Certainly the UN needs a little cleaning. . .but dubya's snub set back foreign relations. When you act like you're the only country in the world, that can come back to haunt you.

France was owed about $180m in oil payments which it had to write off. It never made any huge contracts then or since...this is just a ploy by the Bush camp to smear France's name in the dirt because it refused to join his shabby charade. Actually Bush didn't want to go to the UN at all, but Blair tried to give him international legitimacy by asking him to represent it to the UN. Bush had no intention of abiding by any UN decision anyway, whatever the outcome. France actually never even used its veto.They didn't wish to see a misdirected war coming as a final result without exhausting the inspectors' findings. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose by this position, but maybe they put sense first. France is no golden angel, but it has not been involved in reconstruction contracts and has not changed its position on the war for the reasons sought, so it is silly to say that it was in disagreement simply because of trade deals.

Reminds me of what Madeleine Albright once said: America will act multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must. Translated into less noble-sounding language, this becomes We'll do whatever we damn well please, whether you're with us or not. Bush criticized the UN for not doing its job in endorsing his invasion plans. But what he doesn't care to realise is that if the UN were merely rubber-stamping Bush's plans, they would not be doing their job. And if the UN's function were merely to rubber-stamp American policies, then why would we have the UN in the first place? The UN has its flaws, but it's there for some very good reasons.

Yup. I remember that one. Just goes to show.