Yes, all those wonderful ‘allies’ who refused commit a single trooper to helping the us topple Saddam are indignant that the Bush administration won’t invite them to the trough. Somehow they expected to bid on those multibillion dollar contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq? Oui. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, as usual, gets it right: ‘Help our friends, or the French? You decide.’ Far from being an impediment to James Baker’s mission to persuade these recalcitrant ‘allies’ to forgive Iraq’s part of debt, it could be a bargaining chip.