Gotta admire Uncle Ted for always speaking his mind. As for the French, I had a friend who was recently in Iraq, and they found a rather large cache of weapons and explosives that were marked as French.
As for the general state of affairs in France, or Europe as a whole - there are good apples in every barrel, but it's getting harder and harder to find them in the socialist political climes that are over-riding the common sense of most people. France may have helped us in our war for independence, but we're a lot closer to the U.K. than we are to France these days.
gd