This may be an interesting development to watch....but I cannot truly quip, only observe, and wish the Canadians well...but from my naive American viewpoint, Harper might be right....

Thanks, prick. Too bad your people are still pissed off at you. Canadians will never elect another Frenchman as PM again.

Wussy. What a shame for the Canadian people that they have to put up with this guy. I hope Canadian voters have learned a good lesson here, and that they demolish the liberals in the next election. Sometimes Canada as a whole behaves a lot like France, despite the efforts of a growing number of-right-leaning moderates.

no tickey..no laundry.

Like the French...they picked the wrong team.

"Harper said the government motion was "just another communications strategy, another cynical motion, another image repositioning" introduced after it became evident the United States would be successful in Iraq."

HUH????? Harper actually makes it sound like old Jean was in doubt of the outcome? (Now, I don't think I'll vote for Harpers party either)
Old little Jean maybe a little senile in his last days in office, but I would never accuse him of being that stupid.

Chretien is just to stupid to know you back up your friends no matter what.
He is also selfish as he is only concerned about his legacy of being a peace keeper. What a jerk.

Kiss my yankee ass....Canadian coward.

"based on principle rather than friendship..."

Whould that be the same kind of principles that allow Saddam to imprison children?

Hosers

"Neither country has ever been in the business of economic retaliation over disagreements on issues of foreign policy."

Up until recently, maybe. This is exactly what a lot of American voters are demanding.

A lot of countries thought the US wouldn't be willing to take major casualties in this battle. Recent polls, and US actions, show that to be false.

Many of the same analysts think the notion of the US suppressing their "greed" in the name of foreign policy is unthinkable - the US would never do that. Guess again.

Part of the point here is that the US feels that their friendship is taken for granted (an accusation that is often made, with justification, against the US). It's not often the US goes to our friends and allies and asks for real, substantial help. Well, we needed it this time and got flipped off by a bunch of countries, for whatever reason. A few had the courage (or good sense?) to stand with us, even though it was quite difficult for them at home. Now those friends must be rewarded, and it follows that those who were not our friends must be un-rewarded. Punished, if you will. The degree of this depends very much on how betrayed the US feels. With France, it's outrage. With Canada, it's pretty deep. With most of the others, it's not a big deal, because they hadn't positioned themselves as long-time "true friends" in the first place.

Us anger is NOT about disagreement with our foreign policy. US anger is about what is seen here as betrayal, and betrayal for the likes of a Saddam Hussein. Faugh.

CBC's Rex Murphy has some interesting commentary online about Canada's wavering war stance

http://www.cbc.ca/national/rex/rex_030407.html

And likewise we wish Canada well... it surely must be difficult to see clearly with your head firmly implanted that far up your ass...perhaps as a humanitarian gesture we could send them a crowbar so the can lever it out....or maybe Bono could do a benefit to raise money to benefit Canadian leaders with Severe Cranial Rectal Inversion..

The new band:

Cretin, Crack and Shredder

I'm an American living in Canada.

Something I see getting lost in the Canada bashing is that Canada did not side with the French, Germans, Russians, and Chinese. They tried to stake out a position that would put more force behind inspections and produce a later deadline for compliance in the hope that this would pull in the four nations opposed. The gamble failed when both the U.S. and France demonstrated that neither would budge from its position.

Canada's position was, "If we're going to do this, let's do it with a true coalition." And do even stake out that ground, the government was way out ahead of the electorate... except for Alberta. Alberta is basically Texas with snow.

What you have to remember is that in the system of government that Canada has, the massive amount of the population is in the East, which is majorly liberal. So, the liberals have the majority in Parliment, and usually a liberal PM. (Not to forget that Quebec is one of the more populated provinces, so they get more MPs).

If you looked at Canada by province, the majority of the anti-Americanism is in the East. A lot of the west is for the war, etc... But, since they don't have enough of the population to get a handhold into the government, the country is seen as totally liberal in international matters.

My best friend is from Canada and gives me many lectures on Canadian government all the time. :)

What you have to remember is that in the system of government that Canada has, the massive amount of the population is in the East, which is primarily liberal. So, the liberals have the majority in Parliament, and usually a liberal PM. (Not to forget that Quebec is one of the more populated provinces, so they get more MPs).

If you looked at Canada by province, the majority of the anti-Americanism is in the East. A lot of the west is for the war, etc... But, since they don't have enough of the population to get a handhold into the government, the country is seen as totally liberal in international matters.

My best friend is from Canada and gives me many lectures on Canadian government all the time. :)

damn DSL...

"Sometimes Canada as a whole behaves a lot like France, despite the efforts of a growing number of-right-leaning moderates."

I hope you didn't mean political "right." Our most important political and military ally is (labor) Tony Blair. Our biggest opponent is Chirac who is rightist. I you say France would have opposed us anyway, perhaps, but chirac could have stayed out of the war, given token resitance. He did not need to go out of his way to try and ultra-screw us.

On investments and boycotts. this is laughable. No investor in France is going to penalize American and visa-versa. Almost all trade is b2b. The bottom line is their guide.

Chretien definitely wimped out. He didn't make a decision based on principle any more than one based on friendship. He made his decison based on polling data.

That being said, It shouldn't have been that tough a decision. America put many of it's friends in an awkward situation by failing to win international support for the war before the start of hostilities. We should have been able to get unaminus support for an explicit resolution. Nobody likes Saddam. I think the U.S. dropped the diplomatic ball.

(As far as the politicaly situation in Canada, the main problem is that the right wing vote has fractured into two parties (the Cdn Aliance and the Progressive Conservatives), thus splitting the conservative vote and giving the Liberals a free ride).

