Free Republic

In his new role as Liberty leading the People in revolt against the overweening might of the United States, Jacques Chirac is enjoying the best domestic reviews of his career. Four out of five French voters applaud his audacity in seeking to hobble what they wrongly depict as a relentless American juggernaut, reckless of the risks that war in Iraq must entail. Even in Britain, opinion polls lend support to his claim to be closer than is Tony Blair to a European public mood which has rarely been more anti-American or more dubious about the beneficence of American power. Not...

A PLAN by a group of peace campaigners to travel by bus to Baghdad to offer themselves to Saddam Hussein as human shields has been threatened with collapse by the personal clashes, logistical chaos and the loss of their leader. One of the group’s three double-deckers has been abandoned in Italy with engine trouble and plans to travel through the Balkans were aborted as “too dangerous”. The head of the delegation, a former American marine, has been deported from Turkey for trying to enter the country with a “world citizen” passport after renouncing his United States citizenship. The second of...