OK, so professional War On Terror bullshitter Alexis Debat worked for super-War On Terror bullshitter Amir Taheri. Those of you who use this blog’s Updated category to check corrections will have noticed that I have corrected some posts about Pakistan that used material from his writings. But I’m struggling to make out the pattern; Debat’s nonsense appears to have been self-consistent in repeatedly suggesting war with Iran was not imminent, but already underway.
This chimes with some super-rightwing publicists, notably Michael Ledeen, but the curious thing is that Debat doesn’t seem to have hyped the notion of Iranian attacks on US or allied forces or interests; more the other way round. Long-time TYR collaborator Laura Rozen has obtained his CV, with critical comments from the French Embassy (pdf), as part of this article.
Interestingly, Debat claimed to have been part of the French terrorist-financing research group that later starred in the Clearstream scandal, if I’m not very much mistaken; but that too was bullshit. Here’s the Debatology ur-text; he was bullshitting about the Christmas 2005 riots, too, and claimed to work for the Institut Montaigne as well as having a doctorate from the Sorbonne. Neither claim was true. He also claimed to work for Claude Bebear at AXA, after Bebear retired.
However, this interview from 2005 surprisingly doesn’t show him pushing the neocon France-is-on-the-brink line, nor does this, even in the Moonie Times. Instead he sounds a lot like the policy Claude Bebear’s commission came up with..
Here he is, on the subject of the liquid bomb plot in 2006; he fingers one Matiur Rehman as the “interface between the brain and muscles of Al-Qa’ida”, on the basis of presumably invented Pakistani sources. However, someone of that name was indeed arrested in Pakistan; one hopes he knew of this, rather than being the source himself.
So far, I conclude that rather than being a cunning plan, he’s actually what he seems to be; a chancer who rose by agreeing with anyone else in the studio.
He was also at the Nixon centre, which is generally a force for restraint (I mean, right now and everything). Looks like he just followed whichever path his line of bullshit opened up for him.