Nineteen

Very interesting:

The Scotsman, Scotland's national newspaper, has an interesting article online about a bribery scandal involving Saddam Hussein and the French government. Apparently, the former Iraqi president "was told as early as May 2002 that France - having been granted oil contracts - would veto any American plans for war." Instapundit is shocked, very shocked.

But there's more.

[T]he Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which returned its full report last night, said Saddam was telling the truth when he denied on the eve of war that he had any weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He had not built any since 1992.

Instapundit has this to say:

Personally, I find it hard to fault the Bush Administration for thinking this way. And had they failed to engage Saddam, we'd be hearing -- from many of the same critics of the war -- that their failure to do so was evidence of ineptitude ("How could you leave such a vicious dictator free to cause us trouble, smack in the middle of the mideast?") along, probably, with claims that it was somehow a way of enriching Halliburton.

I agree it's hard to fault the Bush administration for thinking that way but I wouldn't say war critics would find another way to bash the president. Any war critic that I would trust would not criticize the president for thinking about the safety of his nation, rather the that critic would be questioning the methods and way in which the president chose to keep his country safe.

Meanwhile...

Bush said he took a "hard look" around the world at where terrorists might get weapons of mass destruction and concluded that "one regime stood out" -- Saddam Hussein's. "There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," he said.

Like John Stewart said last night on The Daily Show, "There's nothing better than 20/20 blindsight."