Czechs favor Kerry

A survey by GlobeSpan found that Czechs would prefer John Kerry 42-18 over George W. Bush if they could vote in the U.S. elections. The poll didn't delve deeply into the reasons, and STEM said it knows of no domestic survey on the issue, but several factors have likely contributed to the preference for Kerry. His local roots make him a sort of hometown favorite, but more important are probably the problems with U.S. visas and the Bush administration's foreign policy. The CR hasn't lost any men or women in Iraq, otherwise Bush's rating would surely be worse. Bush has made it clear that he doesn't care much about what foreigners think. If he did, he could send his secret weapon, Vice President Dick Cheney, to charm the Czechs. Jan Beneš, a former teacher at the Defense Language Institute in California, told the BBC that Cheney graduated from a short course in Czech at the school in the mid-1970s. Richard