It is absolutely smart, long term. Steven Den Beste covered this much more completely than I could a long time ago. We don't need to -- and shouldn't -- attack France economically, but we should make it clear that they are no longer our friend. Friends don't do what France did last year.Most importantly, everyone needs to remember that France fought as hard as they could to keep the Iraqi people under the boot of Saddam. Just because they had different reasoning (maybe) doesn't change the end result. The people in the mass graves don't care how altruistic France was.

You have a link to the Shorter Version?

To me, this seems like a lot of baying at the moon.For one, this only forbids countries from using US TAXPAYER DOLLARS for reconstruction. Russia is perfectly free to donate its own money and use its own contractors. To me, it seems to be the height of arrogance to expect to receive contracts when they opposed the action to begin with. The US and allies (France and Russia are not allies, they are just other countries. WWII ended 60 years ago, and the Cold War ended over a decade ago) such as Poland and Spain were forced to bear a higher cost in terms of money and lives because the blacklisted countries refused to contribute- due in large part to the financial stake they had in maintaining Saddam's regime- so it does not seem fair to award them contracts paid with American taxpayer dollars, benefitting their economy, when they made no investment in the effort in the first place. Why should France profit when it risked nothing in lives or money to get rid of Saddam?Secondly, the countries are only forbidden from bidding on contracts as general contractors. There is nothing saying they can't work as subcontractors. In fact, a German company, Siemens, operating as a subcontractor, is already working in Iraq. There is a French company working on deisel generators, and a Russian company is refurbishing power plants.Now, if this were a valid complaint, it would be valid from any perspective, but I think this one warrants the good old intellectual honesty test. Let's take a hypothetical scenario here. Let's say that the US never participated in WWII, and in fact was a vocal opponent of the allies, working against them at every turn. After the allies came out of a close victory over the axis, Great Britain passed a very controversial bill in the Parliament granting billions of dollars, let's say, $87 billion, at a time when Great Britain was suffering from high unemployment, budget deficits, and a recession, for the purpose of reconstructing Germany after the war. Now along comes the arrogant Americans, Johnny-come-latelies, a country that opposed the war against Germany because of the large and lucrative arms contracts it had with the German government. Should America expect to get some of the money paid by the British during harsh economic times when it could ill afford it, when America opposed Great Britain? Should American CORPORATIONS profit from the lives lost and the blood spilled by the British people when America scoffed at the British for their actions and acted in the UN (I know it didn't exist then) to hinder their efforts? Answer that, and be honest. You will only lie to yourself otherwise.

"preferential bidding and sweet deals for American companies"Because we all know that only American corporations are bad. A French corporation profiting from the blood of another country's citizens is still worthy of a humanitarian award by virtue of not being American, or something like that. I think that people forget that other countries have the same selfish interests as the US. A lot of people seem to have a tendency to attribute to other countries the highest and noblest motives for everything they do contrary to US interests simply because they think that only America is selfish, but in fact, we do not live in a black-white world where the US is greedy, selfish, and unilateralist. Every nation is that way, but because every other nation will put its interests before the US's interests, they think that somehow the rest of the world is altrusitic and selfless, serving some kind of greater good. They aren't. It is just that in pursuing their own interests, many will share in common an opposition to US interests.

This isn't about "valid complaints." This is about piss-poor diplomacy. This is about continually acting in ways one MUST recognize will set your allies' teeth on edge.

I took the original entry to be against the substance of the decision, not the lack diplomatic propriety in announcing it.I heard a similar complaint on C-SPAN, that it wasn't so much the substance of the decision, but the way it was announced. But then another commentator stated that the fact that it is an election year played a big role in the way the message was delivered. A great many Americans are satisfied with the decision, and, like any politician, Bush wanted to make it as publicly known as possible that the countries that stood against the US would be punished.It is a bit duplicitous, however, since the countries can still bid on the contracts as subcontractors. But I cannot get upset. Only those with elevated expectations of politicians can be upset about any cynical action taken by a member of the political class.