I'm not a terribly big fan of the French, but man did they make the Bushies look like singes mangeurs de fromage today, and topped it all off with a special irony sauce.

First they toyed with our attack dog at the UN. John Bolton, who was supposedly sent to NYC to teach the frogs a lesson and impose the neocon worldview on the world body, was left chasing his tail.

[D]uring the first UN Resolution that was cobbled together, the French signed on to the U.S. language. While that first resolution favored Israeli interests disproportionately and did not call for an immediate Israeli military withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, it laid the groundwork for a ceasefire and for a deal on the Shebaa Farms.

The French encouraged the Arab League and Lebanon to object to the resolution -- particularly over the failure to call for an immediate Israeli withdrawal. The French then jumped ship and sang in unity with Lebanon and the Arab League -- and then pushed Hezbollah to accept something reasonable between the original US/French position and the later French/Arab League position.

In the end, the French maneuvered American agreement on the ceasefire and Israel's troop withdrawals -- and left Israel diplomatically cornered.

As the Frenchies might put it, Le pwnz0red.

The next wound was inflicted by a dead Frenchman and reported by the Agence France-Presse. How embarassing is that? 

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday that Bush, here on his Texas ranch enjoying a 10-day vacation from Washington, had made quick work of the Algerian-born writer's 1946 novel -- in English.

The US president, often spoofed as an intellectual lightweight, quoted Camus in a February 21, 2005 speech in Brussels praising the US-Europe alliance and urging other nations to help Washington spread democracy in the world.

"We know there are many obstacles, and we know the road is long. Albert Camus said that 'freedom is a long-distance race.' We're in that race for the duration," Bush said in those remarks.

Ok. This is hilarious enough on it's face. Not only is it a gobsmackingly lame attempt at imagemaking, but as Dependable Renegade points out it ain't to difficult to make "quick work" of a 150-page book that's required reading for damn near every highschool freshman. 

But to appreciate the real beauty of an existentialist/absurdist prank one has to peel back the layers. When Bush made the quip about freedom, he became an even bigger laughingstock in Europe. That's because he parodied and insulted himself by using that quote:

Camus's character, while sounding resolute and tireless about pursuing freedom, making it seem daunting and thankless, but the mark of a true human being, is really prattling on about freedom, intimidating people with it, using it for purposes of self-interest - but does not at all believe in it. The grand-sounding phrase about freedom being a "long-distance race" is just another piece of flimflam.

Yup. That's our flimflam man. Did the White House flaks even consider, apart from the fact that this was embarassing the first time, that announcing Bush is reading the book now confirms that he was bulls***ing about having read the book then?

One has to have a rather dark sense of humor to appreciate the piece de resistance, though - the fact that Bush is quoting from a character who kills an Arab for no reason whatsoever and has absolutely no remorse about it afterward.

That Frenchy bastard Voltaire once said, "God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."