"Dominique is not a person who lies; he is a character of successive truths"

Dominique de Villepin est-il crédible dans ce rôle d'alternative à droite ?

ominique de Villepin, embroiled in the Clearstream affair, "wounded" by some of Nicolas Sarkozy's words at Dakar in Africa, and using the maxim of his favorite hero, Napoléon ("la meilleure défense, c'est l'attaque"), wants to become the leader of the majority's opposition to the president, writes Christophe Jakubyszyn…

A bit hard to do, though, as général Philippe Rondot has just confirmed that Villepin was the scandal's "mousquetaire" (as the plot's insiders called the prime minister at the time).

More revealing than anything, though — especially in view of all the ways that Bush and the members of his administration have been dragged through the mud as liars by everybody in France, from common citizens to élites and journalists — is the fact that not only are the friends of the "musketeer" allowed to present his lying in a positive light (in Ariane Chemin's story of Villepin's tumultous summer), but that Le Monde lets them get away with it, unchallenged.

Là-dedans, allez savoir ce qui est vrai ou faux, soupire un autre [ami]. Dominique n'est pas un personnage qui ment, c'est un personnage de vérités successives. Peut-être que son bras droit ignore ce que fait son bras gauche. Il est tout le temps dans ses paradoxes.

So with an American, we have treachery of the highest degree, deliberate and malicious lies, and evidence that is damning to the fullest; with a Frenchman (or an internationalist of any nationality), we get the high-falutin' psychological "explanation" from his "sighing" friends (see, these wizened friends are trying to show indulgence although they know the poor man hardly deserves it) that he "is not a person who lies; he is a character of successive truths. Maybe his right arm ignores what his left arm is doing. He is always inside his own paradoxes."