Meanwhile, Roger Cohen adds that

Jacques Chirac, the French president, sees a chance to place the United Nations, rather than the United States, at the center of an international initiative that plays to the image he seeks to cultivate of Europe as peacemaker and donor. His government has proposed the creation of a global civil protection force to intervene in such emergencies, a form of intervention that could scarcely be more distinct from that of American forces in Iraq.

The United Nations, hurt by the oil-for-food scandal, battling the image of ineffective talk-shop, sees an opportunity to demonstrate its ability to coordinate an emergency relief operation. Its bureaucrats have become loquacious, indulged by European television networks with on-air time to fill.

Not all of this is edifying.