Freedom's not on the march any more

Heh.

In the hype build-up to the US war against Iraq, GOP big-wigs openly criticized allies like France because they didn't believe the propaganda and accept known forgeries as fact - even though dubya's administration insisted they were good enough to start a war. The neocon leadership went so far as to have Congress' cafeteria change the names of "French fries" and "French toast" to "freedom fries" and "freedom toast". It's hard to imagine a more childish gesture, but apparently it was very important to the republican party to do so. Never mind they could have been paying attention to things like the economy, healthcare, or even the actual facts about the pre-war propaganda.

Well, here we are a few years into this war, and the first several reasons given to punish Iraq have either been debunked (behind 9/11, nuclear weapons, other WMD, backing al Qaeda) or achieved (toppling government, capturing Saddam, holding elections), yet we keep our troops in the crosshairs of a civil war. The "coalition of the willing" consists of the US and Britain (both against the popular will of their people) and a smattering of trivial support, most in name only.

At least Congress sheepishly changed the names of the fries and toast back. Funny, the GOP was so proud of their renaming achievement a few years ago, and spread that news heavily through all their mainstream media outlets and talking point channels. Now that they've backed off from that juvenile stunt, there's barely a mention of it in that very same US media. At least some press in the world is still more concerned about events than perception.