Murph and I were sitting here looking through the news on the Net and we came upon this opinion poll in French from Le Monde, so we took it. We were particularly attracted by their promise to send the results and comments to Monseeur Jack Chiraq himself. Then we checked the results.

Keep in mind that this is a self-selected survey and therefore not representative of French opinion as a whole, but it bloody well is representative of the mentality of those French folk who read Le Monde, 2700 of whom had filled out the survey when we last checked.

Anyway, out of these folks, 47% said they thought the Iraqis saw the Americans as an army of occupation, not liberation; 57% think humanitarian goals are not of concern to the Coalition forces; 56% say the Coalition should not have intervened militarily in Iraq; 64% say Chirac did not err in his diplomatic efforts; 43% of them say they totally disapprove of the intervention and another 19% somewhat disapprove; and, get this one, 52% see the United States as a danger to the world, as against 29% who see the US as protection against dangerous countries and 18% more who say the US is neither one nor the other. Fifty-two percent of any survey, even a self-selected one like this, is pretty significant, I submit.

The most fun part is that there's a place where you can put your commnets, so we said M. Chirac was a big tete de merde and then Murph added this joke:

Q: What's the difference between the Republican Guard and Jacques Chirac?

A: The Republican Guard knew when to quit.