Gee, it turns out the munitions were there when the Americans arrived, as shown by a variety of different lines of evidence, of which the one above is only the strongest. I guess my point about idiots and the lying liars they listen to was valid after all.

Not in Hollywood. The Brit is either the butler or the super-baddy

I don’t know what’s sadder about that comment: The ignorance of history it demonstrates, or the European post-war trauma that it reflects.

My bad. Ambiguous sentence. The context of the paragraph was the war on terror, it was wars on terror that aren’t won. No excuse for sloppy writing.

“We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual and those interests it is our duty to follow”? - from: http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page149.asp

Chap 1 of Walter Russell Mead’s Special Providence is a thorough defense of the long arc of US diplomacy. In short, though, Brits are supercilious because they are no longer in charge. (To use as broad a brush as was done in the jokes. I also find the subservient anglophilia that I see so often on the US right weird and creepy. But that’s a post of a different color.)

ROFL! The accumulating evidence of the pervasive incompetence of the Bush administration is widely reported in mainstream American media - like the Washington Post on the “disapprearance of nearly 400 tons of explosives in Iraq” - and by Americans on US-based blogs. It is hardly secret - are regular web surfers supposed not to notice? A few links are on display here above in the thread.

I’ve a long memory for political affairs, extending back to the end of FDR’s administration, and can’t recall a time when the American presidency was so universally reviled around the world with the possible and ominous exception of Nixon’s second and mercifully brief presidency.

It is widely observed and even admitted that the Pentagon sent too few troops to Iraq to secure the peace after the invasion of Iraq and despite many prior warnings by informed commentators of the likelihood of increasing insurgency. And I certainly never expected to read charges against an American administration and military of extensive violations of the Geneva protocols.

Whatever happened?

Let’s hope the Black Watch regiment arrives safely at its intended destination without an attack from either insurgents on the ground or a strike from the air by friendly forces.

I mentioned this in a discussion group I belong to and a Brit, who served in WW2, related a wry army joke from those times: When the British bombed the Germans ducked, and the Germans ducked when the British bombed. When the Americans bombed, everyone ducked. Evidently, not much has changed since.

I don’t know what’s sadder about that comment: The ignorance of history it demonstrates, or the European post-war trauma that it reflects.

I’m not a Bush fan, and think Iraq was mostly a dumb idea. But I hope like hell that this isn’t what passes for enlightened criticism on the other side of the Atlantic.

“When troops from the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade arrived at the Al-Qaqaa base a day or so after other coalition troops seized Baghdad on April 9, 2003, there were already looters throughout the facility, Lt.-Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit, told The Associated Press.

“The soldiers ’secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemical weapons were not present in their area,’ Wellman wrote in an e-mail message to The Associated Press. ‘Bombs were found but not chemical weapons in that immediate area.

“‘Orders were not given from higher to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions, as they (high-explosive weapons) were everywhere in Iraq,’ he wrote.”
- from: http://www.canada.com/news/world/story.html?id=5e1f5802-cced-4435-84f1-74215300c10a

Naturally, the Associated Press, the Canadians and the 101st Airborne are all part of the vast international conspiracy intent on discrediting God’s representative on earth . . .