The sale of European weapons in anything but private. The entire process is vetted if not engineered by governments. Look at the "poening up" of Libya. As far as the French and the British governments were concerned, the only issues out there were who could get their grubby mitts on [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7422494.stm]Qaddafi[/url]'s oil money while they remain silent about the 4 decade long "abu greib" he's been running.

The change in attitude about Iraq comes after 5 years of trying to figure when they can admit that they have to live with the fact that Saddam was deposed, and that their usual interests of selling the poor of the world their overpriced rubbish.

The government did not recover the Lockerbie settlement. The [url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9406E2D71F31F937A2575BC0A9659C8B63]families of the victims[/url] did. As for being on the take, the entire effort to get the Lybian to come clean was undermined thus:

[i][url=http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/14/un.lockerbie/index.html]Thursday, August 14, 2003[/url]

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- France is holding up the settlement for families of the victims of the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, because it wants Libya to pay more for the bombing of a French UTA airliner in 1989, a U.S. official said Thursday.

Wednesday, lawyers for Libya and for families of the 270 Pan Am victims agreed on a framework for $2.7 billion in compensation.

As part of the deal, Libya was to send a letter to the United Nations officially accepting responsibility for the bombing and agreeing to pay compensation to each family in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against the country.

But France has "intimidated the Libyans" into delaying the delivery of that letter, a Bush administration official said.[/i]

The motive for the french government to get a settlement from the Lybians was to get the money because it seemed possible. The effort initiated by the [b]families of the victims[/b] of Pan Am 103, which began shortly after the bombing, was to punish the Lybians.

So spare me the nonsense. We're talking about a rush to sell weapons to Qaddafi in the same way that the CCCP did in the 70s, even though Libya had no threats to speak of, and was being built up by the Soviets at the time to become a threat.

So they used their seat at the UN to get the Lybians to pay out on the UTA crash, at the cost of a longer and harder effort to bet the Lybians to redress the Lockerbie bombing, and you call this "cooperation"?

Do you really thing people will look at that sort of tortured logic, and have any respect for the people who promote it?

As for [url=http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/search?q=le+monde+diplomatique]Le Monde Diplomatique[/url], they are about as irrationally anti-American as you can get outside of Liberation and Pouriel International, and have more than once been willing to lie to prop up that view.

You did the twisting. What part of "Lockerbie settlement blocked by French UNSC seat to expedite UTA settlement" from ALL the raportage is "twisted" and by whom?

You're trying to tell me that this should be called "cooperation" and that the typical venal act of the French government is something we're supposed to thank them for?

- The IHT piece addresses UK and RF arms deals, not American ones as you initially alledged, and yes, your prism on America doesn't seem to include the actual America but the one the lowest common denominator of european tabloid culture wishes existed. It is, after all, so much easier to have and hate an enemy that isn't going to actually act on the invective directed at them.

- The "commondreams" link is an OPINION piece with no citations, depending on allegations that Qaddafi was "installed" by the CIA in 69, a decade where, apparently, every government on earth was the result of a CIA coup, even the MARXISTS, Nassar-avoiding wing of Arab Nationalism like Qaddafi's - while the KGB were planting daisies and feeding the poor... By the way, the author, Eric Margolis, is a "truther".

- The David Ariel piece points to the Libyans and the italian mafia, not any UK/RF/US falut and evil.

- Putin would sell his grandmother for a nickel.

So the decades of bashing America is not to be noted on the part of many Europeans in general, and the French in particular, but make any one of them feel similarly with even the smallest taste of it, and OH! The world is ending!

I'm thinking of the thin skinned reaction people have to dopey stories that only had a one-week lifespan in the US such as "freedom fries" and "old Europe", and you still get a violent reaction years later. Pathetic.

My absolution? My absolution for sins before God? Are Europeans somehow permitted to think of themselves as Gods with their special [i]rayonnement[/i] that they have to offer the rest of humanity? What next, theories about European genetic superiority?

It isn't unfortunate for the rest of the world outside of France. They can look at that history and learn.

As for the rest of it, I don't know what you're desperate to find in other people's opinions.