Has anyone adjusted their cost benefit analysis after hearing Uncle Colin this morning? Or are we bound and determined to pull our anti-Bush blankets over our heads and say "there is no good in the man, there is no good in the man" loud enough so nothing gets in? [I'm not really a big fan of the blanket-over-the-head method, but if that's how you want to go about it then that is absolutely your right. -- RM {Back to making no sense? Sh.} [You used to be smarter than this. What happened? Did your asshole cancer finally spread to your brain? - RM]{Rick, when your brain tells you to type, wait another week until it gives you something clever to say. Sh}
[E: kudos on your use of links in that post, particularly to the picture of the Joe Millionare chick all tied up. That sort of thing helps give this blog a strange internal coherence.]
[E: I can't take the UN seriously. We're supposed to leave our national security decisions in the hands of these clowns? Them and what army? And to have to listen to France... well, here's what Marc Stein had to say that I thought was pretty insightful:

A few weeks ago, there was a spot of bother in Ivory Coast. Don't ask me what's going on: President Wossname represents the southern Wotchamacallit tribe and they're unpopular with natives in the northern province of Hoogivsadam. Something like that. But next thing you know, French troops have locked down the entire joint and forced both parties into a deeply unpopular peace deal that suits the Quai d'Orsay but nobody else. All of this while the UN is hunkered down in a month-long debate on whether to approve Article IV Sub-section 7.3 (d) of Hans Blix's hotel bill. Ivory Coast is nominally a sovereign state. The French have no more right to treat it as a colony than the British have to treat Iraq as a colony. But they do. And they don't care what you think about it.

So they're not appeasing Saddam. On the matter of Islamic terrorists killing American office workers and American forces killing Iraqi psychopaths, they are equally insouciant. Let's say Saddam has long-range WMDs. If he nuked Montpelier (Vermont), M. Chirac would insist that Bush needed to get a strong Security Council resolution before responding. If he nuked Montpellier (France), Iraq would be a crater by lunchtime.

SH: France is like Rick, they both make life easy: They take a position, you automatically take the opposite and you know you are right. But I think France's opposition stems from their belief that they actually have to fight in the war. Once they realize they won't be embarrased by getting their asses kicked again, they'll relax. And by the way, what is: "the decisive reinforcement of the means of inspections"? [Don't know where you're seeing that quote {SH: That's what the Frog eaters UN Ambassador called for instead of a war}, but I would guess that it relates to the US position that the inspections should include use of U2 spy planes - RM]

RM: In my opinion , the better insult would be "France is like Rick, once they realize that they won't be embarrassed by getting their asses kicked again, they'll relax." I just think that it's more insulting to imply that someone is a chronic loser and defensive about it that to merely imply that someone is always wrong on issues. Still lame {SH: You are quite modest, with much to be modest about}, but slightly better. That advice comes free of charge. I would note, however, that France did actually fight in Gulf War I, unlike, say, Germany. I would also note that France's actions in the Ivory Coast were backed by the U.S. who sent a small contingent of military personnel to assist the French military and who also, along with the U.N., has endorsed the peace deal brokered by France.
[E: which goes to the point that many UN members, including and especially France, see its primary utility as a leash on American power. I suspect a US-brokered peace deal would've received much more scutiny. France participated in the first Gulf War, then actively undermined the post-war sanctions. They clearly act in their own self-interest and use the UN as a weapon in that cause -- precisely the reason they will not use their veto, because then a decisive victory by the US followed by an outpouring of gratitude from the Iraqi people would reveal France to be not only wrong but completely irrelevant.]