With everything going on internationally and domestically, France's support would be a big help. With their support, we'd seem more on the side of the angels and the invasion we were planning would seem more like a righteous war. France is a very well-respected country and its decisions are known to be tempered with years of maturity. If France throws its support behind an action, you can generally rest assured that the action is well justified.

Of course, it's to our strategic benefit to have world opinion on our side.

France's newly elected leader meets with our ambassador, requesting a five minute courtesy call from the President. A reasonable request considering our countries' mutual good will, our ambassador passes the request on to the Secretary of State, who has an assistant email the appropriate White House staffer to set up a time for the call.

A week passes with no reply. Given about a thousand other things on his plate, the United States Ambassador to France moves on to other projects and forgets about the request for the call. So does SecState's assistant, who is also just a bit busy.

The French, of course, are sticklers for protocol. They certainly haven't forgotten about the request, but they're also not about to go begging to the U.S. Ambassador for a call from the U.S. President.

Another week passes and a seething President de la Republique Francaise is feeling snubbed. This has never happened before. America always replies promptly to such requests. The U.S. has an excellent protocol office and to not get a reply to such a simple courtesy call must be the American President's way of sending some sort of disapproving message to the new French leader.

In the mind of the French president, France doesn't deserve such a snub. Hasn't France been America's longest-running ally? After all, the United States wouldn't have won the Revolutionary War without France's help.

Following a late-night meeting with his gouvernement (cabinet of ministers), the French president publicly announces that France cannot support America's planned attack.

It's a huge blow to American foreign relations and to America's reputation worldwide.

But why didn't the White House staffer arrange for the President's call? That's what she does. And she's very good at her job.

It turns out that right in the middle of the build-up to war, some gray-haired Special Assistant to the President decided he didn't like the current email system. It was an email system put in by the previous administration and, as a matter of faith, everything done by the previous administration was bad. So, knowing almost nothing about email systems or IT, the gray-haired kindly old politico ordered the old system yanked and a new system put in its place.

He figured changing things out couldn't be too big a problem. He never used email, but his assistant didn't seem to complain. The kindly old politician knew a Senator who knew a techie, the 22-year-old son of one of his contributors, and the 22-year-old geek confirmed that he liked Microsoft more than Lotus anyway.