France is inept

[Dan East]

I just had to say something about this. France was the leader of opposition to the war in Iraq. While their reasoning was thinly veiled in a humanitarian light, the real reason was their existing contracts and relationship with Saddam's Iraq, which were very lucrative.

Now a heat wave is affecting Europe, and nearly 5,000 French citizens have died because of inadequate cooling in their residences. That is absolutely inexcusable in any modernized industrialized nation. France can dedicate enormous resources to try and sway opinion against their "friend" nations, yet they cannot take care of their own. Here in Virginia a few years ago we had an abnormally hot summer. The State immediately allocated funds to the local governments, which began giving away air conditioners to any family with young children or elderly. Welfare checks were initiated to check in on elderly people that live alone, etc.

The people of France should be pretty pissed at their government for their skewed priorities. What a joke.

Dan East

[James S]

Best thread subject-line ever.

[Dan East]

Oh, that reminds me of something else. The last major news I heard from France before this was that the French government because it was "too english".

Dan East

[Arisme]

Actually, I'm more annoyed by left & right politicians using this to put the blame on each other.

[sandmann]

I'm stupid. Ignore this.

[Dan East]

[Arisme]

[sponge]

[Arisme]

you're right, and 5000 people dying surely justifies the bashing, thread subject, comparison with France position regarding Iraq and other witty comments.

really back to my forum this time, I think I wasted enough electrons here.

[Maf54]

[David Horn]

[Village_Ideot]

God forbid France would oppose the war because it would hurt their economy. Jesus, they're just protecting their best interests. Makes sense to me. Besides, Bush lied to a whole nation about a war, where are your WMD's now? In my eyes, that's a lot worse than lying about a blowjob. Bush should be impeached, but instead, it looks like we're going to re-elect him...

/threadjack

[sponge]

I hope you aren't serious, and aren't comparing a dictator who's starved his country to a horny useless lieing president.

By the way Arisme, you attacked the post, and our France bashing, but how come you never even tried to offer an explanation for what they're doing?

[Village_Ideot]

There's another thing, you take it like Iraq is our business, which is a prevailing American viewpoint. We have no business being there, let NATO deal with it. We Americans aren't the police in this world, we have enough problems that we should be spending our money on.

I also noticed you didn't say anything about Bush lying. Me mislead a whole nation on our reasons of going to war with Iraq. The reason was never "to remove Hussein from power" it was always "pre-emptive strike against WMD's that could potentially be used against us."

[Digby]

How hot did it get in France to kill 5000 people? Was this mainly the elderly or are healthy people dropping in the streets?

I had heard that the french government (including most health care workers) were all on vacation when this happened? How does the entire government go on holiday for a week or more while people are dying? That's just messed up.