French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who cancelled a trip to Canada to tackle the crisis, said the violence was "unacceptable".
President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday called for calm, warning that an escalation would be "dangerous".
Typical French. Their capital is being burned to the ground and the strongest response that the govt. will muster is complaining and putting on a face of defiance. If the Islamics were to pull this kind of crap, it would be hunting season if the govt. response were this weak.
The French will be surrendering to the muslims, as they've done historically in other wars. In a while there will be no France OR Europe as we knew it.
Wasn't this Prime Minister deVillepin bashing Bush and just outrageous not less than a year or so ago? Very arrogant and patronizing? I'd love to get some of those quotes back up now. Anyone have them? I remember Oreilly realling going after this guy.
Their capital is not being "burned to the ground."
Also, it's interesting to note that Jaques Chirac served in Algeria during the unpleasantness there. I don't like him, but I think that experience has given him a pretty good idea of what's at stake here, and I rather doubt that he, nor the rest of the French, are really going to roll over.
They have to know the threat presented by the Islamic immigrants -- it's a problem that's been growing for a number of years. That being the case, I begin to wonder if the French government would rather not quell these riots right away, so as to build a political case for expulsions.