[AlguyA]

"The people are being asked to participate in this new battle — which will determine the new postwar balance of power as well as the prosperity of us all — as they did before the war began, but this time with the hope that there will be acquiescence and agreement."

Interesting. A blatant admission that what is driving European policy is, in fact, not principle but economics.

[longtermmemmory]

Greece used to do a lot of construction projects in iraq. In fact before one of its largest concrete suppliers was bought by the Germans, it used to supply concrete to Iraq. Now with the German blunder, that complany would very likely be excluded from Iraqi rebuilding. It not the same issue of contract fulfillment that france, germany and russia have. France and Germany were using Iraq to chip into the dollar's dominance as the prefered currency of international trade, the rest of europe is just trying to make some money and increase their own prosperity. Ecconomic are driving this because the dirty secret is that for the everyday person in Europe, the Euro has produced HUGE inflation. Grandmothers in greece regularly stand outside of new supermarkets and beg for money to buy food. The cost of every day living has gone up but the pay has stayed the same. It really is about ecconomics but more accuratly about ecconomic opportunity. The Greeks have a joke, "We want to live like Europeans but we are paid like Greeks."