The Italian Connection … or the French Trap?

Italy's spymaster identified an Italian occasional spy named Rocco Martino on Thursday as the disseminator of forged documents that described efforts by Iraq to buy uranium ore from Niger for a nuclear weapons program

write Elaine Sciolino and Elisabetta Povoledo as the New York Times journalists ignore rumors of a French connection, aka la grande trappola (the big trap).

What this does is put another nail (as if any were needed) in the coffin that all that Uncle Sam's allies were offering America (whether French or Italian, whether members of the Coalition of the Willing or otherwise) was unfettered and objective friendly advice, and if only America were omniscient, or if only the Bush administration was as close to omniscient as possible, Americans would have heeded that lucid advice, the product of centuries of unequalled experience and wisdom…

(Incidentally, notice the difference between the following IHT sentence and the one printed in its mother paper.)

A breathless three-part series in La Repubblica last week charged that Pollari had disseminated the documents to [the] United States and Britain knowing they were crude forgeries.

Thursday's hearing followed a three-part series in La Repubblica, which said General Pollari had knowingly provided the United States and Britain with forged documents.

(Not that the difference is a big deal. My hunch is that the Paris-based International Herald Tribune printed the story as it was penned in Europe, while the New York Times, as ever willing to provide nuance and refrain from offending anyone [except where American conservatives are concerned], toned it down.)