Once again the Leader of the Axis of Weasels insults the US and British and Iraqis and Polish and Aussies and Bulgarians and…And, boy did that Rumsfield get under his skin! He is still stinging from that “Old Europe” comment. Go Rummy!!!
From www.timesonline.co.uk
Backing Bush has won you nothing, Chirac tells Britain
By Charles Bremner in Paris and Philip Webster, Political Editor
JACQUES CHIRAC dealt a blow to Tony Blair’s attempt to heal the wounds between the US and Europe last night by saying that the Prime Minister had won nothing for supporting the war against Iraq.
As Mr Blair used a keynote speech to present Britain as a “bridge across the Atlantic”, President Chirac doubted whether anyone could play the “honest broker”. Speaking before he visits London on Thursday, he said that it was not in the nature of this Administration to return favours…
In other remarks that will sting the Bush Administration, he again outlined his vision of a “multipolar” world in which a united Europe would be equal with the US, and mocked Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, for his division of Europe into old and new.
M Chirac said that there would be no division between Britain and France.
“It is like that nice guy in America — what’s his name again? — who spoke about ‘old Europe’. It has no sense. It’s a lack of culture to imagine that. Imagining that there can be division between the British and French vision of Europe is as absurd as imagining that we are building Europe against the United States.”
The comments underline the scale of the task facing Mr Blair as he tries to be a bridge between Europe and America, a job to which he devoted last night’s foreign policy speech at Guildhall in London.
Mr Blair also said that Europe had a big opportunity because the US realised that lasting security against terrorism could not be provided by conventional military force but required a commitment to democracy and freedom…
He balanced his warning to the Americans by telling Europe that it was not sensible to ridicule US arguments or parody their political leaders.
M Chirac, whose visit to Britain concludes the Entente Cordiale anniversary celebrations, said: “I am not sure, with America as it is these days, that it would be easy for someone, even the British, to be an honest broker.”
…Blah!!!