Fear of the Truth
    By Christian Makarian
    L'Expresse

    Edition of Tuesday 20 February 2007

Confronted with the CIA, European countries flout their own principles. That's what the terrorists want.

    Up until now, critics of the American engagement in Iraq - the main staging ground for the offensive against terrorism George W. Bush has unleashed on a global scale - have had a concrete political impact only in the United States. Intending no offense to its detractors, I maintain that America, so sensitive to the call of the bugle, is an essentially democratic country where those who supported Bush one day can repudiate him the next when faced with the flagrancy of the facts. After the House of Representatives swing to the Democrats in November 2006, this February 16th the same house of Congress has gone on to adopt a resolution that "disapproves" of the dispatch of 21,500 additional soldiers to Baghdad. The president can be as contemptuous as he likes of this vote "that has no binding force." It doesn't change the fact that 17 Republican representatives joined the Democratic majority for the first time to denounce the strategy Bush has pursued in Iraq.

    One notices no procedure of this type from Bush's European allies. To the contrary, on February 14th, a vote came up in the European Parliament and drew hardly any attention. The Eurodeputies adopted the report of the temporary commission charged with investigating the CIA's actions in Europe. More than 1,200 "secret flights" were thus identified, as well as several kidnappings of persons suspected of terrorist activities. Not mentioned was the probable existence of detention centers.

    To restore your confidence, know that the Eurodeputies were unable to provide any material proof, only presumptions! And for good reason, as the governments under suspicion (Austria, Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Poland, but also Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Romania É) distinguished themselves by their "absence of cooperation." Does their silence equate to consent to the CIA's acts? Or is it the shameful expression of uneasiness? In either case, European nations are flouting their own principles. Instead of openly discussing what should be a positive cooperation with the United States, they hypocritically collaborate, closing their eyes to methods that are situated outside their own laws. That's exactly what the terrorists look for, to prove that Westerners never practice what they preach.