Just because they are not accepting our bribes does not mean that French/Germans/Russians aren\'t also offering a few counter bribes -- think of all the French Fries, they won\'t be selling to us, that they will need to sell to someone else on the cheap.

Also most politicians tend to follow polls and when your people are significantly against something you tend to ignore bribes that you can\'t make public (i.e. do you think that Chile can really say we voted for this because otherwise Bush would make sure our new trade pact will be voted down in congress.) Then again the Spanish PM is facing polls saying 90% of the people are opposed to war in Spain and still willing to support it.

Anyway there was interesting article in Newsweek today (http://www.msnbc.com/news/884259.asp?0cv=KA01) discussing the potential fallout in the Bush whitehouse from this failed diplomacy. I think Bush\'s willingness to make Powell\'s son look like a fool at the FCC through his pawn Martin was probably just a warning shot.

Other folks sometimes express, more eloquently, what I want to say. In this case, it was Teddy Roosevelt:

\"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.\"

It occurs to me that when our Cancer in Chief ran as a \"uniter, not a divider\", he may have been right. I just figured he meant he\'d unite our country, rather than uniting world opinion against us.