Happy Birthday President George W. Bush.

Hardly. Remember the whole "Freedom Fries" bullshit? It all came about because various nations, France in particular, were not convinced of the whole "WMDs in 45 minutes" argument and refused to back our UN resolutions calling for explicit military action in the event of Iraq non-compliance. The intelligence was faulty, came from MI6 and was bought into by the CIA and your President. There was no international consensus over WMDs at all.

Agreed. Even if WMDs had existed, to wade in with no exit strategy or reconstruction plan was a fool's errand. Just war or not, that lack of planning is directly responsible for the current Iraqi government's state of being and that means that the half a million people who have died, including our own troops, have done so in vain. I used to laugh at people who called Bush and Blair war criminals, but the more you look at it, the more that argument holds water where Iraq is concerned.

Not remotely. Not only was Iraq by itself a disaster, but the pursuit of it tore up and binned that unprecedented levels of support for America that existed immediately after 9/11. To take such an upswing in global support for the US and manage to turn it into what is arguably now a similarly unprecedented period of international loathing of Americans is an astounding feat and which shows you just how poor a statesman Bush was and how insular his politics were, to the detrement of the everyday American.

Fries are from Belgium.

Not really.

The post 9-11 international "support" for the United States was never going to last long once the U.S. retaliated.

The "support" was only going to be around as long as the U.S. was seen as a victim.

Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly. Think!

The support was precisely for American retaliation. That's why our actions in Afghanistan were supported--even though those actions were themselves dubious without a plan and without competent leadership--but our actions in Iraq, which had nothing to do with retaliation and everything to do with dick-waving, were not. And, of course, once we collectively shit all over the floors in Iraq and giggled at the stench like a two-year-old, making it clear that there was no plan or leadership, the support in Afghanistan understandably wavered.

I do not remember it that way.

I remember what seemed to be a rising tide of sentiment AGAINST the United States throughout 2002 emanating from Europe. Well before we laid any addition finger against Iraq.

Reply to my detailed post in your own thread and I might take you seriously.....

Conditionally.

Which is why "freedom fries" were so laughable.

What's more, neither the Belgians nor French gave a shit. That's why I like them.

So what is the condition?

1) Renouncement and apology for all previous disrespectful and insulting posts (individually).

2) Restatement of questions in a shorter form for the sake of efficiency (I don't remember half the stuff you asked and what was really a question and what was posturing).

Good luck with that.

You're getting dumber and more delusional every single day.

Never hurts to ask.

Possibly because that's the period during which Bush was making it clear that his eagerness to go to war would make it inevitable whether there was a rationale or not?

IIRC, after President Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, opposition to American policy from the Europeans simply exploded. Americans liberals emboldened by that followed.

They da I apologise to you is the day hell freezes over. You have a damn sight more apologising to do to the people here than I will ever have to do to you. The day you show any form of humility or introspection, then you can revisit that request.

There is no shorter form. The points I made were as I stated. The detail was necessary in order to illustrate them. Now, either you are the intellectual you claim to be, or you are the incompetent we think you are and you won't answer them because you can't.

It makes you look like more of a fucking idiot, if that were possible. So yeah, it does hurt your reputation.