[JimRed]

France dispatched elite commandos...

...to slap those nasty old terrorists with their berets!

Actually, a few more incidents like this might be good to counter the surrender monkey image they've so carefully cultivated.

[rahbert]

The commandos formerly known as CRAP?

[spetznaz]

The problem with France has never been the military ...it has always been a mix of (some) aspects of leadership coupled with a highly vocal segment of the general population (primarily that in and around Paris). The French military, on the other hand, is an extremely professional and lethal armed force, which has served very well in many regional conflicts (e.g. in Afghanistan, as well as other regions ....some of their actions in West Africa have been very un-PC). The French military are the people who sent frogmen to sink some Greenpeace ship (the 'Rainbow Warrior' which was sank by French intelligence services in the so called 'Operation Satanic,' where they sank it in New Zealand) that was trying to interrupt their nuclear tests a while back. Anti-Islamic terrorist policies in France are some of the toughest in the globe, with French judges given such absolute powers over suspected Jihadis that Guantanamo looks like a summer camp.

I know on FR there is a tendency to see the French as surrender monkeys, and I know that Chirac was a major joke. However, for most of their history (apart from the several decades after WW2, and the Vichy part of WW2, when several successive French leaders liked to stick their thumbs up their @$$e$) the French have been quite ....well ....let's say more of their history is by far closer to Napoleon than to Chirac.

Also note that even when they had senile leadership the French military still performed brilliantly, even when hampered by such stuff.

Anyways, while it is 'cool' to mock the French, their military is actually one of the best, is exceedingly proficient, and does not take things for granted (unlike the Brits, who are trying to cancel their future nuclear SLBM submarine forces).

Actually, talking about the Brits ....you do know their soldiers were kidnapped by the Iranians some months back. Kidnapped on the open sea by Iranians in zodiac inflatables! (A sad after story was the British sailor who was crying after his IPod was taken away). The Iranians tried the same thing a few weeks later on some French sailors, and got chased off with tracer fire.

I wonder who the surrender monkeys are?

Anyways, I do not think that Sarkozy put the French on the offensive ....he simply brought back France to what it used to be before WW2.