But then, Democracy is "messy" worldwide not just in Iraq. Of course if you took French in high school, the cartoons about the Gallic rebellion against the Roman Empire that were used to teach some of us that galling language are pertinent. They should show us their historical preference for Empires that the French control versus those that others control. Faulting the French for opposing us in Iraq by not committing their troops and money in support of our Imperial conquest of Iraq is silly. Why on earth should the French support the Bush Administrations Imperial ambitions for the USA? Turning them, as Friedman does in his editorial, into our enemies is worse than silly, it is stupid. Yes they are giving the horselaugh to Bush's still arrogant request for help in a situation that they opposed creating, why should they do anything else? The theory that everyone in the world should see the importance of what we are attempting in Iraq is worse than laughable; it merely measures the arrogance of our current foreign policy.

Yes, we would all prefer a democracy in Iraq to the reign of terror that Saddam imposed. But will it be a tame USA type democracy, where elections are ignored by the voters and their outcomes are determined by who has the most money or who can steal the most votes? Or will it be a democracy that reflects the passions of the people of Iraq? My guess is it will be the latter rather than the former, and that will probably make it unacceptable to the USA since it will not reflect the USA's interests.

Yes, this war is about the interests of the USA, and only marginally, if at all, about the freedom of the Iraqi people to choose the government that oppresses them. Even the false reasons given for rushing to war are obvious in their US centric pose. Saddam was connected to Al Queda in a way that makes him implicated in 9/11. False! Saddam has weapons that pose an imminent threat to the USA. False! This war was actually about the security of the whole world which was threatened by Saddam. False! And, and, and it is about the French interests in Iraq too and how they will be served by the democracy installed in Iraq if it is run by friends of the USA. False! There are hundreds of billions of barrels of reasons why the French do not want Iraq to be an outpost of US power to the exclusion of their interests. That exclusion is being carried out as our blood money is used to pay our big contractors, exclusively, to redevelop Iraqi oilfields and transport the oil to market. It is clear that we do not intend to let democracy really have its messy way with the Iraqi people anytime soon. We are too afraid that it will turn into an Islamic republic like Iran. That threat is far more threatening to our interests than the weapons of mass destruction. You remember; those weapons that Saddam hid so well that he couldn't find them when he needed them most.

Now the apologists for this administrations voices sound ever shriller, as the arrogance of the Bush clique remains the single most visible feature of our government. It is harder and harder to justify arrogance in the face of obvious failure. We who warned against that failure were called "treasonous" which is the essence of unpatriotic distilled down into a really virulent kind of hatred. The TV news channels vomiting this tripe and regurgitating the views of the Bush terror panderers drone on but the audience is starting to wake up to the ugly fallacies that they have been fed as gourmet fare. Meanwhile the French, not a little arrogant themselves, eviscerate our interests in the parts of Europe that have enough money and troops to help in Iraq. Of course there are not a lot of volunteers there who are willing to create deficits in their national budgets related to our little adventure. It is patently not in the interests of any nation not presently engaged in Iraq to plunge their feet firmly into our bloody little Iraqi swamp. To cast ourselves in the role of the Little Red Hen in this stupid, stupid, stupid little war is the most unlikely of arrogant faith-based expectations. We are pouring billions of dollars down a rat hole that we spent billions creating. That is the sad truth about this war. The French are not traitors to the USA's cause; they are patriots of France opposed to our stupid arrogant stance in Iraq. God bless and keep you safe in these treasonous fear-filled time