Shortly after his exclusive interview with Time Magazine, French President Jacques Chirac sat down in the Elysee Palace for an even more exclusive session with an unnamed ScrappleFace editor.

Here are key excerpts of that interview:

Why is France shirking its military responsibilities to its oldest ally? Ally? Which ally?

To the United States...your ally for more than 230 years....located several thousand miles to the west of Paris. Ah, oui...We don't like to think of it as shirking our responsibilities to the U.S., but rather as keeping our responsibilities to our ally, the Republic of Iraq. France is obviously not anti-American, we are simply pro-Iraqi. Of course, we don't like Saddam Hussein, and we wish he would go away. But we think this goal can be reached without starting a war. We currently have a program to deal with that -- it's called "souhait sur une étoile."

That's "wish upon a star." Yes. We're sincerely wishing he'll just go away...and we really believe he will if we just keep sniffing around his weapons sites, and asking prying questions."

But you seem willing to put the onus on inspectors to find arms rather than on Saddam to declare what he's got. Are there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? That's probable. But why should Saddam have to show them to us? The U.N. inspectors are guests in his country. When you visit someone's home, they don't say, 'Come let me show you what's in the medicine cabinet.' No, you have to be subtle. You say, 'May I use your powder room?' And then while you're in there, you peek into the cabinet. For now, I prefer to continue along the path laid out by the Security Council...except for the parts of resolution 1441 that say Saddam must disclose his weapons. That's just impolite."

What evidence would justify war? It's up to the inspectors to decide. When we assigned them this work, we deputized them as de facto rulers of all the nations in the Security Council. In reality, Hans Blix is the President of the United States, France, Germany, Russia and the others. We trust them to make war and peace decisions for us.

You say you want more inspectors. But without Iraqi cooperation, even 300 inspectors can't do the job. That's correct, no doubt. But you are discussing facts, and those of us who want ... what is the English word? ... appease?...no, it's 'peace'...those of us who want peace can't be weighed down with facts. We have feelings and beliefs. We really feel in our hearts that we can get Saddam to cooperate more, despite knowing in our heads and from experience that he won't. What's the worst that could happen? The delay could allow Iraq to produce a few more thousand units of sarin or VX, or to weaponize a little plutonium. This a trifle compared to the shame of bullying Saddam to disarm with threat of force.

Haven't tensions over Iraq poisoned transatlantic relationships? Not at all. France and the U.S. are just playing 'good cop, bad cop' with Iraq. We're intentionally looking like a bunch of spineless ninnies, and letting George Bush play the Al Pacino-I-might-snap-at-any-moment part. It's all an elaborate strategy we're doing cooperatively.

Does George Bush know about this strategy? Not yet...no, I don't think so.

We understand you told Time Magazine that you have a plan to allow President Bush to pull back from war without bringing eternal disgrace upon the United States? Yes, indeed. President Bush should just order the troops to come home and tell the American people, 'It looks like the U.N. has everything under control over there, so we'll just be moseying along now.'

Have you ever used LSD? Why do you ask?

If you liked this satire by Scott Ott, you can see more of his work at Scrappleface

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