Jeff,

To be fair to Germany, isn't their current predicament to some extent a
result of short-term domestic politics? Schroeder's coalition faced some
tough recent elections that were focused on domestic economic issues and to
counter that he pandered shamelessly to extremist lefties on the Iraq issue
in an effort to rally his base. It didn't work, and now Gerhard and Fischer
are just trying to keep things afloat. I think that deep down neither of
these guys are quite as anti-US as they portray on the surface.

The French, on the other hand, are as bad as they appear I think.

Dave

At 08:37 AM 2/11/2003 -0700, you wrote:
 >Are you joking!  The only reason the germans want to prevent war is because
 >they have money at stake or systems sold to Iraq that they don't want found.
 >Maybe it is because they know what will happen to Israel if Saddam gets the
 >bomb!
 >
 >My heritage is German which at this point makes me sick.  Maybe someday they
 >will learn what it means to be ruled by a tyrant.  If anyone should have
 >learned you wou think it would be them.
 >
 >Jeff