Only Because This Is the Fourth of July- from my old friend Bill V.

Bill is very patriotic and did his time in Vietnam without complaining--at least not then. Today he complains his head off about it as a time of indentured servitude and blames himself mercilessly for "doing what I was told, just like the Germans did under Hitler." I have told Bill to give himself a break.

By the way,  he was off on a base in the hinterlands there were, as he says " I never heard one shot fired in anger"

He spent all his time on guard duty and doing data entry

Anyway, I am not a big flag waver but I will run what he sent me just because of the time of year

Whoever put this together seems rather anti-French to me and they ought to be reminded that, without the French fleet at Yorktown, America would never have won its independence, to say nothing of the contributions of Lafayette etc.

People diss the French a lot, not always without reason, but as a Monte Python skit once had it, let's forget the usual targets and pick on some country that never gets criticized or defamed, like Belgium. 

The Python gang had a panel quiz show in which in which the winning insult for the Belgians was " Bloody Sprouts" ( it beat out two others, including just " F--king Belgian Bastards."

And I am still shaking my head over the whole "Freedom Fries" bit in regards to France. 

Well, anyway,

  

How some of our former patriots handled negative comments about our country.

  JFK'S 
Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60's when 
DeGaulle decided to pull out of NATO.  DeGaulle said he wanted all U.S.   
military out of France as soon as possible. 

 Rusk responded,
"Does that include those who are buried here?" 

 DeGaulle did not respond. 
You could have heard a pin drop.---------------------------------------------------------------------
  
 When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the 
Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of 
'empire building' by George Bush. 
  
He answered by saying,
"Over the years, the United States has sent many of 
its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom 
beyond our borders.  The only amount of land we have ever asked for 
in return is enough to bury those that did not return." 

 
You could have heard a pin drop.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  There was a conference in France
where a number of international engineers 
were taking part, including French and American.  During a break, 
one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, "Have you 
heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft 
carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims.  What does he 
intend to do, bomb them?" 

  
A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly:  "Our carriers have three 
hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are 
nuclear powered and can supply emergency  electrical power to 
shore facilities; they have three  cafeterias with the capacity to 
feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand 
gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a 
dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and 
from their flight deck.  We have eleven such ships;
how many does France have?" 
You could have heard a pin drop.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~