WASHINGTON -- But Mr. President, I like French perfume, French food and wine and even Parisian fashions that I can't afford. Besides, who doesn't love Paris in the springtime?

And I just can't get myself to order the trendy "freedom fries" instead of French fries.

It looks like tough times ahead for all things French. We have the word from the White House that it's payback time -- France is being blacklisted by President George W. Bush and his hawkish advisers for not toeing the U.S. line on Iraq.

This is shabby treatment for an old friend who came to our rescue as far back as the American Revolutionary War.

I'm thinking of France's Marquis de Lafayette who came to aid George Washington in 1777 in our war of liberation from England. Then there was the French navy that reinforced Washington's army and helped to defeat the British at Yorktown in 1781.

Not that we didn't express our gratitude by defending France from Germany in two world wars in the last century. We did.

But reverence for our history is not a distinguishing characteristic of this administration. It also has displayed an acute allergy to dissent, internally and externally.

Now that the United States has conquered Iraq, the Bush administration is trying to make good on the president's high noon philosophy: "You are either with us or against us."

As part of the new official Franco-phobia, Bush told NBC-TV in an interview Wednesday that he doubts President Jacques Chirac would be "be coming to the ranch soon" in Crawford, Texas.

A ranch visit is the president's ultimate expression of gratitude, reserved only for leaders of what he calls the "coalition of the willing."

Because France opposed the war against Iraq in the United Nations Security Council, Chirac won't get close to Crawford anytime soon.

France -- our longtime European ally -- has been demonized in America. And Secretary of State Colin Powell recently warned that France would suffer "consequences" for its no-war stand.

Where have we heard that word before?

Powell did not spell out U.S. spiteful intentions toward France, but the word "consequences" has a familiar ring to it. We heard the threats of "consequences" often before the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Does that mean that we are now going to invade France? Of course not. Boycott, maybe. Shun, certainly.

The New York Times reports that the neo conservatives on the presidential and vice presidential staffs are planning to freeze out the French by turning for decisions to the NATO Defense Policy Council which does not include France. It may also snub the North Atlantic Council, NATO's governing body of which France is a member.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer denied a report that Bush would stay at a Swiss hotel when he attends an international economic meeting in Evian in the French Alps this spring. That would have been a blatant insult to the host country.

The chilling of the U.S.-French relationship began in the days leading up to the Iraqi war when Bush refused to take calls from French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder after both asked for more time for arms inspectors to do their work in Iraq.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also has been given a chilly shoulder.

In the aftermath of the war, Chirac telephoned Bush. Fleischer coldly described their conversation as "businesslike." Reporters got the picture in a hurry.

In its frenzy to make sure that no one else share in the spoils of victory, Bush is determined to bar the world organization from playing any significant role in the reconstruction of Iraq.

Meanwhile, the cartoonists and comedians are having fun with the silly anti-French climate. There is no word yet on whether a peeved Bush plans to change the name of Lafayette Park, directly across from the White House.

Well, as they say in France "C'est la vie." Or is it "C'est la guerre"?

(Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address helent@hearstdc.com)