MISSING FRENCH JOURNALIST IN IRAQ BEGS FOR HELP ON VIDEO

French journalist Florence Aubenas, missing for nearly two months in Iraq, on Tuesday made a desperate plea for help [scil., her life] on a video broadcast, saying her health was "very bad."

"I am French. I am a journalist with Libération. Please help me. My health is very bad. I'm very bad psychologically also," the gaunt and exhausted-looking journalist pleaded in English on the undated video, of which AFP obtained a copy.

The camera zoomed in and out several times, showing Aubenas, who previously covered conflicts in Kosovo, Algeria, Rwanda, and Afghanistan, looking dishevelled with her unwashed hair hanging down over her eyes.

"This is urgent now. Help me!" the 43-year-old hostage said. "I ask especially Mr Didier Julia, the French deputy. Please Mr Julia. Help me! It's urgent. Mr Julia help me!"

Whoa. Especially Mr. Didier Julia? M. Julia, you may recall, was behind an earlier bizarre and unsuccessful attempt to free Messrs. Chesnot et Malbrunot. M. Julia was widely condemned at the time although there was cross-reporting on his real commission in Iraq, unusual for the one-story-fits-all French press.

For those who maintain the fairy tale that Mlle. Aubenas and her Iraqi translator Hussein Hanun al-Saadi are the guests of Iraqi patriots, first we would note that the patriots took their fight to the ballot box on January 30th of this year, and second we would point to this recent article by Christopher Hitchens:

Iraq, Muslim militants place bombs in the mosques of those Muslims they regard as heretics. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, too, the Salafi and Wahhabi extremists commit murder against Muslims they deem unclean or unorthodox. And in the West, there are non-Muslims who excuse such atrocities as "resistance."

Mr. Hitchens' point, these are terrorists. To call them insurgents, resistance, the militant "Arab street", or Boy Scouts, or pixies is to excuse their crimes. And to excuse is to collude. Please take note, M. Barnier. Please take note, M. Raffarin.

If the above doesn't convince, then ring up Mlle. Aubenas. She is under no illusions about her kidnappers.

This is a common thing - the islamo facist terrorists are always called by some other name as long as they are only killing Americans or Israeli's - when they start taking out Frenchie's then they transform from la Resistance into terrorists

As many times as I see it it never fails to amuse me so

Michael Moore calls them freedom fighters and Minute Men. Yes, an incredible insult to the American Minute Men but I would SO Love to hear what he would call them if they grabbed his fat ass.

"Michael Moore's last words: Yes, I'd like fries with that".