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Reply With QuoteGreat!...didn't France do something like this in Vietnam... and then we had to go clean up?
France attacks... (wow)
And so I do believe that this will be the #1 Topic in my International Relations class Tuesday...
Craziness, I am just reading about the recent attacks this morning, gosh I feel so out of the loop... there wasn't any news watching for like 2 days straight for me...(my close buds know how much of a news junkie I am... they banned it from me for 2 days, no joke!
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France Deploys Major Force in Ivory Coast
Sun Nov 7, 6:07 PM ET
By PARFAIT KOUASSI, Associated Press Writer
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - France rolled out overwhelming military force Sunday to put down an explosion of anti-French violence in its former West African colony, deploying troops, armored vehicles, and helicopter gunships against machete-waving mobs that hunted house-to-house for foreigners.
In the second of two stunning days that stood to alter French-Ivory Coast relations — and perhaps Ivory Coast itself — French forces seized strategic control of the largest city, commandeering airports and posting gunboats under bridges in the commercial capital, Abidjan.
French military helicopters swept in to rescue a dozen trapped expatriates from the rooftop of a once-luxury hotel, flying them and their luggage to safety.
The chaos erupted Saturday when Ivory Coast warplanes launched a surprise airstrike that killed nine French peacekeepers and a civilian American aid worker. The government later called the bombing a mistake.
France hit back within hours, wiping out Ivory Coast's newly built-up air force — two Russian-made Sukhoi jet fighters and at least three helicopter gunships — on the ground.
The slain French troops were among 4,000 French peacekeepers and 6,000 U.N. troops in Ivory Coast, serving as a buffer between the rebel north and loyalist south since civil war broke out in September 2002.
The airstrike on the peacekeepers came after government forces last week broke a cease-fire in place for more than year and launched aerial bomb attacks on rebel positions.
The peacekeepers are trying to hold together a nation whose stability is vital in a region where several nations are only just recovering from devastating civil wars in the 1990s. Ivory Coast is the world's top cocoa producer and until the late 1990s stood as West Africa's most prosperous and peaceful nation.
On Sunday, loyalist mobs rampaged in a second day of looting and burning, outraged by the crushing French military response.
Gunshots echoed and smoke billowed over Abidjan and the political capital, Yamoussoukro, as thousands-strong crowds destroyed foreign and locally owned businesses alike. Acrid black smoke rose from barricades of burning tires.
An Associated Press reporter watched a crowd clutching machetes and iron bars enter one neighborhood, demanding if any French lived there.
"If there are any whites in this neighborhood, we're going to get ... them," one man shouted.
"It's better to kill the whites than steal their stuff," another yelled.
About 14,000 French citizens live in Ivory Coast. In Abidjan, they crouched in their homes.
"We are all terrified, and try to reassure each other," one French resident said by telephone. "We have been told by the embassy to stay at home. ... It is a difficult situation to live through."
Abidjan's hundreds of thousands of immigrants from neighboring Muslim nations also went into hiding.
"We're afraid because who knows, maybe this is civil war," said one man, who would identify himself only as Ouedraogo, holed up in a mosque with about 30 others.
The Red Cross said it handled about 150 people wounded in the violence, most from bullets. It had no figures on deaths. State TV showed the bodies of what it said were five loyalists.
French armored vehicles moved into some residential neighborhoods, scattering rioters with volleys of tear gas and percussion grenades. At one spot, Ivory Coast military police watched, unmoving, as French forces confronted the crowds.
French helicopters fired percussion grenades to break up mobs holding the bridges and besieging the French military base in Abidjan.
France landed 300 fresh troops Sunday at the Abidjan airport, that has been in French hands since a gunbattle with Ivory Coast forces a day earlier. About 300 more troops were on the way.
Also, heavily armed French reinforcements moved south from Yamoussoukro to help restore calm in Abidjan.
The U.N. Security Council, in emergency session late Saturday, demanded an immediate halt to all military action in Ivory Coast, and France blamed Ivory Coast's leader directly.
"I think President (Laurent) Gbagbo is personally responsible for what has happened," French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier told France LCI television on Sunday, calling the violence "unexplainable, unjustifiable."
Fearing attempts to overthrow Gbagbo, loyalist leaders called on followers to surround the presidential mansion in a "human shield."
Gbagbo, installed as president by street uprising during an aborted 2000 election, stayed out of sight.
His spokesman told The Associated Press that Ivory Coast was willing to cease fire, and immediately pull forces from the peacekeeper-controlled buffer zone.
