Michael Barone examines Tom Daschle's remark "that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy hat we're now forced to war. Saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country."
Daschle's claims are found wanting:

It is not clear whether Tom Daschle was referring to the general complaint or the specific complaint when he said that George W. Bush's administration was guilty of "disastrous" diplomacy. It is clear that he speaks in the accents of the Senate Democratic cloakroom, in which Bush is regarded as an illegitimate president, a usurper who is trying to impose crazed conservative policies, a stupid man incapable of understanding a sophisticated world, who must be opposed ferociously at every step and on any ground. No Democratic campaign consultant whom I know, and I know all the leading Democratic campaign consultants, would have advised Daschle to make the comment that he did. If the war goes badly, Bush and the Republicans will pay a political price, whatever the Democrats say now; if the war goes well, comments like Daschle's will work powerfully against the Democrats and for George W. Bush. Daschle's words can only be explained as the product of a kind of hatred, unbuttressed by any serious intellectual argument, likely to hurt the party of the speaker far more than the party of the president they were directed against.

Few today remember Stephen Douglas except in relation to Abraham Lincoln. I suspect that Tom Daschle will be remembered similarly by future generations only in the reflected light of George W. Bush.

Barone attributes France's obstructionism to its resentment of the preeminence of the U.S. in world politics. That may be why his polls are high in France, but I don't think it's an adequate explanation. To me, the truth lies in the oil contracts and arms trade and, I suspect, Chirac's personal corruption. It's probable that he has profited personally from deals with Saddam. If he were merely resentful of America, he could have abstained from voting on the 18th resolution. The fact that he vowed to veto any resolution that might end up expelling Saddam and making all his deals with French, German and Russian politicians and industrialists open to the world.