Is Obama already the President?

Yeah, those damn French were against the Iraq invasion - boy didn't THEY get egg on their face?

 

They're probably housing the shipped WMDs. How much business did THEY have invested in Iraq?

 

True, Russia and France were about to sign oil contracts with Iraq prior to the US invasion.

They were probably looking out for their interests by not supporting an invasion despite UN investigators finding no evidence of ongoing WMD programs or illicit contraband.

Of course, the potential to gain control of oil had NOTHING to do with W's decision to bomb Iraq. And it's all India and China's fault that oil prices have doubled in the past year - what with all their DEMAND.

 

1. The name is Sarkozy.

2. He is a right-winger whose election was hailed by conservatives in the United States as a sign the French were "seeing the light" after years of that "pacifist" Chirac.

3. France supported and even supplied personnel and weapons to the campaign in Afghanistan. They did not support the invasion of Iraq because it was, well, stupid.

4. If you do not even know the above . . . please stop embarrassing yourself.

 

Actually you do have a point. Excuse my short-term memory gaffe. But, France trying to shed its white-flag culture is like oil executives trying to become poor. It's an imposing challenge for the guy.

 

I think Frank Rich has been reading this thread...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/opinion/27rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Some salient passages...

“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.

Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.

...

When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.

Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.

During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East — conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors — the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.

The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.

 

Frank Rich is starting to write like a guy who knows his tribe let the last eight years happen.