Updated

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Addition by Subtraction

Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is a sharp critic of John McCain — and says the best way for Mitt Romney to have a chance to defeat McCain is for R omney to lose in the Florida primary.

Santorum says the ideal outcome for Romney would be a Giuliani victory in Florida which he reasons would keep Giuliani in the race — and enable him to split the votes of moderates and defense hawks with McCain on Super Tuesday and beyond. Santorum says denying McCain those votes — could enable Romney to come out of Super Tuesday as the leading conservative candidate.

Less Is More

Former Bill Clinton adviser and current FOX News contributor Dick Morris has a similar view of Hillary Clinton's situation in South Carolina.

Morris writes that a Barack Obama victory propelled by overwhelming margins of black voters will further paint him as capable of winning only in states with large black populations. Morris claims Senator Clinton is counting on a massive white backlash that will carry her in other states — and drive her to the Democratic nomination.

Crying Wolf?

A study by two self-described nonprofit journalism organizations accuses President Bush and his advisers of 935 false statements about the threat from Iraq in the two years following the 9-11 attacks. But a large number of those were drawn from repeated assertions that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction — a concept nearly universally accepted by most of the world's intelligence services at the time.

For example — President Bush said of Hussein — "He has weapons of mass destruction. He's used them before. He's used them on his own people before."

In fact we know now that Hussein had chemical weapons. He was being tried on charges of killing 5,000 Iraqi Kurds with chemical weapons when he was executed for other crimes.

The study was done by the fund for independence in journalism — which is an arm of the center for public integrity — which is heavily funded by Bush critic George Soros.

Environmentally Unfriendly?

A United Nations official has joined the growing chorus warning that the use of biofuels to cut greenhouse gasses may do more harm than good. Regan Suzuki of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization says that while biofuels are better for the environment than fossil fuels — their use must be weighed against the pitfalls — such as increased competition for agricultural land, water shortages and deforestation.

Suzuki's comments echo those from Britain's environmental audit committee — which earlier this week said Britain and the European Union are wrong to impose biofuel use targets until the drawbacks can be eliminated.

FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.