As a Taiwanese person, it's truly amazing to witness how divided the US is over the Bush administration in this election year -- especially after reading articles, three days in a row, responding to Joel Linton (Letters, July 18, page 8) and then others fiercely denouncing the first respondents.
To my eyes, it's hypocritical for US President George W. Bush to boast about democratic progress in Iraq, when almost everybody knows his adventure in Iraq relates to another much more important substance -- oil.
So I laughed, and laughed bitterly to hear him suggest that President Chen Shui-bian (
However, it was even more laughable to see on TV the image of the exuberant Michael Moore being applauded for "revealing the truth to the public" by the French -- whose own government is notorious for siding with dictatorial regimes and being obsessed with their own irrational anti-Americanism.
Iraqi people lived peacefully and happily when former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was in power? The lifting of sanctions advocated by French President Jacques Chirac's government was for the Iraqis' own good?
Give me a break. The French had extensive interests in Iraq's oil industry, too.
Moreover, which nation first lifted its diplomatic boycott on China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre? Which nation has been campaigning unrelentingly for lifting the arms sales embargo to China?
Yes, it's France. Now that I've seen Moore talk about morality but gleefully accept praise from the French, I know what "super-hypocrisy" is.
Yung Ching-lin
Hsinchu
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