Filed at 9:26 a.m. ET
PARIS (Reuters) - It's the diplomatic equivalent of water rolling off a duck's back. Bashing the French does not beat them down -- au contraire, it only makes them more convinced they must be right.
The air has been thick with insult these days, both over the Atlantic and across the Channel, as the United States and Britain pile pressure and scorn on their reluctant ally to support an attack against Iraq.
``Cheese-eating surrender monkeys,'' ``the rat that roared,'' ``the petulant prima donna of realpolitik'' -- the epithets flung at France by the U.S. and British media can easily make a reader forget they're talking about America's oldest ally.
U.S. officials have hardly been diplomatic either. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has written off France as part of ``old Europe'' and said its opposition to emergency NATO measures to boost Turkey's defenses is a disgrace.
If all this was meant to bully France into changing its mind, it's not working.
France's reaction has been to redouble its efforts against a U.S.-led war, blocking NATO war preparations in Turkey and plugging for an extension of United Nations arms inspections that an exasperated Washington insists are now useless.
Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the easy-going prime minister who rarely speaks about foreign policy, shot back last Friday at President Bush's ``the game is over'' statement by saying: ``It's not a game, it's not over.''...
<http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-france-bashing.html>
Carl
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