Those Evil, Evil French.

[chequita guevara]

Thanks

France evacuates Americans from Liberia

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER

June 9, 2003 | MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- French military helicopters evacuated Americans and other foreigners from the besieged capital of Liberia at dawn Monday, ferrying them from embassy compounds to a French navy ship in the Atlantic.

The evacuations came as President Charles Taylor's soldiers reported more fighting, with rebel forces bearing down on the western edge of the city, and explosions sounding in the distance.

Helicopters left first from the walled European Union compound, a hillside complex overlooking the ocean for European diplomatic staff in Liberia. The aircraft then continued to the neighboring U.S. Embassy compound, retrieving about 100 Americans who had gathered overnight.

Children at the U.S. Embassy pressed their faces against windows to watch the approaching helicopters. One teenager sat slumped in a corner, cradling an arm wounded by gunfire.

"I'm afraid for my life. I don't want to get killed," said Edna Oshoko, a Liberian-American waiting to be evacuated.

At the European compound, EU forces stood guard as aid workers, ducking against debris from the twirling blades, ran down a rocky hillside and climbed into the aircraft.

"We can't work, and we had to leave," said Isabelle de Bourning, of French aid group Doctors Without Borders, running for the helicopter. "I hope it will be quick."

By midafternoon, France had evacuated 350 people -- including Americans, Europeans, Lebanese, Indians, and others -- to the French ship Orage, which planned to sail to neighboring Ivory Coast, French Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Christian Baptiste said in Paris.

U.S. Ambassador John Blaney and a coterie of Marine guards, U.S. special forces and security contractors planned to remain behind at the American embassy, U.S. authorities said.

The European Union, which operates the water plants for this war-ravaged city of 1 million, now crowded with refugees, also planned to keep a core staff here as long as possible, Parker said.

Liberians, residents of a nation founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century, came out of their shacks and watched silently as the helicopters flew back and forth across the seascape.

The French-led evacuation was being coordinated by E.U. and U.S. Embassy officials because most countries only have honorary counsels in Liberia. Many embassies closed at the start of Liberia's bloody 1989-96 civil war and never reopened.

The evacuation had been planned at least since the weekend, when rebels fighting to oust Taylor made two pushes into the city outskirts.

Liberian forces and local radio reported more fighting on the west side at dawn, as the evacuations began. Explosions sounded occasionally from that direction.

Pro-Taylor militia fighters raced through the city in jeeps with mounted cannons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Stores were shuttered and most gas stations closed.

Thousands of terrified civilians were on the move, heading for the city's eastern suburbs. Others bundled mattresses on their heads and rushed back to the U.S. Embassy complex, where Americans refused them entry during weekend fighting.

"God will help us," a heavyset Liberian woman said, heading up hill toward the U.S. complex with a cloth bundle on her head.

Late Sunday, Liberian government soldiers claimed to have beaten back the latest rebel advance into the capital, driving insurgents deeper into the swamps behind the St. Paul's river bridge marking the city's western entrance.

The rebels' drive against Taylor gained momentum Wednesday, when a joint U.N-Sierra Leone court charged him with war crimes for allegedly aiding Sierra Leone rebels in their vicious 10-year terror campaign.

By Sunday, Taylor controlled little of the country outside of the capital.

The rebels' leader told The Associated Press on Sunday that insurgents will fight their way into the capital unless Taylor yields.

"We want the international community to ask him to step down so as to avoid bloodshed," the chairman of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, Sehon Damate Conneh Jr., said in Rome, where he met with the Catholic Sant'Egidio Community, which mediates world conflicts.

"If Taylor doesn't step down, we would go in."

Taylor vowed in an interview with the AP on Saturday to keep the city. He directed Sunday's fighting from a white-walled compound in the city's main port on the Atlantic Ocean.

The port is on the city's west side, and apparently is the rebels' immediate objective.

Government defense officials said Sunday that rebels made their latest raid across the St. Paul's River in dugout canoes, bypassing the bridge.

Before the drive on Monrovia, Liberia's civil war already had uprooted 1 million people within the country and sent 300,000 fleeing to neighboring countries.

[DaShi]

Damn them!

[DinoDoc]

Well they did have all that military right next door.

[SlowwHand]

Screw the French.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Screw the French.

Some of the single women probably did as a reward for saving thier life.

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Screw the French.

Thankfully the French military don't have a similar attitude towards Americans trapped in Liberia.

[SlowwHand]

French have a crap attitude, and I'm about sick of hearing Che and all the whine-butts knock the U.S. and then turn around and nominate the French for sainthood.

[chequita guevara]

Who's nominating them for sainthood? I'm just having fun with those who hate the French for no good reason than they wouldn't suck Bush's Cheney.

[Spiffor]

Indeed Sloww, I'm sure you'd have loved it if we had evacuated every westerner except the Yanks

[SlowwHand]

Here. Get your blubbering done all at one time, rather than stretching it into a damned day-long ordeal.


