As France's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre and seemingly incomprehensible, I wonder more and more about their motivation.
We can immediately dismiss any humanitarian argument ("war is never the solution; poor innocent Iraqi civilians will get killed") as transparently cynical and hypocritical.
Part of it, I'm sure, is a vainglorious wish to be considered the foremost counterweight to the hyperpuissance that is the United States.
But another part is an entirely legitimate desire to protect their own commercial interests. Obviously they can never expect to preserve current sweetheart deals with the dictator after he is overthrown.
But what Woolsey was telling us with the above quote was that we shouldn't drive France, Russia and China all the way to the wall, when it comes to divvying up the oil after the war. Although I tend to give the U.S. administration the benefit of the doubt, I still wonder if we really did provide enough incentive to these three veto powers to sign on to the coalition.