[A]fter what the contemptible French pulled yesterday, there is no reason for further delay.

Just moments after Britain offered a compromise resolution that would extend a deadline in return for imposing a series of steps Saddam must take to prove he's disarming, France swiftly turned thumbs down.

Not because it wasn't tough enough. Au contraire: French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin whined that the proposals "are part of a logic of war, a logic of automatic recourse to war."

And, as history tells us, if there's one thing the French can't stand, it's actually standing up to a dictatorial tyrant.

Here's the best part, as White House spokesman Ari Fleischer put it: "They rejected it [even] before Iraq rejected it. If that isn't an unreasonable veto, what is?"

Precisely.

Meanwhile, there's some evidence even the notoriously self-centered French are beginning to understand that their willfulness may have unhappy long-term consequences for them.

Paris put out a statement yesterday insisting that unity on the Security Council is paramount - a move that's being interpreted as a diplomatic opening.

Too little, too late, said Fleischer: "I think France has recognized that its statement that it would veto anything that is put before the Security Council has created problems...from which they're trying to retreat."

You don't say.

These [American] kids [who fought in France during World War II] died to save the French from a tyrant named Adolf Hitler.

And now, as more American kids are poised to fight and die to save the world from an equally vile tyrant, Saddam Hussein, where are the French?

Hiding. Chickening out. Proclaiming, Vive les wimps!

I read these names with tears in my eyes and fury in my heart..

These names mean nothing to the French, 91 percent of whom, according to a poll, are against President Bush's plans to make Saddam a dark mark in history.