France nearly always takes an anti-US line. This time, their intransigence at the UN possibly caused the eventual war, by weakening the effect of Res 1441 and the depolyment of coalition troops. Their likely pressure on Turkey prevented the Coalition having a fully-effective Northern Front. Their illegal arms supplies to Saddam are yet to be fully discovered and broadcast to the world. Their oil deals with Saddam were naked greed-over-principle.

And their downright ingratitude to the US and Britain, and insults to war-dead, is the last straw.

France needs to be roasted for all these MORAL failings. It needs to be drastically cut down to size, diplomatically punished, ostracised, and hurt economically. Its behaviour cost Coalition and Iraqi lives. There should be an attitude-changing article in the French press : another "J'Accuse".

Although there is no sign yet of contrition, France must be taught to hang its head in shame.

Pour encourager les autres.

Russia needs a big slap too, but not so hard. Germany will scuttle for cover if France is walloped around. And maybe Canada will return to its normal place as a staunch member of the Anglosphere.

I think a girl said that to me once: "You are a nice guy and everything, and I wish you well, but honestly, I would rather shower in prison than go out on a date with you."

I told her she was a stuck up bitch and moved on. I can do the same regarding Chretien.

True that the US diplomatic effort was far from perfect. But maybe if we had had some more support for the idea of taking out a murderous, torturing dictator who has WMD and terrorist connections, from other countries who claim to have ideals about liberty and human rights, then we could have goten the resolution.

Instead we got a lot of "prove it"s from countries whose own intelligence agencies were telling them the US wasn't lying. These "prove it"s were, for the most part, rather cynical, and delivered for reasons that had nothing to do with Iraq.

So let's not lay the WHOLE blame for the failure of diplomacy on the US.

Canadians will never elect another Frenchman as PM again

Only if that was true... At least the next one will be from Montreal... Which is still in Quebec... But tends not to be full of such cowards.

Dear Jean... Fuouk Uu

I'm a Canadian, and like the slogan said at the pro-US rally last Friday, 'Cretien does not speak for me'.

Indeed, many Canadians have come to realize that Cretien speaks for no one but himself, and his own self interests.

The problem with our present political democratic system is that the Liberals have been the only viable political party for the past decade, basically the only ones with their sh*t together, and not being led by what the public perceives as chinless wonders. As someone else has pointed out, the Progressive Conservative party and the Cdn Alliance have both been engaged in a decade long series of non-productive leadership in-fighting, and with no political platform to stand on to speak of. In the view of a large proportion of the CDN public, the Liberal party has been only the best of a bad lot, like choosing between Curly, Larry or Moe.

If you think Cretien has been duplicious with it's US cousin south of the border, remember... Cretien is the same one who opposed Gulf War I as the Right Honourable leader of the Opposition in Parliament back in '91. This should come as no surprise to the politico's in Washington. Cretien has also been duplicious to his own people, and with his retirement, the only legacy he's going to leave the CDN people of his reign of indifference, is a bad taste in the mouths of those who get to see him kicked to the curb.

Cretien is partly right, it is a matter of principle... the principle being, that even had we been willing to support our US cousins, we wouldn't be able to in any material way.. thanks to Cretien, our Armed Forces have decayed to the point that we would be an embarrassment to Cretien, in the first sign of opposition from the foe, we'd have our asses handed back to us on a platter. Cretien would then have a legacy of military defeat to retire on.

Descartes, you couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is that Canada IS currently supporting the US in a material way in Iraq with 31 troops already there on an exchange – 31 troops which he refuses to recall. They are currently seeing action on the frontline, something that Chretien vehemently denies and a fact that the Canadian press refuses to take him to account over. At the very least, give support to the war to give your own troops the legitimacy they deserve. Anything less is immoral and disgusting.

I’m Canadian, but have been living outside Canada for a few years. I’m utterly appalled by Chretien’s “principled” approach. I’ve always hated him and I despise him even more now. He didn’t make this decision because he’s a weasel; he did it because he has his own agenda and because he can. The “UN justification” is a farce because Canada willingly sent troops to Bosnia for active combat without UN approval.

But this inconsistency should not come as any surprise from such a sleezeball. This is a “Canadian” who said in an interview with Le Monde that he regrets that the French never kept control of Canada. And then the Liberals go out and decry everyone who criticizes him, saying they’re “unpatriotic”. Sure…

Canada has done an exemplary job in the past in military conflict and people must never forget this. And Chretien does have every right to make the decisions for his country as he is the man (rightly or wrongly) in charge, so people shouldn’t forget this too. I just question the motivations behind his decision…and just about everything else he’s ever done since being in office. He’s duplicitous and downright dangerous.

In short, Canada’s problem today can be summed up in one statement: it is an English country being run by the French. So Canada’s foreign policy decisions shouldn’t really come as a complete surprise to anyone.

"Canada has done an exemplary job in the past in military conflict and people must never forget this."

This is very true, and here's one American that remembers.

Let's hope that Canada can return to the ranks of honorable nations soon. We miss ya, guys. (sniff)

Had Simon Crean been Australia's PM instead of John Howard, we too would have been on the sidelines with Canada.
So there but for the Grace of God go I...
Judge Canada by its actions after the next elections, not now.

In response to previous comments...just because I am French and Liberal does not make me side with Chretien. Just because I generally disagree with war does not mean I agree with all the horrible things happening in Iraq, it just means I'm young and perhaps naive...

My opinion is that war should be a last resort, and it was time for the last resort.