Exactly- we are the most powerful nation on earth so who cares what the whiny french cowards have to say. their national flag should be white for "we surrender." bunch of pussies who can't stand up and fight because they: a) want to protect their oil interests b) are afraid of a few isolated islamic militants within their borders c) are french and thus worthless, smelly, rude cowards who run like little girls at the slightest threat send in the troops to iraq and while we're at it, fly a B2 over france and carpet bomb paris, blow up the eiffel tower and show them "no one fucks with the USA!!!"
If we nuke France, it will be the end of the line for bears......go bulls!!! (the french are muy macho, no?)
`in divine mission´- the crusade of George W. Bush http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-242831-,00.html
Yes, the French President Mitterand pretended to protect Human rights in fact he was above all protecting his families investments (for example his son has a hostel chain in Rwanda). This is disgusting. What is also disgusting is while Mr Clinton was making war against Irak, Mrs Clinton was making business by sending arms to Irak through Larfarge US (she was at the head of this company at that time - just remark that Lafarge is French so competition between France and US is just a grand public farce: financial interests has no patriotism, patriotism is just a pretext to make war ... and so business. Another significant example is US Defense Carlyle's group that has taken control of the FIRST right-wing newspaper in France : french governement which is used to give his veto for any small takeover in any media approved it although the most important french defense company was also a candidate for that newspaper. And today Carlyle is publicized by this french company which owns other medias. Do you imagine that a french defense interest took over your important newspaper without protest of US governement ? This would be unbelievable. This takeover coïncidently was made after this newspaper revealed that Ben Laden had been seen with a CIA agent. After that they had to deny that Ben Laden has ever been seen by this agent ... strange no ? And there is Arabian interest in Carlyle, it has been revealed by Wall Street Journal that Ben Laden family was holders of Carlyle. And strange this french newspaper accepted a whole page of advertisment for the Arabian King just to show his portrait saying that he is smart ridiculous even Bush is not so narcissic I have other examples also of strange cooperation of this genre. Competition is a farce: they cooperate on business and faint to make competition because they want people believe they live in a free and competitive world whereas it is a oligopolistic world ! ). Ethic is always given as argument whereas in fact it is just war business !
"France Is Not a Pacifist Country" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030224-423466,00.html
Germany and Belgium came around to the side of the good guys and decided to honor their NATO committments over the weekend. Its nice to see western europe as a whole is not as bad as France.
MondoTrader:`Germany and Belgium came around to the side of the good guys and decided to honor their NATO committments over the weekend. Its nice to see western europe as a whole is not as bad as France.´ not quite yet - the decision that Turkey was being provided with "defensive assistance" was only made after a fundamental re-wording of the US/Turkish application on Nato's second level defensive planning committee which has not included France since Charles de Gaulle withdrew from the alliance's military structures in the 1960s. the final decision requires a unanimous vote of all NATO members - including France. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/international/europe/17IRAQ.html : `The dispute was resolved when it was agreed to have the military staff of the NATO Defense Planning Council, which does not include France, make plans for Turkey's defense, specifically by sending Awacs air reconnaissance planes, Patriot missiles and chemical and biological warfare defense teams to Turkey. France had objected to such a step on the grounds that the Security Council had not yet authorized the use of force against Iraq. Shifting the decision to the planning council rather than NATO itself was a way of circumventing French opposition. Germany went along with the compromise, and the last holdout, Belgium, agreed to go along under pressure from other NATO members. Belgium dropping its long-held demand that any NATO decision be linked to authorization of force by the Security Council. After the announcement tonight, France, Germany and Belgium issued a joint statement reiterating their opposition to military action unless authorized by the Council.´
Chirac pledges to veto new resolution Ian Black in Brussels and Michael White Tuesday February 18, 2003 The Guardian Tony Blair's options for going to war on Iraq were shrinking last night after Jacques Chirac publicly pledged that France would veto an early second United Nations resolution explicitly authorising military action. "There is no need for a second resolution today, which France would have no choice but to oppose," Mr Chirac insisted as he arrived for the European Union's emergency summit in Brussels. He called it "the worst solution". http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,897775,00.html
He left himself some wiggle room (unlike the much more clumsy Schroeder earlier this year). Chirac may have entered on a high, but by the time summit was over, the situation appeared to have changed. As I noted on another thread, referring to an early article from the UK Herald: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13353&perpage=6&pagenumber=14 Chirac finding pro-US stances hard to stomach MICHAEL SETTLE AMID the mocha coffee and the petits four, Jacques Chirac lost the argument. Shortly afterwards at his press conference, he lost his temper too. You could also try "Chirac Slammed After EU Unites to Warn Iraq": http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=578&e=3&cid=578&u=/nm/20030218/ts_nm/iraq_eu_dc
sure there was rewording of agreements and general political haggling, but Germany and Belgium are not the problem and if it wasn't for France there would be no NATO problem.