I was willing to let your argument stand, weak as it was, until I saw this silliness. Putin took his position to preserve international law? What a crock!
Just yesterday a managing director for a Russian oil concern threatened to impound oil tankers in the Persian Gulf if his company's contracts were discontinued in Iraq. In a sign that he is completely delusional, he said he would get the judges at the International Criminal Court to rule in his favor and then enforce the ruling with guns on the high seas. The threat shows exactly how serious all parties are about "international law." As many conservatives have long known, a plea to honor "international law" is simply one more ploy among gamers looking out for vested interests, either political or financial.
Putin is not some altruistic angel looking out for the interests of the UN and international law!
The disturbing aspects of this report are two-fold. First, if the charges are true, Russia supplied Saddam with potentially useful intelligence about the British Prime Minister's thinking at a time when British lives were about to be put at risk to fight Saddam, a grave betrayal by Putin. And secondly, Russia seems to have had some knowledge about nuclear weapons and Saddam, information that should have caused them to work for his ouster, not to protect him.
You can moan about the unreliability of the press as much as you like, makes no difference. As evidence accrues, reasonable people with experience in evaluating stories like this one know when a tipping point is reached and the story becomes plausibile. All that's needed is some good sourcing and a little documentation.