The response of western governments to the Danish cartoon scandal has been rather lackluster. Few world leaders have expressed outright support for the cartoonists' right to free speech, with most instead throwing in a lot of qualifiers about how we must be "sensitive" and "responsible" and so on. I thought President Chirac's comments, which are quoted verbatim here, were a particularly telling, and thus upsetting, wishy-washy statement of this type.