selise @ #156 is spot on in her answer to do-si-do’s question “Is Sarkosy the new Blair?” (#154).

He will entrench the divides already apparent among the haves and have nots and stoke communal tensions along religious and racial lines just as Thatcher did. The French, however, have a penchant for storming the Bastille.

France has always craved the role of leadership in continental Europe and Sarkozy is not going to play the poodle to a powerless eunuch across the pond. He is too astute for that.

The French Constitution does not grant the President the same executive licence to establish his/her fiefdom as civil service and judicial appointments must be based on peer selections, vetted by the Parlement which the President approves. A lot depends on what happens in the forthcoming elections to the Assemblee Nationale of the Parlement – the French Right may not have an outright majority forcing the Prime Minister to seek compromises, even if the PM is a Presidential appointee.

Sorry to point this out, but we had that here, too.

Sorry LL, I’m curious as to your background – you sound so hopelessly uneducated and uninformed.

Phoenix Woman @ 161

Oh, Frank: Before your hero Bush invaded Iraq, the ammo dumps were all being monitored and guarded by the IAEA — and they were sealed. Saddam couldn’t have used them.

They only became available to the insurgents AFTER your lovely neocons Bush and Rummy and Cheney had Iraq invaded. But you knew that, right?

You KNOW that cannot be right. el-Barradai’s IAEA had only sealed those nuclear sites Saddam TOLD them about. Not the ones he secreted to Syria. Besides the other weapons caches were all chemical and other lethal munitions but the terrorists have converted dual use sites to IEDs now with Iranian help.

Why in heaven’s name would Saddam dream of secreting his nuclear capabilities in Syria when Syrian and Iraqi Ba’ath parties were at each others’ throats for 30 years? What would be the point of developing a nuclear capability for your enemy?

LL – you really ought to read The Prince by Machiavelli – you divide your enemy to weaken not strengthen.

He will entrench the divides already apparent among the haves and have nots and stoke communal tensions along religious and racial lines just as Thatcher did. The French, however, have a penchant for storming the Bastille.

France has always craved the role of leadership in continental Europe and Sarkozy is not going to play the poodle to a powerless eunuch across the pond. He is too astute for that.

The French Constitution does not grant the President the same executive licence to establish his/her fiefdom as civil service and judicial appointments must be based on peer selections, vetted by the Parlement which the President approves. A lot depends on what happens in the forthcoming elections to the Assemblee Nationale of the Parlement – the French Right may not have an outright majority forcing the Prime Minister to seek compromises, even if the PM is a Presidential appointee.

twolf1 @ 42

CNN tv covering the Comey story…

They left out that the President made the call.
They left out that Comey attempted to get Ashcroft to respond coherently.
They left out that Gonzo and Card ignored him.
They left out that Card demanded Comey to come to the WH that night.
They left out that Comey refused to go without a witness.

So sad.

Let’s hear it for PBS, then. Last night’s news gave it 10 mins, covered most of the above, PLUS Mueller’s instructions to the FBI guys not to allow Comey to be removed from the room,
PLUS the smackdown:
COMEY: “After the way you behaved… I want a witness”
GONZO & CARD: “We only came to wish him well”
COMEY: “I said, after the way you behaved, I want a witness”

So who DOESN’T want to impeach Gonzo today? And why?

astounding! what a tool you are and a victim of propaganda too. I’ll bet you never noticed on fux news that rummy left an enormous cache of weapons unguarded after the invasion and they were stolen and some people think they’ve been used to help arm the insurgents and those that are waging civil war. google it – someone at this board will post the link for you no doubt if you wank enough (not me:) – stop with the iranian crap too – bush made them stronger and they didn’t have to lift a finger! say it with me, “the shiite crescent!” phrase didn’t exist before bush’s war mongering crusade.

The truth was saddam was a defanged dictator who served as a bullwark against al-queda and iran – the shia in the south are now iran’s natural allies and bush having opened pandora’s box has created the shiite crescent and helped his enemy – he has also weaked american power and influence around the world with this folly and the horrors it prodiced like abu ghraib which was on HIS watch – enjoy what you’ve been cheering for ll – it comes at a cost none of us can imagine because the consequences will still be reverbating for far longer than we can predict -

Extensive post-war investigations
were carried out by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG). The ISG found no evidence
that Iraq had tried to reconstitute its capability to produce nuclear weapons
after 1991; no evidence of BW agent stockpiles or of mobile biological weapons production facilities; and no substantial chemical warfare (CW) stockpiles or credible indications that Baghdad had resumed production of CW after 1991. Just about the only thing that the Intelligence Community got right was its pre-war conclusion that Iraq had deployed missiles with ranges exceeding United Nations limitations.

I am embarrassed that any American would be so totally ignorant of such well-known facts as to whether there were WMDs in Iraq.

YOU FORGOT POLAND

or have I heard that before somewhere?

Also Espaa? Remember what happened to Aznar?