In regards to posts by Pascal and Robert....
I usually avoid anything remotely political, but I feel I need to weigh in here. As a disclaimer, I'm not for or against the war. I don't have enough information to be able to draw an appopriate conclusion one way or another. None of us - or perhaps very few of us - have the intelligence that the US and other govenments have. And it's not like we can trust CNN anymore.
Why is it people become emotional and largely irrational in these kinds of situations?
For example, the media here has made a big deal of the boycott of French restaurants recently. They interviewed a few owners and worked on NY1, and most of them weren't French or even of French descent - they just happened to serve French cuisine. Read those articles, it's absurd the pitiful behavior. Sometimes I'm not proud to be an American.
And look, I'm not even going to fault these people for the anti-French sentiment. If they feel they're being patriotic Americans by resenting those from other nationalities - fine, that's retarded enough.
What really gets me is that a boycott like this doesn't hurt the French, it hurts their neighbors who work and run these places. France doesn't get a royalty check every time foie gras or bouillabaisse is served. And so what if you refuse to drink French wine? The American-owned restaurant already paid for it, so they're the only one suffering. The only economy these people are going to hurt is their own.
I wish we weren't at war, but if we are, I'm inclined to support the men and women who trust enough in what we're doing to risk their lives for the it, and hope we're really over there for the right reasons.
Sigh. Almost as retarded as the VB.NET vs. C# language wars... or the ever-popular text editor wars.