Guantanamo May Set Up Execution Chamber
46 minutes ago

By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Guantanamo officials are working on plans to provide a courtroom, a prison and an execution chamber if the order comes to try terror suspects at the base in Cuba, the mission commander said.

Although no new directive has been given and no plan has been approved, a handful of experts are looking at what it will take to try, imprison and, if need be, execute detainees accused of links to Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s fallen Taliban regime or to the al-Qaida terror network.

"We have a number of plans that we work for short-term and long-term strategies but that's all they are — plans," Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller said in a telephone interview Monday.

Isolated on Cuba's eastern tip and out of the jurisdiction of U.S. civilian courts, Guantanamo is a likely location for U.S. military trials.

Last month, officials named Army Col. Frederic Borch III the chief prosecutor and Air Force Col. Will Gunn as chief defense lawyer for the proposed trials. The Pentagon (news - web sites) has listed 18 war crimes and eight other offenses that could be tried, including terrorist acts, and has issued rules for the tribunals.

Borch said he was looking at prosecuting at least 10 possible cases before a tribunal.

Some 680 detainees from 42 countries are in Guantanamo, categorized as unlawful combatants by the U.S. government. It has refused demands from human rights organizations to recognize them as prisoners of war. They have no constitutional rights as non-U.S. citizens being held outside U.S. territory, and none have been formally charged or allowed access to attorneys.

The cases would be decided by a panel of three to seven military officers who act as both judge and jury. Convictions could be handed down by a majority vote; a decision to sentence a defendant to death would have to be unanimous.

Some civil liberties advocates have criticized the process.

"Any further movement in the direction of trying these men in commissions that could have the power to carry out death sentences is cause for great concern," Vienna Colucci of Amnesty International's Washington D.C. office said Monday.

Miller said renovations on a building being considered as a courtroom began in March and likely will be completed next month. The building is being rewired and could be used as a courthouse with facilities for media and military officers.

There also are plans to build a permanent modular detention facility, to imprison detainees who might be sentenced to indefinite terms, and an execution chamber should any be sentenced to death, he said.

"We're getting ready so we won't be starting from scratch," Miller said, speaking while on a visit to Washington D.C.

About five people have been drafting several plans for the last six months, he said. It was unclear how much money it would take to sustain such a permanent mission.

After the detention center opened in January 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld called the detainees "among the most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth." But, after lengthy interrogation, many are thought to be low-level former Taliban fighters and unlikely prospects for commission trials.

[DinoDoc]

Start your own thread Sloww. We're suppossed to be happy at all of the lives saved in this thread.

[alva]

Oops,

wrong thread indeed

[DinoDoc]

Wrong thread.

[Spiffor]

Has Sloww's computer been infected by a spambot who copy / pastes irrelevant articles ?

[oedo]

I´m sure Slowwhand would have refused being saved by the French in a situation like this...

[Spiffor]

Sloww's a Texan anyways. He'll sure have killed all them Blacks with his shotgun in such a situation

[BeBro]

The French evacuated Americans during their operations in the Ivory Coast too. Just to be pedantic

[oedo]

Sloww to the French right after being rescued by them:
"you damn frog eating bastards! bring me back to Liberia immediately or I´ll shoot the **** out of you! screw you all you moronic *******s!...... "

[Menlas]

Great news

Oh, and about Sloww...I cannot even say I'm surprised

[Dr Kellogg]

Vive la France!

[Bereta_Eder]

it has become a habit of the french to save americans' ass.

stop it.

[mrmitchell]

Whut?

French Rescue
Guantanamo Execution

[DAVOUT]

I suspect that the 100 americans have been taken in hostage to be exchanged against a visit to the ranch.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by paiktis22
it has become a habit of the french to save americans' ass.

stop it.

We can't. What could the Americans do if we weren't there to save their asses each time ?
Dang, we are just too generous

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Dr Kellogg
Vive la France!

[Giancarlo]

You know every morning I wake up and say "Thank goodness I am not French. I never understood our disfunctional neighbors. How could anybody be proud of a country that hasn't won a single war in the 20th century?"

[Monk]

Fez,

Which 20th century war did Spain win, then?

[Giancarlo]

Originally posted by Monk
Fez,

Which 20th century war did Spain win, then?

We weren't really involved in any war... neutral in WWII. Well.. Franco said were neutral.. and the allies just bypassed us.

I don't think we were involved in WWI either.

After a three year civil war, Spain won... well that is the Spanish people and soverignity won against an evil communist invasion. Well that is the war we won. We weren't really involved in other wars after that one.

[oedo]

France was involved in Kosovo war.

[Monk]

Fez,

Regarding dysfunctional neighbors, maybe you should choose your words differently in mornings to come, as it seems Portugal is your superior