The government troops had been in the third day of their first offensive against rebels after breaking a the cease-fire that had held for more than a year.
Ivory Coast will ask the U.N. Security Council for action against France, presidential spokesman Desire Tagro said. "We are faced with aggression by one country against another country. We are going to inform the entire world ... that France has come to attack us."
France rejected the accusation.
"In no way is France there to destabilize Ivory Coast and its institutions or take sides," the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It is above all concerned with preserving constitutional legality. There is no hidden agenda."
While admired by his violently devoted followers, Gbagbo is widely accused by critics of fanning ethnic, political and regional hatreds in Ivory Coast since a 1999 coup opened the way for instability and repeated violence.
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Associated Press reporters Pauline Bax in Yamoussoukro; Nafi Diouf in Dakar, Senegal; and Daniel Balint-Kurti in Abuja, Nigeria, contributed to this report.
Great!...didn't France do something like this in Vietnam... and then we had to go clean up?
good?
I'm so going to shoot you in the head, right after I shoot Bbc84 in the head on the 21st.Originally Posted by SilverGS-t
good?
2000 Trans Am | 2007 Tahoe LTZ
should i report u to the cops right now?
I'll shoot them too if they come.
2000 Trans Am | 2007 Tahoe LTZ
oooooh, ur talkin about paintball, haha
Viva la France!
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts."They say evil prevails when good men fail to act. What they oughtta say is, evil prevails."
World War 3
I hope they asked the UN before they attacked. Just like we are supposed to.
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more then likely not.
um...not likely... UN approval only applies to the US... besides, have you heard ANY of this on ANY news outlet?
"Rational arguments don't really work on religious people. Otherwise, there'd be no religious people."
"Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die."
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Yes, I was being sarcastic.
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I know
"Rational arguments don't really work on religious people. Otherwise, there'd be no religious people."
"Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die."
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Is that "UN approval only applies to the US" comment for real or sarcasm?
And NO, I have NOT heard about this in ANY other news outlet... it's so annoying...
They said "World News Now"
But
Yeah right.
wow, go figure, france attacks unmanned planes and a mob that doesnt have any guns
Maybe that is the reason they couldn't send more military support in the Mid East?
They were preparing for Africa.
I've seen it on the news, not american stations(love directv).
French President Jacques Chirac is a "misleader" who has made a rush to war in the Ivory Coast, causing needless deaths and injuries to innocent Ivorians and to the ill-equipped and poorly supplied French soldiers.
The horrific deaths of these soldiers are causing great sorrow to French mothers and fathers, and sowing seeds of doubt among untold millions of French citizens about this unnecessary war.
This war is a remnant of French militaristic and colonial oppressive power in the world. It is indeed the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There is no threat to France from the Ivory Coast, and Chirac has acted unilaterally, without taking the time to work with our allies to raise a broad international coalition that would pass the global test. He has taken his eye off the ball of the real threat of global terrorism.
He has used excessive force of enormous magnitude in destroying the entire Air Force of the Ivory Coast. He has compounded his original arrogant error of sending troops by sending even more poor, young French soldiers to die on this cruel battlefield. I seriously doubt that Chirac's own children or grandchildren will be sent to fight in this poorly planned, incompetently run war.
Chirac's true motives in starting this unnecessary bloodbath are to steal the rich cocoa crop of the Ivory Coast, and to give no-bid billion-dollar contracts to his business cronies.
It is rumored that Chirac will even resume the military draft to raise enough troops to fight the growing insurgency in this far-off country.
These Ivorian freedom fighters are now threatening the lives of French citizens, and have already caused the death of another foreign national. Thus, their innocent blood will solely be on the hands of President Chirac.
Chirac has appealed for more help from the U.N., and the Security Council has bravely authored several new resolutions and condemnations of the fighting, calling for an end to the conflict. They have backed up their resolutions with the threat of an embargo and the the authorization to use "all necessary means" to to keep the peace. U.N. peacekeeping troops are on the ground there, but have not been involved in any of the hostilities.
I call for French misleader Chirac to prevent further bloodshed by pulling all French troops out of the Ivory Coast. He should give peace a chance, and if that doesn't work, I would be glad to assist him in calling an international summit. At this global summit, we will seek to understand the oppressed feelings of the Ivorian people, and look for ways of waging a more sensitive conflict.
Signed,
John F. Kerry
DooD, where did you find that and when was it dated? Link?
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