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Dave Hinz (in ) said:

| On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:30:37 -0600, Morris Dovey
| wrote:
|
|| How so? They were a major help at the battle of Yorktown,
|
| OK, so what about the _last_ 230 years?
|
|| they were an ally in two world wars and during the police action in
Korea,
|
| "ally" in the definition of "load to carry", yes.

The attitude of the time as best I can recall was close to "He ain't
heavy - he's my brother". By the time the US entered the war all of
the other allied participants had already taken a beating. I don't
recall anyone ever singling out the French as especially burdensome. I
_do_ recall disgust with the Vichey government and total admiration
for the Resistance, along with gratitude for the willingness of French
civilians to take enormous risks to help allied aviators and GI's
avoid capture by axis forces.

|| they warned us about Indo-China,
|
| They _caused_ the cluster**** in Vietnam.

They also warned that we would also find ourselves in over our heads -
as we realized after too many of our young men (also) were killed.

|| they shed tears with us on and after 9-11,
|
| So did everyone else that matters.

Exactly who, in your opinion, does not matter? There were a lot of
people in the world who were not sorry to see the US take one on the
chin. To say that those people do not matter would seem a most
dangerous form of denial.

|| and they did their best to tell us that our intelligence on Iraqi
|| WMDS was incorrect so that we would not make ourselves look like
|| liars and/or idiots to the rest of the world.
|
| Funny; they _sold_ a bunch of those WMDs to Iraq, so no wonder they
| didn't want us looking too closely at the situation. You _do_
| acknowledge the tens of thousands of Kurds killed by the Iraquis
| with WMDs sold to them by France, do you not?

My understanding is that the US also provided Sadam's government with
weaponry. It would be comforting to be able to believe that we weren't
guilty of enabling those behaviors; but I doubt it'd be very
realistic. I don't think we're in a very good position to criticize
other arms suppliers on this issue - because we all screwed up.

|| What have you noticed that I missed? Or does all of the above
|| constitute "askin' for it"?

IMO, even if I accepted every assertion you made, that would still not
provide any kind of sane justification for advocating action of any
kind against the French.

| The French are useless on a good day.

To you, perhaps. I don't see 'em that way - and I confess that I've
never felt that I had so many friends that I could afford to discard
any.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html