Warning: stern lecture approaching
Apologies if this comes across as hostile. I'm not looking for a fight, and I'm doing my best to keep this polite. However I've got a lot to say...
Sai: since when is stating an opinion meddling?
If it's going to sway somebody's opinion it's probably a good thing (hearing a different perspective can hardly be called a bad thing).
Buying votes or election fraud would be a different story.
Threatening economic sanctions or sponsoring coups would be a different story. I don't suppose that's what you suggested by "write to your government and have them do something about it"? (there are
certain governments - that shall remain nameless here - that do that sort of stuff, you know...)
About "the French":
That list that shows certain French
individuals, and others who are supposed to have received "oil vouchers"? That list also contains the names of Americans by the way - but their names have been blacked out "for privacy reasons".
Also - I may be wrong about this, but - if I understand correctly, the allegations of fraud came from someone by the name of Ahmed Chalabi...
Also: hands off the damn French. I don't always agree with French policies (e.g. vetoeing a request for Patriot batteries by Nato-ally Turkey), but they were perfectly in their rights to say "no" to that adventure. The US media/politicians like to blame them, but the fact of the matter is that the hawks could not even get more than 5 out of 15 votes on the security council, so they never pushed it to a vote.
What's more:
France was right. And so was Blix. You were wrong. Ask David Kay. A bit of humility is in order.
By the way, thanks to the damn French, your government can get its hands on 56.6 million doses of 'flu vaccine:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/ ... index.html
US election
The way I see it, no US president (including Clinton or even Carter) has ever had any other interests at heart than the US - they're not supposed to, being US prez, and any valid higher priority would have to be "humanity" or something like that.
Some presidents are more reasonable than others, though.
I though GHWB was sort of OK.
I thought that Reagan was too trigger-happy, but we survived that (well, so far, anyway).
I liked Clinton, but I thought the dollar was getting a bit too strong.
In 2000, I figured that Gore and Bush would be virtually the same on foreign policy (which is all that matters to me), but that Bush was probably going to crash the US economy with his tax cuts.
I don't mean this in a bad way, but I thought it needed crashing - in a relative sense, i.e. I don't mean I wanted the US to sink into poverty. So in a way I preferred Bush.
Bush certainly did his best on part two, but boy was I wrong about part one...
He stuck his nose up at the rest of the planet by ditching Kyoto, signed the ASPA (I'm still looking for a full text of what sounds like a declaration of war on my country), and made a horrible mistake (yeah let's just call it a mistake).
And you probably should stop watching Fox News - it sounds like you've swallowed the lines from the WH.
Portraying "liberation" as a prime rationale for going to war is not the same as saying "Gee, we're awfully sorry we went in and killed about 10000 civilians for no good reason, but we hope that at least some good has come out of it, that it was worth the high price for the Iraqi people, etc etc".
As far as your elections are concerned: I don't really care who wins, but considering the foreign policy record of the current prez, if he gets "re"-elected it will probably be seen in many countries as an endorsement of aggressive war and torture.
Personally I think that US policies have become a liability for Nato, but US internal politics I don't care about, and besides, I don't make Dutch foreign policy.
Either way, we'll all probably survive another GWB presidency - although I'm mighty glad that I don't have to live in the US.
PS: I read about The Guardian's letter-writing campaign. I would never write a letter to someone I don't know. It's unsolicited, and I myself don't generally read mail from people I don't know. It sounds too much like junk mail.
From what I understand, the letters were polite and decent though. The nasty replies were funny to read, but I still can't call it meddling.
Edit: initially I wrote 56.6
additional - but the original plan had already included the 54 - but the fact remains that the French company is delivering on its commitments while the US company (Chiron, who manufactures the stuff in the UK) is letting the US down.
I just assumed the US had only looked for French vaccines after it was determined that they would not have enough.