Thank you! I don't have any attitude towards facts - would not know one if I saw one - but I do appreciate the effort to detail the circumstances of the event, and I am better for it. Thank you!

>I realize you have a post-modern attitude toward facts, but your WWII history is based on even a shoddy watching of television.
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>The Battle of Mers-el-Kebir, part of Operation Catapult, in which 2,000 French sailors were killed, happened after Admiral Gensoul refuse the British ultimatum. This was not Churchill 'ruthlessly' murdering hapless French sailors who did not have time to evacuate their ships. The Vichy government had allied itself with Hitler and the battleships and cruisers were going to become part of the German war effort. The Germans used the attack as a propaganda coup, but from a military perspective there was no question Churchill did the right thing. Two years later a British S.O.E. team took out Admiral Darlan. *That* was ruthless - and absolutely correct. <s>
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>If 'the oligarchs' had controlled our entry into WWII - instead of the 'traitor to his class' we would have comported ourselves like the Swiss, whose 'neutrality' was a pretext for war-profiteering.
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>But I will agree - we should have gone in earlier - say 1934. But that would have been an arrogant, cowboy kind of thing to do and our only ally would have been Britain ( if Churchill had been PM and he could have overcome immense internal opposition ) The French would have resisted and the League of Nations would have condemned us.
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>>You're right - and there was the Balkins (Serbia and Kosavo) - that was pretty bad.
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>>I saw a History channel special once. The US (FDR) was considering lend/lease to the UK. The French had surrendered and Germany was preparing to take the French Warships. Churchill sunk them before the French sailors got off. Churchhills ruthlessness (shelling the ships even though ally troops were aboard) sealed the lendlease. FDR was attracted to his Ruthlessness, eg Churchhill was someone he could work with.
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>>It's funny - the US could have come in earlier - but like the good oligarchs we are we waited till the war had destroyed most of the European infrastructure. We made a lot of money off Europe after the war!
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>>War is money - usually free money from your or some other countrys' tax base!
>>Do need need market or advertise, just be able to count the money when it comes in.
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>>>>I guess the thing that disturbs me most, is that I really do not believe Kerry has a core and therefore I do not think I can predict with any reliability what he will do.
>>>>Bush lied to us. His lies have killed 100K Iraqi and 1200 US. Clinton lied about sex - no one was killed - and he was prosecuted.
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>>>Not sure noone was killed. Six years ago, after he bombed Sudan and Iraq, the joke was circulating: "if they catch him with his fly open one more time, we're the next". And we were - 3/24/1999-6/10/1999.
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>>>And there was an attempt to prosecute him for that, but then the court disagreed on jurisdiction and the whole thing was cast into oblivion.