Well, I am referring to the royal, the editorial “us” and “them”. It doesn’t just mean the US and someone else. But yes it does have to be that way, no amount of intellectualism will change that, it is human nature, there are only friends and enemies. Let me put it to you this way, are their any current members of the Bush administration that you see as “friends”? Would you support any of them? Your politics are as black and white as anyones. As for Germany and Japan, yeah they are good friends now because their system of government is vastly different than it was when we were enemies, they may as well be different countries now, if they still had those old governments in place we would not be friends. Are you trying to say that reptiles are intelligent or that I am dumb? Reptiles have survived on this earth longer than we have (they’ll definitely out last us too) so I’ll take it as a complement. With Iraq Russia, France and Germany most certainly did not do us a favor. If we had their full support the invasion may not have been necessary and if we did invade extra troops from three powerful nations would have undoubtedly reduced casualties, and ended this war much sooner. As with Russia and SO, the problem is that their interests you speak of are located in another nation and of course they are expanding their power (that is what protecting their interests is), are you that blind. I don’t know why you think that we should have a “once our enemy, always our enemy” mindset. Russia is just a piece of land, it the actions of their people and government that makes them friend or foe. Yeltsin represented a change in Russia that we wanted to see, a Russia that was friendlier with the West. Chavez has publicly stated that he is an enemy of the US and I think that we should take him seriously, no matter what a pussycat he may seem. Chavez is also a filthy communist (anyone who would advocate that oppressive and broken system of government deserves to be a default enemy). (that last line was just a bit of fun, so don’t get too upset… Communism does suck though).