Hope For France And More Death In Iraq

At long last there is a bright spot on the horizon for our one time friend France. From the results and subsequent concession by Segolene Royal to her rival Nicolas Sarkosy there may be hope for the ailing country.
Sarkozy, 52, says France's 35-hour work week is absurd and proposes relaxing labor laws to encourage hiring. A former interior minister, Sarkozy cracked down on drunk driving, crime and illegal immigration.
He is an admirer of the United States who has borrowed from some American policy ideas. Tough-talking and blunt, he alienated many in France's housing projects when he called young delinquents "scum."
Police were quietly keeping watch for possible unrest Sunday night in France's poor, predominantly immigrant neighborhoods if Sarkozy is elected. Authorities in the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris — the epicenter of the 2005 rioting — refused officers' requests for days off Sunday, one official said.
To push through change, the winner will need a majority in French legislative elections in June. Sarkozy has drawn up a whirlwind program for his first 100 days in office and plans to put big reforms before parliament at a special session in July: One bill would make overtime pay tax-free to encourage people to work more, and another would put in place tougher sentencing for repeat offenders.
Royal, 53, is a former environment minister who believes France must keep its welfare protections strong. She wants to raise the minimum wage, create 500,000 state-funded starter jobs for youths and build 120,000 subsidized housing units a year. But she's also pragmatic and acknowledges that the 35-hour work week has had both benefits and drawbacks that she wants to smooth out.
Royal is strong on the environment and schools but has made a series of foreign policy gaffes — suggesting, for instance, that the Canadian province of Quebec deserved independence. During the campaign, Sarkozy's camp portrayed Royal as a lightweight with unclear ideas, while hers painted him as brutal, a bully — once Royal even called Sarkozy the "bogeyman."
If Royal loses, it will mark the Socialists' third straight defeat in presidential elections. The party managed to glue itself back together after splitting in two over the 2005 referendum on the proposed European constitution, when many of its leaders broke from the party line to urge the French to vote it down.
The rise of centrist candidate Francois Bayrou — who had a strong third-place showing in the first-round vote on April 22, though he was eliminated — suggests the Socialists will need soul-searching about whether to move toward the center like other leftist parties around Europe, or stick to their traditional alliances with the far-left.
This week, as poll numbers suggested Royal's chances were slim, she made a last-ditch effort to rip into Sarkozy, warning of the chance for new riots if he is elected and calling him "a dangerous choice" for France.
Sarkozy retorted in an interview published in Le Parisien newspaper's Web site: "I think that in the history of the Republic, we have never heard such violent or threatening comments.”
I think that if Sarkozy is elected that there will be riots, but he will be able put them down and get on with the business of fixing the country that Jacque Chirac broke over these last years as he tried to usurp the superpower status of the United States. He really thinks that France has a place at the top of the pile of countries. Instead he turned a once great nation into a bunch no whiney sycophants who deserve the violence in their country by seeded power to the violent rioters over the last few years. When a group of criminals such as the rioters are not dealt with it is only a matter of time before anarchy reigns supreme.
I have some french ancestors, but have been ashamed of that fact over the way France has treated America and all americans. It would be nice to once again be proud of France and perhaps they will once again be the ally that they were in the past. For a country that was saved twice in the last century by Americans it behooves them to act a little more grateful, instead of acting like petulant little children.
I wish the people of France much needed luck to get their nation back on track to be something they can be proud of in the future.
IN more sad news from Iraq, soldiers and a civilian journalist, the military said, were among 12 U.S. troop deaths reported on a day when two car bombs killed at least 44 Iraqis at a Baghdad A roadside explosion outside the Iraqi capital on Sunday killed six American market and a police headquarters.
A car bomb in the capital, where U.S.-led forces are in the midst of a crackdown on sectarian violence, killed at least 30 Iraqis. At the police headquarters in Samarra, a volatile city in the Sunni heartland 60 miles north of Baghdad, a car bomb and shooting attack killed 12 police — including the police chief.
American soldiers racing to the headquarters to help also came under attack by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades that left two soldiers wounded, the military said.
Dozens of Al Qaeda linked insurgents — some wearing masks and carrying video cameras and black banners — also paraded through the streets in Samarra, arriving in about 40 cars, in a show of force against the U.S.-Iraqi efforts to tame the Tigris River city.
Those deaths raised to at least 3,373 the number of U.S. military members who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The market bombing occurred about noon in the Baiyaa district of western Baghdad, shattering vehicles, ripping roofs off nearby buildings and collapsing storefronts. Police said about 80 people were injured in addition to the 30 dead.
Following the horrific blast, blood pooled on the dirt streets. Hospital officials said two pickup trucks filled with body parts were brought to the morgue.
Pay attention people, particularly the loud mouth politicians and Hollywood elite who want us to leave Iraq and let this country be devoured by the ensuing violence, just as surely as Jane Fonda and the rest of her followers caused the deaths of millions after we left Vietnam, they shall be responsible for the deaths of the millions who will perish if we leave Iraq in the shape it is now. Shame on them for not having a conscience, for I cannot see how they can live with all of those dead souls on their minds.