according to this analysis in the International Herald Tribune.

But reacting in fear of isolation, the official suggested, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's willingness to subordinate Germany to a French view of confrontation with the United States on many wider fronts has brought the government to a position it now finds an awkward fit with Germany's long-term interests, and to a place outside the realm of the two men's anticipation when they ran for re-election on a pacifist platform last September.



In very less specific terms, this notion of things having gone too far appeared to suffuse remarks on Monday by Fischer that American policy was absolutely nonimperial in nature, that the United States was the irreplacable element of global and regional security, that there was no alternative to good trans-Atlantic relationships and that he well understood how the new East European membership of the European Union could have a "very different view" of their security than this or that EU founding member.

Even in normal, less electric times, this was a vision France could not sustain. If part of it also suggested that Germany's existential need for smooth relations with Eastern Europe was whipsawed by President Jacques Chirac's warning to the EU's new members that he required them to choose current French and German global policy over that of the Americans, then it also complemented concerns in Paris that Chirac's Brezhnev-style blunder - explained away here as hearty Chiraquian straight-talk - was one among many.

These concerns have made for the first real breach in the French media's amen chorus that has punctuated their president's breakaway run since January from the last half-century's Western notions of international order.

For the first time, French publications, reporting on the disarray of political analysts, are now asking: Who are we against, Saddam or Bush? Or: Where was the sense in Chirac's promising a veto of a new UN resolution when such a gesture was not an absolute necessity? And even: How did France manage to reject British revisions to its draft resolution last week hours before Iraq did?

"Have They Gone Overboard?" this week's cover-story in Le Point, a center-right newsmagazine, wondered over a picture of Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. Its lead editorial's response was mostly yes, noting viperishly that France was rather good at accommodating itself to any detestable status quo. But that hardly signaled some kind of special unease, no more than the middle-ground financial daily La Tribune did in saying Tuesday that France would pay dearly for its gratuitous threat of a veto.

Instead, the notion that a botch may well be at hand for France came in a well-researched article in the current issue of the left-populist magazine Marianne, normally a font of anti-American tweaks and bellows, which analyzed recent French diplomacy under the title, "Visionary Policy or Operetta-Style Gaullism?"



When France threatened to veto ANY resolution that actually enforced UNSCR 1441 (which they coauthored), they left no alternative. They tried to weasel out of it by offering another 30 day extension to inspections, but by this point they'd proven they couldn't be trusted to honor their agreements. Their offer was rejected outright.

As for public opinion, here in the US, support for the war is over 70% according to the Washington Post.

Seven in 10 said they supported Bush's televised call to go to war without the blessing of the United Nations unless Saddam Hussein and his sons leave Iraq within 48 hours.



An equally large majority believe that Bush has done enough to win support from other nations. More than two in three said his policies on Iraq are the right ones, although fewer than half are strongly convinced.

The public's preference for a U.N.-endorsed war also has faded into the background following the collapse of efforts by the United States and its allies to win support for a second war resolution in the U.N. Security Council. Three in four disapprove of the way the United Nations has handled the Iraqi crisis, up from slightly more than half three weeks ago.



The French are even backing off from their offer to help if Saddam uses chemical weapons according to this article. Not that they would be trusted, but their offer is meaningless.

France's ambassador in Washington, Jean-David Levitte, appeared to offer an olive branch to the United States on Tuesday when he told CNN that France could help the U.S.-led military coalition if Baghdad used biological or chemical arms.



But French diplomats in Paris made clear this was not a change in France's refusal to join the war. "It is obvious we wouldn't sit back and not help if there was a chemical attack. But what we are talking about is medical assistance," one said.



As for the US, we have the direct support of 30 nations and behind the scenes support of at least 15 more. So what if France, Germany, and Belgium disagree?