BUSH BLEW IT: FRANCE WOULD HAVE SENT TROOPS

Well, this won't make the splash it should because the Repugs don't want to believe anything positive about the French. Their kind of mind needs, craves betrayers as well as enemies. But a newly released book says France was ready to contribute troops until Bush blew it.

French officials were prepared to provide as many as 15,000 troops for an invasion of Iraq before relations soured between the Bush administration and the French government over the timing of an attack, according to a new book published in France this week.

The book, "Chirac Contre Bush: L'Autre Guerre" ("Chirac vs. Bush: The Other War"), reports that a French general, Jean Patrick Gaviard, visited the Pentagon to meet with Central Command staff on Dec. 16, 2002 -- three months before the war began -- to discuss a French contribution of 10,000 to 15,000 troops and to negotiate landing and docking rights for French jets and ships.

French military officials were especially interested in joining in an attack, because they felt that not participating with the United States in a major war would leave French forces unprepared for future conflicts, according to Thomas Cantaloube, one of the authors. But the negotiations did not progress far before French President Jacques Chirac decided that the Americans were pushing too fast to short-circuit inspections by U.N. weapons inspectors.