Having first read your article about two French presidents, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac, who attended the funeral of Omar Bongo, Gabon’s president for no less than forty-two years (“They Came to Bury Him, Not to Praise Him,” June 20, 2009), I was quite surprised to read Bongo’s obituary in the same issue. As you put it, he “made no distinction between Gabon and his private property.” Facing a big corruption case in France, he surely deserved no international honors whatsoever, let alone respectful visits by two presidents of the erstwhile colonial master of Gabon. Under the circumstances, it appears that France makes no distinction between the Gabonese Republic and its former colony, either.