Seems to me that Chirac's opinion of anything Iraq or middle east related is a bit jaded, especially as more comes out regarding the involvement of the French, German, and Russian governments concerning the oil for food program... maybe it would have been better to call it the money / military hardware for oil program.
IMHO, I think that France is a nice place to visit, most of the people seem fairly decent, but, their leadership is just not headed in a direction I would consider to be honest and productive.
Either way, like a few have already said, Chirac is definitely not making friends over here very easily, but, that shouldn't matter too much because the idiot that could have been influenced by his opinions never made it to the white house!