Its also interesting that they wrote a book about Saddam - which took a very "French" position on the issue. Mehtinks that their connections with the former regime were how they got kidnapped and why they got released.
Saddam Hussein, total portrait
George Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot

Andrew Sullivan points to for an explanation of the journalists' release. Basically they decided that having France change her mind and join the US coalition was maybe not such a great idea.

Yep. We can expect France to be even more contrary (if that is possible) now that the journalists have been released. Yes, negotiation (a cynic might suggest heavy bribes knowing French expertise in that area) works and 'anglo-saxon' beligerence is never an answer. I can hardly wait for Chiraq's crooning and preaching towards our ignorant leaders.

Do not be surprised if money changed hands, and that these kidnappers are not as politically motivated as the press makes them out to be. Iraq seems to be falling into the same pattern that exists in many Latin American countries. I'm too lazy to look for the link, but I seem to remember Zayed at Healing Iraq discussing the kidnapping phenomonam.

>>When Hamas, Hezbollah and a bevy of otherwise insanely violent Caliphascists are falling over themselves to denounce the kidnappers and call for the hostages release,

We should recall that both Hamas and Hezbollah denounced the Berg decapitation as "appalling and un-Islamic." So there is a precedent for this sort of thing.

Yes, negotiation (a cynic might suggest heavy bribes knowing French expertise in that area) works and 'anglo-saxon' beligerence is never an answer. I can hardly wait for Chiraq's crooning and preaching towards our ignorant leaders.

Well, it's true, isn't it?

I think that it's pretty clear that France's policy of dialogue with groups like Hamas (the EU's refusal to classify Hamas as a terrorist group is dialogue, no?) and her laisser-faire attitude with the like of Al-Jazira could have something to do with this.

While I don't approve of this morally questionable stance, France has made some "friends" in the region.

Maybe the right to veto and her seat on the Security Council played a role.

All France would need to do is tighten the leash a bit and they'd have groups from Seine-St-Denis to Damascus pleading for the hostages' release.

... "and her laisser-faire attitude with the like of Al-Jazira"

err... are you implying that one should *not* let Al J operate as it wishes, or that the US should (or does) suppress media outlets which don't reflect it's views favourable to it? Surely any just government should have a "laissez-faire" attitude to the press in general, regardless of editorial inclination.

A_t, what I'm saying is that it's likely that a high percentage of France's 5+M muslims have access to Al-Jazira and the government seems to tolerate it. Moreover, they take no action to supress it at the source.

In Canada, Al-Jazira was denied a licence. What they do in the US (or would do, if the said channel was an option in the satellite bouquet), I can not say.

Al-Jazira is only of interest to this discussion because (a) they seem to have some very good contacts, contacts that most western governments would love to know about and (b) they can greatly influence muslim popular sentiment.

Well, it's true, isn't it?

Only if you don't care about ending the cycle of kidnapping, and don't care about future victims of the kidnappers.

Belmont Club has an interesting account of the diplomatic scrambling by France that preceded the release. There may or may not have been a cash payoff, but there almost certainly was a diplomatic payoff of some kind.

Remember, you get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish. Did France punish the kidnappers? Assuredly not. Did France reward them? Almost certainly so.

Carr: "a rather surprise 'ending' nonetheless given the grisly fate that has been meted out to just about every other hostage in Iraq."

Not in the least surprising if you know the ME (which the CIA doesn't).

Kidnapping is a way of life there, has been for centuries. Tribes constantly hold each other to ransom this way, often to avoid having to fight on a big scale. It's a little like the old chivalric idea of single combat. When rich foreigners stray into the region, the temptation to tweak the principle is overwhelming, since you don't run the same risk of retaliation as you do when it's the next-door tribe's chief's daughter who is seized. Beheading is no big deal either: it's SOP for Middle Easterners and some believe it is a more manly way of dying (by the sword) than being shot, so forget all that "barbaric" stuff too.

The chaos into which Iraq has fallen since the occupation encourages the growth of paramilitary gangs of extortionists. Typical of the western media's insistence on trying to force a non-white country into its own mould that they should present everything in terms of religion, national resistance (Iraq isn't a real nation, BTW), "cultural clashes" and other academic syntheses. Ever heard of bandits? Ever heard of racketeers who masquerade as political rebels? Take a trip up to Belfast if you need a refresher course. But you'd think the US was a little more clued up about organised crime.

I seem to recall that the KGB regarded France as the weak link in Nato during the Cold War.

The attitude from France is, I sense, "don't kill us, kill the Americans instead!" These are the people John Kerry regards as allies!

This whole French hostage crisis looks like a propaganda stunt by the French government, unlike the very real, and all too tragic Russian school tragedy.

10 Arabs in the school massacre, in a school full of Christians, for this took place in a Christian region unconnected with the Chechen conflict.

Oh yeah, God forbid France changes its mind and join the U.S. Its fearsome arsenal and military would make such a crucial diference. Even John Kerry believes it : once the French agree, it will all be different. For starters, we'll figure out where the border with Cambodia is. And then...

We actually know very little of what happened with these particular hostages, and NOTHING the press says about these events is without purposefull bias.

We do know that these nasty people kill all but their own families to get what they want.

No, probably not the handywork of Hollywood executives but a rather surprise 'ending' nonetheless given the grisly fate that has been meted out to just about every other hostage in Iraq.

this was gay