As if America needed more proof about its being hoodwinked into the invasion of Iraq, London's Observer reveals that President Bush told Prime Minister Tony Blair that the effort to oust Saddam Hussein was on -- even though there was not a single finding of a weapon of mass destruction.

The "poodle" hardly yipped. In fact, Tony rolled over so the President could give his belly a rub or two.

According to a memo of the meeting between the two, crafty Dubya was thinking about playing a trick or two on Saddam to "smoke 'em out." He tinkered with the notion of slapping United Nations colors on a reconnaissance plane and zooming in low so Saddam would take a shot or two at it. That's grounds for war in Bush territory.

There was talk about a shady defector spinning a bogus tale about the Iraqi leader that would surely make the world cry as one for an immediate military assault.

Bush, never one to dawdle, told Blair that March 10 was penciled in as II-Day. Blair apparently gave Dubya a big thumbs-up even before getting a decision from his attorney general about the legality of the war. The note completes the unraveling of the reputation of Britain’s former leader.

The memo is bound to be a part of current PM Gordon Brown's "lessons learned" report on British involvement in Bush's charade. It's too bad the spineless Democrats won't give America the same opportunity to probe why we were snookered into the Iraqi misadventure.

We have far more lessons to be learned about Iraq than our cousins across the Atlantic.