Mark Steyn, again:
[S]o eager is Kerry to subordinate U.S. foreign policy to Saddam’s patrons that his attacks on America’s real allies have become increasingly obnoxious. In the last presidential debate, Kerry said:
”This president has done it wrong every step of the way. He promised that he would have a real coalition. He has a fraudulent coalition.”
… It’s taken as a given among Democrats that somehow this administration has needlessly offended the French and Germans. But insulting Britain, Australia and Poland as a cheap way to get at Bush demonstrates your superior sense of the subtleties of foreign policy? I’d say it’s going to be very difficult for President Kerry to work with these chaps after his election victory–or I would say it if I could type that sentence without collapsing in giggles.
The really ”fraudulent” coalition is the one Kerry wants: one that gives the Belgians and Syrians a veto over U.S. action for nothing in return. The ”fraudulent” coalition is Clark’s from the Kosovo war, where all ”allies” were entitled to advance operational information regardless of whether they were actually contributing to any of the operations, and where, as Clark himself noted in his memoir, ”one of the French officers working at NATO headquarters had given key portions of the operations plans to the Serbs.” [Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 11/2/03]