URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1491567,00.html
Wednesday May 25, 2005
The Guardian
French fries protester regrets war jibe
Jamie Wilson in Washington
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."
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