Why NATO isn't working properly

When even the NATO Secretary General admits it publicly, why further pretend that the Alliance is working properly? With countries like France or Belgium who fear the "American influence" more than the Muslim terrorists or the energy and political dependency on Russia - where is the EU heading?

"Some deliberately want to keep NATO and the EU at a distance from one another. For this school of thought, a closer relationship between NATO and the EU means excessive influence for the USA. I do not share European instinctive fears about undue influence of the USA in European affairs anyhow. Europe is sufficiently self-aware – and they know it in Washington too," Jaap De Hoop Scheffer.

Irussia

Just a little reminder..who are the 5 permanent members (with veto-right) in the UN Security Council?
USA
UK
France
Russia
China
Ok, now what are the chances of the UN to REALLY take some measures against Iran's obvious nuclear activities? That's right. Zero. Russia, for instance, announced to be interested in a "a gas OPEC". Putin's statement came just days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world's largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves. All clear?

good ol' chirac

Hmm...remember France? and all the jokes about their consistency and courage during wartime? This is not a joke. This is for real.

Speaking to the New York Times, IHT and Nouvel Observateur journalists, monsieur Chirac said this: "Having one [atomic bomb], maybe a second one a little later, well, that's not very dangerous. Where will [Iran] drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed to the ground." His aides quickly realized their man had committed the gaffe of saying what everyone thought he really believed, and so left out those passages from an official interview transcript. The journalists also got a return call from the president on Tuesday, in which he noted that "I should have paid better attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on the record."

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 2007, page A18.