Yes, America rightly and correctly refused to engage in a colonialistic "guarantee" of the oil contracts France had with Saddam; when such contracts must (at that time) become subject to a future Iraqi government, not America.
France helped perpetuate the myth - in the geopolitical media - that America "went to war for oil" when it was France who would have gone to war with the U.S. if the U.S. bought that cooperation with oil, Iraqi oil that the U.S. had, and even no excercizes no rights to make "guarantees" about.
No, we are glad to have not indulged in the colonialistic gamesmanship of the French in their lust for Iraq's oil, and their willingness to dispose of the trans-Atlantic alliance because we refused that indulgence.
It demonstrated the "my way or the highway" self-centeredness of the standard French foreign policy. It also demonstrated that France seldom has any true multinational partnership interest, unless there is some commercial benefit in it for France.
And for that stance, America went into Iraq without a UN mandate, with a substantial alliance arrayed against her.
And such allies as she did manage to cobble together, mostly inefficient 3rd Worlders, have left. In Europe, the governments that supported the American effort have been voted out of office and replaced.
The Americans did incredible damage to their own war effort by being greedy about Iraqi oil. For let us be clear: the Iraqi government is a puppet state, and will necessary remain so, and the Americans are going to call the show with that state in terms of oil concessions.
The US had to decide what was most important.
They decided, at the outset of the war.
Now the domestic political support for the war is falling apart even within the United States, and the Americans have no plan for either victory nor exit from Iraq.
The Republicans will probably not lose the 2006 elections, but they have no idea how to win the war in Iraq, and without any such idea, the war will simply continue. 2008 will be a replay of 2006, except with thousands more US casualties. And at that point American political will to continue in Iraq will collapse, the Democrats will sweep to power, and the American position in Iraq will collapse in the same humiliation that the US position in Vietnam did.
The so-called "principled" stance on Iraqi oil will not have accomplished anything other than to hand it all over to radicals.
It would have been better to make a deal with Paris and have world support. It would have made it far harder for the terrorists to find traction or allies.