooligans". Criticisms had been calmed, but in this end of campaign venom antifrançais runs again with flood. "One returned one year behind", is afflicted a French diplomat. The preserving commentators are given some to heart joy. "Kerry speaks French!", it "resembles to a French", it "likes the French wine", it "has a French cousin" (Brice Lalonde, note)... The democratic senator of Massachusetts tries to avoid the blows, awkwardly, while avoiding speaking French, by criticizing the water of Evian, or by exchanging in the course of countryside his scratched ties Hermès for of Vineyard "made in the USA".
"With the bed with Saddam". Mentioned in the report/ratio of the American inspectors on Iraq made public last week, the alleged bribes, or rather of oil, that Saddam Hussein would have offered to some politicians and businessmen French fed a new offensive against the Hexagon. In the New York Times, the preserving chronicler William Safire published Wednesday an article whose title implies that the leaders in Paris had been bought by the Iraqis. Impossible to circumvent Bill O' Reilly, star of the preserving network Fox News, is not in remainder. "Proof is made that France was well with the bed with Saddam", it claironné on its chain. "John Kerry declared that it would court countries like France to help us in Iraq, adds it on his site Web.Maintenant, you can decide who, of the two candidates, has the best international vision. Jacques Chirac is an enemy of the United States, and if you do not believe it, we can help you."
The embassy of France tries to answer each new attack. But its means are limited. The diplomats comfort themselves by reading the articles devoted to the vexations of Bill O' Reilly, continued by a former employee for sexual harassment.