You're certainly doing a creditable impression of a jackass here.

You explicitly told Raoul that his opinion was unwelcome and his input was rude because his country's position differed with the position taken by an American administration that you support.

He is one of the most mannerly people who posts here. Would you really want a post-for-post comparison between the two of you for content and civility?

If you have a fixation on the behavior of the French, German and Belgian governments, you deal with it. They are acting like independent nations, not like puppet states of the US. There are nations that agree with us, and nations that don't, but with whom we still have political philosophy and many interests in common. As a World Leader, we need to deal with that and work with it in the context of international cooperation, not have a tantrum.

Their behavior may have been more helpful to the Bush Administration than we realize, for they gave some people an outside group to blame for a war the Administration wanted to wage from the outset.

If other founding members of the UN want to be sure that the letter of the Oil for Food program's UN regulations is followed, that is, to assure that there are no WMD hanging around, let them. Or are you afraid that there will be no WMD, and the US's public justification for war will be seen as either erroneous or duplicitous?

If I were you, I'd worry more about the apparent espionage activity in Russia than any diplomatic posturing by the French. And I'd remember that the Belgians' political memory is formed by two invasions of their homeland in the last century and their colonial disaster in the Congo.

I will not even pretend I will ever understand Germany. My experience with German exchange students has only deepened my bewilderment.

"Axis of Weasels" sounds awfully clever to American ears. Unfortunately, not everyone speaks English and can understand the pun, in which case it only sounds rude and petulant.

Take your blood pressure medicine and go for a walk. I worry about you.

Regards--
Mary Anne