Iraqi militants wanted Bush re-elected

[norml]

Former French hostage: Iraqi militants wanted Bush re-elected
By Associated Press, 12/24/2004 06:21



PARIS (AP) French journalists held hostage for four months in Iraq said their militant captors told them they wanted President Bush to win re-election.

In a four-page account of their ordeal, one of the reporters, Georges Malbrunot, also wrote that they saw several other hostages who were later decapitated. The journalists said their captors viewed foreign businessmen working in Iraq as their enemies.

One of the captors from the group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq said Bush's re-election would boost their cause, Malbrunot wrote in Friday's edition of Le Figaro, the French daily he works for.

''We want Bush because with him the American troops will stay in Iraq and that way we will be able to develop,'' Malbrunot cited the captor as saying.

Bush beat Democrat John Kerry to win the presidency last month.

Another captor, who described himself as the group's head of internal intelligence, told the men that the Islamic Army has four enemies: American and coalition troops, ''their collaborators, that is to say Italian businessmen, or even French,'' as well Iraqi police and spies.

Malbrunot wrote that the Islamic Army has 15,000 to 17,000 members and that its hostage-takings are carefully organized.

''There are those who stop people on the roads, those that carry out interrogations, those that keep guard and those that judge,'' he wrote.

snip

[The Sheik]

1. Now thats a nice rebuttal to all those stupid...

republican posters of Bin Laden with a Kerry Edwards sticker...

...if this story is really true.

[norml]

2. The Iraqis are so pro Bush.

''We want Bush because with him the American troops will stay in Iraq and that way we will be able to develop,'' Malbrunot cited the captor as saying.

[mainer]

3. Why isn't this bigger news?

This is the kind of story that must give the neocons ulcers.

Therefore -- kick it!

[mainer]

4. It needs a link. Here it is.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041224/ap_on_re_eu/france_iraq_hostages_2

[norml]

5. Thanks for posting the link.

I should've remembered to do that.