administration, the French governemnt, executive branch anyway, is laying the groundwork for military action against Iran. For the foreign minister to say or imply he too opposes war is disingenuous at best and hypocritical as worst--he opposes war so long as his government, like the neocons in Washington, succeed in bending Iran to its will.

On March 17, 2007 Al Jazeera-English reported this.

"Dominique de Villepin, the French prime minister, has urged the United States and other foreign nations to withdraw from Iraq in 2008 and said the war had "shattered" America's image abroad.

"The Iraqi conflict ... is sapping the power of the United States to peacefully influence other players in the troubled Middle East," he said on Friday.

"The war with Iraq marked a turning point. It shattered America's image," Villepin, who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, told an audience at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts."

"It undermined the image of the West as a whole. It is time for the United States and Europe to regain together the respect and admiration of the other people."

This is the AlJeezera-English link. (link...) I do check it out sometimes, but it's pretty much the same news as here at home. Not as radical or crazy as I thought. I'm sure clicking onto it puts my name on some list in Cheney's office, but that doesn't bother me.

governmental policy is shifting vis-a-vis Iran toward war; Iraq, perhaps not.