"They don't make a distinction between invasions invited by the country to fight a different invader?"

... very seldom disclosed about our liberation of France between June and August of 1944, is that the intensive Allied bombing campaign throughout Normandy and northern France just prior to and during the rusulant Allied invasion resulted in over 50,000 French civilian casualties, including over 10,000 dead.

Further, another 19,000 civilians were estimated to have died in the crossfire throughout the summer of 1944 as U.S., British and Canadian forces advanced through France and Belgium toward the German frontier.

That we very seldom acknowledge this sad but inevitable carnage -- which was for the most part unavoidable, given the enormous scale of opposing forces in France that year -- has long been somewhat of a sore point with the French, even today.

Another dirty little secret from the Second World War is that when American forces first went into action against the Axis European powers in November 1942 during "Operation Torch" (the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa), we were not initially facing German or Italian forces. Rather, we ran smack-dab up against heavy resistance from the nearly 150,000 Vichy French troops who garrisoned Morocco and Algeria. (Vichy France was a client satellite state of Nazi Germany.)

In the naval Battle of Casablanca (Nov. 10, 1942), the U.S. Navy squadron covering the invasion sank a French cruiser, six destroyers and six submarines, and further disabled the French battleship Jean Bart. One American destroyer was sunk, and another badly damaged in the melee.

At Oran, the U.S. troops who were initially pinned down on the landing beaches by heavy French fire (November 8-9) were ultimately saved by the actions of four British Royal Navy battleships, which braved enemy artillery by sailing close to shore, training their heavy guns on French fortifications in the hills above the beaches, and literally pounding the French into capitulation one day later.

Officially, 497 Americans, 94 Brits and 1,396 French sailors and soldiers lost their lives in the three days' fighting at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers. Another 900 Americans and 2,000 French were wounded.

Therefore, the notion that we were "invited" by the French to liberate the motherland in the Second World War is at best dubious.

While Gen. Charles DeGaulle and the Free French government then exiled in London undoubtedly gave the green light to Gen. Eisenhower, it's clearly a real stretch to claim that they represented French mainstream public opinion at the time. They merely spoke for those 150,000 French troops who managed to escape from Dunkirk with their British allies in May 1940, and who chose to continue fighting alongside the British after Gen. Henri Petain surrendered their country to the Germans the following month.

One final dirty little secret is that while there was indeed a stubborn and active core of French resistance throughout the four years of German occupation, French civilians were often more than prone to work in active collaboration with the Germans. It was not at all uncommon for those U.S., British and Canadian airmen who survived being shot down over France, to be subsequently taken into custody by civilians and turned over to the German authorities.

War by its very nature is a rather complicated and messy affair, and each conflict will always have its share of dirty little secrets that few wish to either acknowledge or talk about.

I've always been terribly cognizant of the difference between the words, ever since my high school English teacher politely pointed it out to me while grading my paper -- with a little smiley face by my mistake. She still gave me an "A," but that's one lesson she drummed into me very easily.