Keeping Mum About, and Keeping Secrets Regarding, Facts that Disprove the Myth of the Great Yankee Bogeyman

Did you know that "a French general now commands the NATO forces in Afghanistan as well as in Kosovo"?

I sure didn't. And that is probably due at least partly to the fact that France and America's mainstream media alike never make a big deal about items in French-American relations which serve to disprove France's complaints and to prove that France's carping and whining to be exaggerrated.

Which also explains the background to this item:

France and the United States are also working closely together on intelligence, particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

"We do it quietly," said a French official who asked to remain anonymous.

"We had to work on our intelligence very hard during the 1990s, when there was a wave of terrorist attacks on French targets from Algerian Islamists. We have the linguists and we have the expertise. And the U.S. knows that."

No wonder the French keep quiet about the ways in which "Paris and Washington have … been working much more closely together". Keeping such relationships secret (i.e., the positive ones) help to perpetuate France's self-serving myth of the great American bogeyman, abroad as well as amongst the populace.

By way of a post-scriptum, let us add this from Judy Dempsey's International Herald Tribune article:

Antonio Missiroli, a NATO expert at the Institute for Security Studies in Paris, said, "There is a gap between the rhetoric and the practice of what France does because this reflects the old differences between the Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry.

"The French military have their boots on the ground and have to be pragmatic while the Foreign Ministry has traditionally pursued a Gaullist view that wants a Europe, depending on the issues, more independent from the U.S."