Shorty

Germany's Bundeskanzler, Gerhard Schröder, is probably my least-favorite European politician. I dislike Jacques Chirac also, but Monsieur Chirac has sound political and strategic reasons for his opposition to the United States on foreign policy matters. I find it more difficult to excuse Herr Schröder's eagerness to flush years of good relations down the drain so as to better be Monsieur Chirac's poodle over Iraq, a position he seems to have taken solely because he was in political difficulty at home, and needed support from Germany's hard left.

David's Medienkritik, which follows the German press, has a delicious photograph of Herr Schröeder; showing that the good Herr Bundeskanzler's desire to, ahem, measure-up, is pretty constant.