The Holier-Than-Thou Attitude Is So Ingrained in France that Even at the Highest Levels of Its Defense Establishments, It Rears Its Ugly Head

By leaking sensitive intelligence information on the London bombing, writes Elaine Sciolino (merci à Jon Baum et Gregory Schreiber), France's new antiterrorism coordinator broke the cardinal rule of the club and "the bonds of trust".

[Christophe Chaboud] did not stop with his assessments of the explosives and their origins, which, it turned out, were completely wrong [!]. He plunged into politics, railing at the British with an I-told-you-so air that Europe was a more dangerous place because of the war in Iraq.

"The war in Iraq has revived the logic of total conflict against the west," he declared [to France's newspaper of reference], without adding the obvious, that Britain supported the war and France did not.

Neither did he mention the mention the obvious that a framework is being set up for the French élite (it always is, that's a permanent fact of life here) where anything that goes wrong in France in the future (terrorist attacks in this specific case) can be blamed, directly or not, on America, the Anglo-Saxons, and/or the capitalists (or their leaders, if you want to be cute).

The sense of betrayal has been acute. The British overture to its friends was rare in the intelligence and law enforcement world, where information is often shared only on a bilateral basis and only when it benefits a country's own national security. …

So poisonous is the atmosphere that the talk in European intelligence circles is that the British feel that the French may have leaked bad information on purpose.

"My friends in London are furious at the French about this," said the director of a European intelligence agency. "They believe they released this incorrect information deliberately." The result, he added, is "there's not much good will left between them."

What this does is help confirm what I have been observing over the past few years: it puts the lie, at least partially, to the myth — oft repeated by (usually well-meaning) Frenchmen to their Anglo-Saxon counterparts (officals or common citizens) — that too much importance shouldn't be granted to French anti-Americanism (or "anti-Anglo-Saxonism") because under the surface, French citizens are reasonable, and lucid, and unfazed by the ruckus and impervious to the drone.

And where it matters most, the myth goes on, say in matters of intelligence-sharing and in cooperation among the military, the respective French establishments can be found standing steadfastly by the Anglos' side…

I wish it were so, les gars, but I trust this (self-serving) mantra less and less, and I am less and less willing to believe that it has ever been otherwise to a great degree.