Which is why they'll be on the front lines when the war starts. For all the criticism the French get at FR, they do know who to play the end game pretty well (comes from experience with their history of surrenders). They know Bush's timeline - they asked for proof, and now they're getting it. It's important to them that they play the role of eminence griese.
Has anyone here ever been to the ME (other than military)? If you have, you know that it still reflects the partitions imposed after WWI. Lebanon, Syria and Iraq were administered by France. French is still the second language, after Arabic, in those countries.
There's no way the French are going to be left out of the economic boom times created by an Allied occupation/creation of a new democratic government in Iraq.