, 9 February 2006 (UTC) 

 You have to remember that France does not have a hard-core market economy like the United States does.  If you want to compare corruption in France to corruption in the US, you're going to have to work a little bit harder (it's not easy to compare apples and oranges ) ).  As you probably know, the French government has large holdings in my companies considered to be important to the national well-being.  By nature, public companies have major differences to private ones.   Are they more corrupt ?  Maybe, but then we have things like Enron and Haliburton (Dick Cheney).  You can't simplify the issue to the point that «because France is old, it's corrupt» or «because Chirac (and many others, including Canada, Germany, and most of the world) didn't want to help the US with their bogus invasion, they all must be criminals.» I would rather that Bush kicked back a couple of million $$$ and bought himself a new car, then having him procede with whatever he thinks he's doing now.  By the way, how do you like paying for the war ?  Not exactly a small bill, is it (Bush just asked for another 130 billion)?  Might have used that money for something else...educatin, social security, you know, junk like that.   05:59