"Ragnar" wrote in message
ink.net...

"Brian" wrote in message
. net...
Jeez, talk about yesterdays views - get off the France bashing already and
get back into life - I supposed you have stopped eating French Fries too?

And yes, France does have an Army - one that is very strong with very good
equipment - the Le Clerc being comparable to the vaunted M1.

How many battles has the Le Clerc been in?

France is an independant country and that in itself was one reason for
deciding to withdraw from NATO - so they could pursue their own course of
action.

Umm, they didn't "pull out" of NATO. They very conveniently stayed in just
enough to whine about stuff but far enough out to never actually do any
work.

Actually, they did pull out of NATO. By March 1966, deGaulle had withdrawn
France from NATO and its command structure because he felt that France needed to
be independent of joint security considerations, which would not have been
possible had they remained in NATO. As an example, they would have been unable
to bar the presence of missiles from their soil that were under foreign (to
them) control, which was a step that de Gaulle actually took. They remained out
of NATO until Mitterand brought them back in during the early '90s, although I
am not sure of that date or time period.

George Z.