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Another nice catch from the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross brings into sharp relief another aspect of the danger to national security that Hillary Clinton’s secret e-mail system created. Chief of staff Cheryl Mills lost her Blackberry in March 2010, a little over a year into Hillary’s tenure at State, which had been used with the unauthorized and non-secure homebrew Hillary server. She reached out to the State Department to inform a familiar figure of the loss: Records obtained by The Daily Caller through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show [Cheryl] Mills revealed that she lost her Blackberry in...

The supposed “responsibility to protect” has taken America into a war on the side of the ultimate killers of innocents. (See also "Rebel Libya: ‘Brothers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, now is the time to defend your land!" on the Tatler.) In the absence of any evident national interest justification for bombing Libya, the Obama administration is said to have been motivated by the so-called responsibility to protect — or “R2P” per the wonkish English acronym. In American discussions, “R2P” has quickly come to be associated with Obama advisor Samantha Power. But “R2P” did not emerge full-grown from the...

Sarkozy, then-French FM say the choice is "between an Iranian bomb and a bombing of Iran;" France pressed EU to impose sanctions. French then-foreign minister Bernard Kouchner warned that there could be a war against Iran, according to a US diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks this week. The cable, dated September 18, 2007, explains that "three weeks after [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy publicly warned about the 'catastrophic choice between an Iranian bomb and a bombing of Iran'...Kouchner publicly observed that given Iran's behavior 'we must prepare for the worst, in other words, war,' and called for EU sanctions against Teheran."

President Nicolas Sarkozy will travel to the Middle East next week, his office announced, as France kept up the pressure on Israel to end fighting in Gaza despite Israel's rejection of a temporary truce. Sarkozy will meet Monday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah before dining with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem. Continuing his whirlwind tour, the French president to travel to Syria and Lebanon the following day, Tuesday, for further talks with regional leaders, the president's office said in a statement late Wednesday.

David Miliband joined a chorus of Western leaders to condemn Russia, accusing the Kremlin of jeopardising European security by recognising Georgia's two breakaway regions. Speaking in Ukraine's capital, Kiev, the Foreign Secretary said that Russia was "more isolated, less trusted and less respected" as a result of its actions in Georgia. These breached a United Nations Resolution, approved by Moscow last April, which reaffirmed Georgia's sovereignty over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Mr Miliband placed the onus for avoiding a new Cold War firmly on President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia. "The Russian President says he is not afraid of a new...

BACKSTORY 11-08-2002 Dateline: PARIS American billionaire investor George Soros, on trial in a 14-year-old insider trading case, told a court Friday that he didn't have privileged information when he bought shares in French bank Societe Generale. Soros and two other businessmen are on trial at the Paris Criminal Court, accused of benefiting from insider knowledge when they bought the bank's stock in 1988 before a failed takeover that pushed up the price. "I have been in business all my life and I think I know what is insider trading and what isn't," said the president of Soros Fund Management, in...

Commentary by philosopher Andre Glucksmann A word is enough to raise a storm. Commentators' inkwells began to boil over and the West European governments declared their disapproval in a very undiplomatic manner. By citing the risk of war entailed by Iran's desire to build the bomb, and the need to prepare for this in order to avert it, did [French Foreign Minister] Bernard Kouchner commit blasphemy, displaying his naivety and lack of professionalism? He was promptly admonished by his counterparts, Sergey Lavrov in Moscow and [Massimo] D'Alema in Rome ("we must not talk about war now.") It was the same...

Ahmadinejad at Columbia provided the entertainment, but Sarkozy at the U.N. provided the substance. On the largest possible stage — the U.N. General Assembly — President Nicolas Sarkozy put Iran on notice. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, had said that France could live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. Sarkozy said that France cannot. He declared Iran's nuclear ambitions "an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world." His foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, had earlier said that the world faces two choices — successful diplomacy to stop Iran's nuclear program or war. And Sarkozy himself has no great hopes...

You said 'war', Mr Kouchner, and you were not mistaken... Commentary by philosopher Andre Glucksmann Sept. 25, 2007 A word is enough to raise a storm. Commentators' inkwells began to boil over and the West European governments declared their disapproval in a very undiplomatic manner. By citing the risk of war entailed by Iran's desire to build the bomb, and the need to prepare for this in order to avert it, did [French Foreign Minister] Bernard Kouchner commit blasphemy, displaying his naivety and lack of professionalism? He was promptly admonished by his counterparts, Sergey Lavrov in Moscow and [Massimo] D'Alema...

