The one thing most of my fellow europeans have not forgotten and wont pardon is Guantanamo.

Al the others lies about WMD, illegal wars, bombing of innocents and so on, others participated willingly or even reluctantly, and so the fault is not squarely on the previous administration (eg Tony Blair has a lot to answer too). They were certainly the prime movers but had followers.

But the return of barbary and sweeping of feet on the Geneva Convention is a very dirty stain on the american values.

B. Obama said clearly he will close it and that a good thing. But if there is one thing to prosecute of the Bush era, this is that one.

French constitution and civil law expressly separate itself from religions (all of them). They are recognized, but the law purposely not give them any public role, considering it is a private matter. Law is the same for all, and the moral used is a republican one that can be shared by everybody.

It is an important foundation of our society. Eg religious signs of all sort (muslim scarfs, jewish kippa, or the christian cross) cannot be weared in public schools, or by a public servant on his workplace. Religious teaching is optional even in the community private schools. In fact, many muslims girls attends catholic schools because they can wear their scarfs there.

So, virginity may be an important quality for a muslim, but this is not a proper motif for annulment in the eye of the law, due to the fact it is an "essential quality" for religious reasons only, unlike hiding eg a criminal past. And french marriages are strictly civil. You can have a religious ceremony too, but the only official one is in front of the mayor.

There was a very important outcry when the original ruling was enacted, and the higher court corrected what almost everybody considered a very bad error.

There is a little fundamentalist fringe of the muslim community that try to push his religious view at every corner possible, and the request for annulment was one of those.

Renault is not in bad shape for having be 50 years a fully state owned company (was seized from the owner because he willfully helped the nazis during WWII).

It was slowly returned to private hands since 1996 (state only own 15% or so of it) and, depending in how you account its 44% participation in Nissan (which would have gone bankrupt), can be considered as the 4th world carmaker. Samsung and Dacia are part of the group, and they have the controlling stake of volvo too.

Btw, they just announced big layoffs (10% of the integrated salesforce, less in manufacturing, yet they shutted down night shifts in some plants), but their financial situation seems to stay rather sane.

@Chaumont

If one is allowed to mention it, in Europe as well the tendency for Presidents such as centre-conservativet Sarkozy in France is to compose a government in picking the best and the brighest also from the opposition party, the socialists.

2 things :

- Sarkozy is far from being a center-conservative. In fact he is one of the few remaining admirers of GW Bush and has said so multiple times. His policies would make GWB look moderate on some points, even if he start from a much more nanny state where many reforms are indeed needed.

Kouchner and the few other left guys in his cabinet are in fact centrists, or non-political. It was a smart move though.

- What is the center is very different on the 2 sides of the pond. Heck, we have 2 political organisations here on the left of the communist party !

But I agree that M. Obama picks seem to be very smart ones.

The reason true democracy actors must always do it "by the book", is the problem of the lowered bar.

If you infringe the rules for what is seen a good reason at a time (the generic example is "there is a bomb in the town, the security services detain one of the terrorists. Is it ok to torture him to learn where is the bomb planted ?"), then there is a temptation to go further the next time a less dangerous situation arise. This slow eroding of the safeguards and individual liberties is what we have witnessed not only during the Bush era, but it started even before mid-70's, especially in Europa. This lesson was learned the hard way first by my compatriots in the algerian war, and the last repercussions of that only happened in the 90's (starting by calling it a war and not evenements).

Btw, this tricky question is a problem only for democracies. The others wont have any guilt to get an answer, and you wont have any problem to imagine which it is. But when democracies do like the autocrats, they just lose a bit of their "mandate of heaven" as chineses would call that.

That dont mean that "No" is the only answer, but that it is a very serious question and that the consequenses must be checked and accounted for. The main problem with the Bush era is the lack of accounting which resulted in angering even closest allies.