Doug: One more try. The "Bush is a louse" thread must be fairly old. I couldn't find it.   It may be that the author of some article has different views from mind. May even be he publishes in a "liberal" magazine. The only "opinion" I have stated of the USA is that it is not all-powerful, and if someone disagrees with me on that, well, what can I say?

But really, I think I am being willfully misunderstood. I believe you are attributing to me a low "opinion" of my country. Not so. I want my country to be strong. I want it to have friends. I don't want it to have a whole lot of deadly enemies. As stated above, W. Bush is making lots of deadly enemies, sometimes it seems for no apparent reason but to whip up nationalistic sentiment and win elections. A political speech about an "axis of evil" is a good example. Such a speech can have no possible purpose other than electioneering.

And Bush is also costing us friends. Don't be decieved if the national leaders of European countries go along with Bush for a ways. The U.S. has clout. Bush is unpopular enough with the people over there so that it may cost those leaders a lot to follow. Note, the German Social Democratic Party, which was unpopular, was expected to lose a national election. Its leader said he would not support a war against Iraq, and won another term in office. You will doubtless respond that the two things have nothing to do with each other. But I suggest you give that some thought.

Last month I was invited to a reception at the German Consulate here (I'm not claiming I'm a big shot, but I have a known interest in Germany.) Almost everyone there was a German expatriate in the export-import business - a very conservative crew, when it came to things like labor relations. But nobody liked Bush's foreign policy.