THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS: Good news — the French government finally seems to be getting some vague idea of how much damage Chirac’s chicanery has done to U.S./French relations. The bad news — they still can’t get it right:

With French-American relations severely strained over the conflict in Iraq, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin of France offered an olive branch to Washington today — but immediately declined to say explicitly who he hoped would win the war for Baghdad.

And even as he insisted that France stood ready for reconciliation with Washington, the French official delivered an impassioned attack on American plans to sideline the United Nations and assume the leading role in running post-war Iraq.

This, of course, is only going to make things worse. I thought the French were supposed to be sophisticated where diplomacy was concerned.