[kj] ot - freedom fries recant

[fluwdot at earthlink.net]

Jamie Wilson in Washington
Wednesday May 25, 2005
Guardian

It was a culinary rebuke that echoed around the world, 
heightening the sense of tension between Washington and 
Paris in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. But now the US 
politician who led the campaign to change the name of french 
fries to "freedom fries" has turned against the war.

Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina 
who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom 
toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper 
the US went to war "with no justification".

Mr Jones, who in March 2003 circulated a letter demanding 
that the three cafeterias in the House of Representatives' 
office buildings ban the word french from menus, said it was 
meant as a "light-hearted gesture".

But the name change, still in force, made headlines around 
the world, both for what it said about US-French relations 
and its pettiness.

Now Mr Jones appears to agree. Asked by a reporter for the 
North Carolina News and Observer about the name-change 
campaign - an idea Mr Jones said at the time came to him by 
a combination of God's hand and a constituent's request - he 
replied: "I wish it had never happened."

Although he voted for the war, he has since become one of 
its most vociferous opponents on Capitol Hill, where the 
hallway outside his office is lined with photographs of the 
"faces of the fallen".


"If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in 
this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, 
and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is 
wrong," he told the newspaper. "Congress must be told the 
truth."