Clinton's Savant Predicts Demise of Paris-Berlin Axis!

[ullr]

OLD EUROPE'S LAST HURRAH

By DICK MORRIS
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February 18, 2003 --
THE objection of France and Germany to acting on the obvious necessity of disarming and dismantling Saddam Hussein's regime is not the first breath of a new age of peace but the last hurrah for fading powers seeking to throw around a weight they don't have.

It is quite like the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Britain and France felt they could go it alone and, without even informing the United States until the last minute, launched a pre-emptive attack, allied with Israel, against Egypt. Their goal was to recover the Suez Canal, which the Egyptian dictator Gamal Nasser had seized.

The two powers met initial military success - but soon found themselves isolated on the global stage as President Dwight Eisenhower, outraged, threw his lot in with the Soviet Union in demanding a cease-fire and pullback. The lesson, apparently lost on France, was that neither nation still had the clout to go it alone without U.S. backing.

The two nations experienced decades of impotence after Suez. The same will be the legacy of France's and Germany's last stand against America's Iraq policy.
[SNIP!]
Why are the French and the Germans walking into this trap? For the same reason Britain and France did in Suez: Ego and an inability to perceive how the world had changed. Just as London and Paris in 1956 did not grasp that global politics had become bi-polar, Paris and Berlin today do not now grasp that it is uni-polar.

In both cases, the powers of the old regime reflexively acted on past assumptions before their irrelevancy was brutally brought home to them.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/54641.htm
THE NEW YORK POST

 

[SINthysist]

There will be war - Germany vs France!

What are the odds?

Would France survive yet another retreat?

Where would they go? Britain? Spain? The Azores? Palm Beach?

 

[virgin_rose]

 

[Lost Cause]

Germany.........

I hear France is already changing it's street signs to German.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.........

The North Korean ship that last year delivered Scud missiles to Yemen transferred a large shipment of chemical weapons material from Germany to North Korea recently, U.S. intelligence officials said.
The ship, the Sosan, was monitored as it arrived in North Korea earlier this month carrying a shipment of sodium cyanide, a precursor chemical used in making nerve gas, said officials familiar with intelligence reports.
The same ship was stopped by U.S. and Spanish naval vessels Dec. 9 as it neared Yemen. It was carrying 15 Scud missiles and warheads. After a brief delay and assurances from the Yemeni government, the ship was allowed to proceed to Yemen with the missile shipment.
After unloading the missiles in Yemen, the Sosan then traveled to Germany, where it took on a cargo of sodium cyanide estimated to weigh several tons. The ship then was tracked as it traveled to North Korea. It arrived at the west coast seaport of Nampo on Thursday, the officials said.
Disclosure of the chemical shipment comes amid heightened tensions between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear activities. The North Koreans were found to have violated a 1994 agreement to freeze plutonium production and other agreements prohibiting it from making nuclear arms.
The Bush administration is planning in the coming months to impose sanctions aimed at halting weapons shipments to North Korea and cutting off funds sent to the communist state by Korean residents in Japan, said an administration official. The plans were first reported yesterday by the New York Times.
North Korea's official media have said that any sanctions imposed on the country would be tantamount to a declaration of war.
The official Korean Central News Agency confirmed that the Sosan arrived at Nampo on Thursday.
The chemical is controlled by the 34-nation Australia Group, a voluntary coalition of states that agree to curb exports of dual-use chemicals that can boost the chemical weapons programs of states like North Korea. Germany is a member of the group.
A German Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment.
South Korea's defense ministry stated last year that North Korea has a stockpile of between 2,500 and 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, including 17 different types of agents.
The ministry stated in a report made public in September that North Korea can produce 4,500 tons of chemical weapons agents annually. It also can produce a ton of biological weapons agent a year.
Sodium cyanide is an ingredient of the deadly nerve agent sarin, a small amount of which can kill a human.

 

[SINthysist]

Meanwhile, p_p_'s still in the loo fumbling with his zipper which seems to have a bit of the cloth stuck in it...

"Hey old chappie, come give me hand here..."

I can see him now! The Paragon of the Party...

p_p_(well it had to stand for SOMETHING didn't it, even if it was the wrong thing)man!

 

[ullr]

Writing in The Los Angeles Times, (16 February 2003). Jonah Goldberg apparently agrees with me:

"Indeed, there's almost no criticism of the United States that doesn't apply with greater or equal force to France. The French are certainly willing to trade blood for oil, just so long as it's not their own. And if it's true to say that America helped 'create' Hussein, it's doubly accurate to say it of the country that sold him a nuclear reactor. The only difference between the two countries is that America is eager to correct its mistakes while France is entirely at peace with letting Hussein continue murdering and terrorizing his subjects and neighbors."