Watched Kenneth Timmerman on C-Span2

He can't pronounce "nuclear" consistently, but he seems quite knowledgable. He was speaking at the Middle East Forum about his last two books, Preachers of Hate and The French Betrayal of America. He also wrote Shakedown, about Jesse Jackson's career of squeezing large businesses for "contributions."

Two stories he told impressed me. First Chirac called Bush and not only said the French would support a Security Council Resolution authorizing removal of Saddam, but offered to meet and make plans for coalition actions, apparently for the purpose of embarrassing us. Timmerman states that France had contracts for $100 billion in Iraqi oil that depended on keeping Saddam in power.

The second story was about Ghadafi watching the clips of Saddam being examined by the medic after he was captured. He says that, according to a person who was in the room, Ghadafi "turned white" and he shortly thereafter offered to give up his nuclear program.

Chirac, he says, is a creature of Saddam and other Arab connections who have funded his political career. De Villepin is an admirer of Napoleon and longs for the return of the France to its glory days of authoritarian government. He quotes Villepin as telling a U. S. Senator, "The problem with you Americans is that you don't read Machiavelli. Of course, we lied to you at the U.N.! Of course we lied to you about Iraq! That's what big boys do when they play politics."

What I don't understand is why this book hasn't gotten more attention, since it corroborates so much of what we suspected about France and raises extremely troubling issues about the usefulness of working through the U.N. as John Kerry proposes. None of his reporting hasn't been challenged that I've been able to find, just ignored. I can see why the major media would ignore him, because he is politically incorrect and his books are published by Crown Forum, a conservative publisher. There is a review by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. in the Washington Post reproduced on the Amazon page, but it dismisses Timmerman's case with a reference to an article in The Nation which claims that France's offers of support were conditioned on "evidence of Saddam's terminal unwillingness to get rid of weapons of mass destruction." Timmerman isn't interpreting events, however, he's reporting, and he doesn't include any strings attached to Chirac's offer. Nor does Nye's explanation explain De Villepin's frank admission that his government had lied to us.

The review is dismissive, but doesn't really offer any reason why the reader should suspect Timmerman's honesty. The implied criticism is "This guy's a conservative. Don't trust him." Nye notes that Timmerman doesn't reveal his sources, but admits that he probably shouldn't. The readers who reviewed it are split between five stars and one. The pans have phrases like "Yet another neocon jew tomb (sic)" and "Too Provocative." I wonder how many really read the book. I can't imagine most liberals shelling out the money for a book with a title that challenges one of their most cherished beliefs, that we should have listened to France about Iraq. Timmerman doesn't have Newsweek flacking for him, like Bob Woodward, but I think his book sounds a lot more important.