Our Friends The French

NATO forces were asked for to aid Afghanistant with a plea coming from Hamid Karzai himself. The US and Britain were ready to oblige. Not so the French:

It is easy to make fun of the French and their pompous pretense to the grandeur they shed a half-century ago when their loss of honor under Vichy, and then their loss of empire, relegated them to the rank of second-class power. But the fun is over. Before Sept. 11, France's Gaullist anti-Americanism as a form of ostentatious self-aggrandizement was an irritant. With a war on — three, in fact: Afghanistan, Iraq and the larger war on terrorism — France's willful obstructionism becomes dangerous and deadly.

That obstructionism was on amazing display at the recent NATO summit in Istanbul. The supremely courageous President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, flies there to beg for our troops to protect his country in the run-up to September elections. Two female election workers had already been murdered and some 16 men had been shot to death by insurgents for registering to vote.

NATO responds with an offer of a small number of troops to be sent around September. Karzai pleads for a more immediate deployment. Britain and the U.S. request deployment of NATO's new rapid-reaction force created precisely for such contingencies. France's President Jacques Chirac vetoes it, saying the force should not be used "in any old way."

However, this may bring to light some unseemly goings on by our buddies Chirac and his cohort, a guy name Dominique. This is off the MEMRI news ticker:

THE SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE IRAQI MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS SAID HIS COUNTRY WILL SOON RELEASE TO THE IRAQI PRESS DOCUMENTS REVEALING THE NAMES OF COUNTRIES AND INDIVIDUALS WHO WERE INVOLVED IN THE 'OIL FOR FOOD' SCANDAL. (AL-SABAH AL-JADID, IRAQ, 7/6/04)

Let the weasling begin.