Since you're fixated on two words let me give you another
"you can prove to the world that you DID it for legitimate reasons"
past tense. How do you get from that to "looking for approval"?
As for "I would bet money that if Saddam had had fifty nuclear missiles lined up in silos, only months from deployment, that France and a few other choice nations would still have opposed the invasion. "
I wouldn't take that bet.
But then , if we invaded, we coulda paraded the 50 missiles, thereby passing the test. ;-)