"If the war starts and if Saddam Hussein uses chemical or biological weapons, it would change completely the situation for the French president and for the French government, and President Chirac will have to decide what we will do to help the American troops to confront this new situation. But I confirm it would change completely the perception and the situation for us."

"In order to reduce the chances of an Islamic terrorist attack on French soil we have just made a public display of standing up to America, however it remains apparent to us that the sands of the Middle East are blowing in your direction and we wondered if you would mind our taking a seat at the table."

For the first time, French publications, reporting on the disarray of political analysts, are now asking: Who are we against, Saddam or Bush? Or: Where was the sense in Chirac's promising a veto of a new UN resolution when such a gesture was not an absolute necessity? And even: How did France manage to reject British revisions to its draft resolution last week hours before Iraq did?

"Have They Gone Overboard?" this week's cover-story in Le Point, a center-right newsmagazine, wondered over a picture of Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. Its lead editorial's response was mostly yes, noting viperishly that France was rather good at accommodating itself to any detestable status quo. But that hardly signaled some kind of special unease, no more than the middle-ground financial daily La Tribune did in saying Tuesday that France would pay dearly for its gratuitous threat of a veto.

Instead, the notion that a botch may well be at hand for France came in a well-researched article in the current issue of the left-populist magazine Marianne, normally a font of anti-American tweaks and bellows, which analyzed recent French diplomacy under the title, "Visionary Policy or Operetta-Style Gaullism?"

It said France always sought if possible to propel its own policies with a European motor but found that its disagreement these days with many of the EU's members and candidates about the French desire for a Europe defined by its opposition to America eliminated any hope of a common policy.

Quoting Aymeric Chauprade, who teaches geopolitics at the French War College, the article told of his criticism of France's resistance to American "domination" as piecemeal, without any overall plan, and judging its flirt with Russia and China at the United Nations as old stuff and without basic effect on Moscow and Beijing, whose ties with America are priorities for them.

"As for Germany," Chauprade said, "if it changed its line (from its present stance), it could return to its role within American strategy. Not France."