Dateline May 18:

French Minister Flies U.S.'s Snow to D-Day Beaches

Putting aside differences over Iraq, the finance ministers of France and the United States recalled their countries' decades as allies on a helicopter tour of D-Day beaches on Sunday.

"This shows, 50 years later, that the ties are so tight they will never be loosened," said France's Francis Mer during a tour of Normandy beaches where U.S., Canadian and British troops came ashore in June 1944 to free France from Nazi occupation.

Mer, who had hosted a meeting of top world finance ministers in a nearby town, was joined by his U.S. and Canadian counterparts Treasury Secretary John Snow and Finance Minister John Manley.

The helicopter landed them at Omaha Beach at Colleville-sur-Mer, and a famous American graveyard where the three men paused at the tombstone of Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jnr, son of the late U.S. president.

President Bush visited the same spot in May 2002, long before the spat between Paris and Washington over Iraq.

"It's inspiring to be here," Snow said in a whisper to Gene Dellinger, superintendent at the cemetery where Roosevelt Jnr, who died on July 12, 1944, is one of 9,387 U.S. buried soldiers.

"I want to thank minister Mer for making possible this opportunity to be with Mr. Manley here on this hollowed ground which calls to mind the sacrifice, the heroism, the mobility of spirit, in the pursuit of freedom," Snow said.

"This is very moving," added Manley, whose prime minister, Jean Chretien, repeatedly criticized Bush's policies in Iraq.

It seems they did not visit the same museum that the Frogman visited, for if they had, Mer would have had some serious explaining to do.

The government of France uses our dead as a political weapon against us, and spits on their graves when our back is turned.

Update 20030702: The Dissident Frogman has more to say on this.

Update 20030703: More on this at LGF. It is claimed that no US flag ever flies at that particular museum.

Update: Sylvain Galineau offers an alternative explanation.

Update: The Dissident Frogman has discovered that the empty flagpole never flies a US flag, and that there were no pins and small flags in the shop there because they were sold out.