he was indeed partisan of taking a strong line against Saddam Hussein - in the name of promoting democracy and ending a nasty dictatorship. Like others, he saw the new international attention on Iraq as a way to actually promote democracy. They should have known better with Bush, but at least they have been consistent, as the same intellectuals had been calling for action about Chechnya (i.e. calling Russia to task a lot more seriously than was ever done) and previously against Milosevic.

WMDs were never a big consideration for them, and (sadly) neither was the identity of the party pushing that war. So I would not dumpt him/them in the same bag as the armchair warriors - especially Kouchner who does have credibility as an activist against war.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes