Wampum

How much difference did Chirac's "non" make? To begin with, if it hadn't been said, body bags would be making the return flights from Baghdad to Paris, in addition to Sydney, London and Washington. That is important in Metro France. Without Chirac's "non" Colin Powell's scam at the UN would have carried the day, and it would be the United Nations, not the delusional leaderships of the former democracies that self-destructed when 19 suicides in four heavy transports and a cartoon of a bearded man uttering incomprehensible threats filled the televisions that would be prosecuting a blunder on the scale of the Korean War. That is important outside of Metro France.

Its not just the color of the helmets of the Occupation Forces, its the identification of Treaty Law with the minds of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, ...

Chirac would not walk into Arab East Jerusalem accompanied by the pro-annexation mayor of non-Arab West Jerusalem, Eduad Olmert. He would not leave Yasser Arafat with no alternative but to die without medical attention in a ruined building surrounded by tanks.

Its not just the momentary specifics of the "Arab-Israeli Conflict", its the full measure of the Likud-NeoCon dream, of armed brilliance in Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

At 11am this morning Jacques Chirac transfered control of the world's fourth largest nuclear weapons inventory to Nicolas Sarkozy. It was Charles De Gaulle's insistence on French strategic independence, on un monde multipolaire et démocratique. Without which, "non" would have been impossible, or simply implausible.

The price of a mess o' freedom fries was profoundly understated.