THE TROUBLE WITH THIS REPORT is that you have to ask yourself: Would you have relied on the French?

More importantly, the persistence of the whole issue demonstrates the colossal folly of the Bush Administration’s effort to take the United Nations seriously in 2002, something that — like Bush’s failure to fire a lot of people at the CIA following 9/11 — has led to considerable grief and no discernible benefit.

UPDATE: On the “would you have relied on the French?” point, reader Betsy Gorisch emails: “Well, that’s one trouble with the report. The other trouble with it is, why would you believe them about it now?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader George Gooding emails:

If the French knew in 2001 and 2002 that the Niger reports were baseless, why was the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director for Nonproliferation telling the United States on November 22, 2002 (per the SSCI report) that they had intelligence showing that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger?

For more on this, and some pertinent questions that need to be answered Link

There are a lot of questions.