And be careful when you read more recent items about France agreeing to "suspend sanctions" - what they actuall propose is suspending the total UN embargo invoked during the hostilities and resuming the sanctions.

The US is running Iraq now. The US will sell Iraqi oil at market price. As much as possible. There is no way France or Russia or the UN can control this. They all know this and nobody is so stupid that they think otherwise.

With this in mind reread Chirac etc. Reread Safire's editorial. Chirac's audience is in France, but Safire's audience is US public opinion. What is he trying to accomplish by this pretense?

Safire's article is less about the future and more about the missing money from the 'sanctions' era under Baath. He is simply asking for some forensic accounting, I can't identify any 'pretense'--but maybe I'm just too gullible.

The pretense that Chirac can or will interfere with Iraqi recovery. He can't even if he wanted too. In my opinion the subtext of this editorial is "Look, here is more outrageous evidence that we should simply ignore our ex-allies completely, and just do what is right for the good people of the world."

Well, all will agree that this has pretty much been the Bush administration gameplan, Colin Powell's softer words notwithstanding. A lot of the right wing would like to get rid of Colin Powell.