New French Foreign Policy Takes Shape September 22, 2007 Asharq alAwsat Amir Taheri Earlier this week, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner set the cat among the pigeons by announcing that the Western democracies had to prepare for war to stop the Islamic Republic in Tehran from developing a nuclear arsenal. To be sure, Kouchner, always a man of peace, did not present war as the only option. In fact, he went out of his way to insist that every effort should be made to resolve the crisis through peaceful means. What was refreshing in Kouchner's comment was the fact that...

The Talk Shows Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and filmmaker Ken Burns.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Mrs. Clinton and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Mrs. Clinton. THIS WEEK (ABC): Mrs. Clinton and Burns. LATE EDITION (CNN) : Mrs. Clinton; Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt; French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner; Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.; former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

WASHINGTON: For anyone still doubting the striking turnabout in U.S.-French relations, it was enough to see the reception Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner got during a speech here before his meetings Friday with top Bush cabinet officials. Kouchner, who made news this week by warning that a failure to resolve mounting tensions with Iran could mean war, had barely begun speaking Thursday in a crowded hotel ballroom when several antiwar protesters jumped up and unfurled pink banners that read: "Bush + Kouchner = Warmongers!" One woman tried to climb onto the stage. Guards escorted the protesters away as they shouted, "No...

MOSCOW, Sept. 17 — France sent another strong message to Iran on Monday, announcing that it would work to set up European sanctions modeled on those by the United States if the United Nations Security Council failed to agree on tougher measures. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France, en route to Moscow for his first meeting with his Russian counterpart on Tuesday, emphasized “credible” sanctions as the best tool that the West has to resolve the standoff diplomatically. He had caused some alarm Sunday by discussing the prospect of war with Iran; he later softened his tone somewhat, but not...

France's foreign minister warned Sunday that the world should prepare for war if Iran obtains nuclear weapons and said European leaders were considering their own economic sanctions against the Islamic country. Negotiations and two sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions have failed to persuade Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program, a process that can produce fuel for nuclear power plants as well as material used in atomic weapons. Iran insists its atomic activities are aimed only at producing energy, but the U.S., its European allies and other world powers suspect Iranian authorities of seeking nuclear weapons. Foreign Minister Bernard...

PARIS - European leaders are considering their own economic sanctions against Iran over its refusal to forgo parts of its nuclear program, France's foreign minister said Sunday, indicating that U.N.-imposed penalties have not been effective. Bernard Kouchner, speaking on RTL radio, also warned that the international community should be prepared for the possibility of war in the event that Iran obtains atomic weapons. The U.S., its European allies and other world powers suspect Iranian authorities of seeking nuclear weapons, although Tehran insists its atomic activities are aimed only at producing energy. Negotiations and two sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions...

World should brace for possible war over Iran: France Sep 16 02:44 PM US/Eastern The world should brace for a possible war over the Iranian nuclear crisis but seeking a solution through talks should take priority, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Sunday. "We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," he said in an interview broadcast on French television and radio. "We must negotiate right to the end," with Iran, he said, but underlined that if Tehran possessed an atomic weapon, it would represent "a real danger for the whole world." "We are trying...

The nuclear Iranian crisis forces the world "to prepare for the worst" which "is war," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Sunday evening, while emphasizing that negotiations should still be the preferred course of action. Kouchner, quoted by French daily Le Figaro, added that "Iran does whatever it pleases in Iraq ... one cannot find in the entire world a crisis greater than this one."

PARIS: After years of shunning involvement in a war it said was wrong, France now believes it may hold the key to peace in Iraq, proposing itself as an "honest broker" between the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions. The shift was one of the most concrete consequences yet of the thaw in French-American relations following the election in May of President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose administration no longer feels bound by the adamant refusal to take a role in Iraq that characterized the reign of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

...Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner arrived in Baghdad on Sunday becoming the first senior French official to visit Iraq since the beginning of the US-led war in 2003 which France vigorously opposed. Kouchner's visit could be seen as a sign of warming relations between the US and the French government, under newly-elected President Nicolas Sarkozy. "At the invitation of Mr. Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, the foreign minister has just begun an official visit to Baghdad," the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "Bernard Kouchner is in Baghdad to express a French message of solidarity with the Iraqi people and...

It was Donald Rumsfeld who divided Europe into “old Europe” and “new Europe”. Old Europe means the hardcore of countries which comprise the European Union. Of those, France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg were hardline opponents of the Iraq war. New Europe incorporated the swathe of ex-communist countries which entered the European Union in 2005 and 2007. Where Britain, and Spain – longstanding EU nations which joined the Iraq War Coalition – or Italy and Holland, founder members which did the same, fit on this analysis is unclear. Europe, of course, has never accepted any such division. Though Jacques Chirac told...