(damn I promised myself to never get involved in any political thread here ;))

PhantomII you are right.. well almost 😉 Yes, America is a great country (perhaps not the best 😀 but still great). I fully agree with what you said about all the superb things, the opportunities, technology, etc. Come on, I had myself benefited from it more than once! Yes, it has a right to do whatever it wants to defend its interests. If it involves attacking this or that country because of this-and-that political agreements, that’s fine. If it involves shaking hands with some deadly dictators, just because they happen to be sitting on a stack of gas, that’s completely fine with me. If it involves just ignoring thousands of political prisoners somewhere, in the name of “balancing the trade deficit”, that’s bloody fine, I don’t care. Be it presenting false claims about other country as a pretext to attack it and stating “you’re with us or against”, like the famous Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech at the UN. That’s life, “these are the days of our lives”. Damn, that’s exactly what I would expect from my leaders (even if some of them happen to be retards ;)) and if they’d done otherwise I’d be the first to kick them in the nuts. I fully support the Americans like you that want to fight for all that, I’d probably do the same if I were one (especially given a chance to fly a Raptor ;))

Interestingly, all of that proves your point about Mr Blair’s quote – because it means that the country cares most about itself, its interests and its own citizens than anything else in the world. That’s indeed a reason for “in” being higher than “out”.

The one and only thing I hate about America is this bloody hypocrisy, that is trying to present all the above (once again: completely justified from a nation’s point of view) actions as “fight for the human rights”, “removing bloody regime”, “saving the world from the global terrorist threat”… etc., substitute anything you will hear on the CNN tonight.

Well, yet another Pole here 🙂 I learnt Russian for several years, as a part of obligatory education in the primary school. I don’t have much problem reading or understanding (besides, for native Polish speakers to understand is not really difficult, even if one doesn’t exactly speak Russian ;)). I can express myself a little if_i_really_have_to 😀 Otherwise, English, French and a bit of German.