The translation in the posted article is correct.
Either O and his staff really are this stupid, or they’re trying to get a shadow government going in France.
It could be that he wrote Chirac to form a bond and knows he is not President. It is an incredible insult to the President of France if he wrote Chirac before the real deal.
I doubt it was addressed “Mr President” or whatever the protocol is for a letter to a Head of State.
Yes, he wrote to Jacques Chirac saying - “I am certain that we will be able during the four years to come to collaborate together in a spirit of peace and of friendship in order to build a safer world”,
The article continues...so writes the successor of George W. Bush to the predecessor of Nicolas Sarkozy. While evoking the word of “peace”, Obama pays homage implicit to the actions of the former French president who was was opposed to the war in Iraq. An American intervention against which the future US president was opposed as senator, at the time of the vote to the Congress.
He dissed Sarkozy no matter what way one looks at it and it appears that Obama is pretending to himself that Chirac is still in charge.
Why hasn’t this gotten more publicity one might ask...thereagain...
I think it is the latter