Hubby--

Congratulations on your usual unthinking knee-jerk anti-UN screed (actually, can't be a screed--not long enough). I would not have expected less of a perceptive and deftly stated answer from you). It's painfully obvious that the limit of Bushites' foreign policy expertise is "UN. Bad. Ugh".

Also, since you are a Bushite, I can't expect you to have any interest in facts (your mighty leader doesn't--why should you?)

However, being fully aware that talking to a Bushite is worse than talking to a wall--the wall at least does not try to fit the world into a Manichean straitjacket---still, a few points.

1) Carol C is dead right about Cheney, Halliburton and enforcement of sanctions against Saddam. Cheney not only was willing to look the other way when Halliburton stood to gain, but actually pushed for weaker enforcement of sanctions.

2) As I stated earlier (in fact, much earlier--April 2004, in a thread called "Irony: Bush and the UN", the UN has indeed pulled Bush's chestnuts out of the fire. At the risk of repeating myself, I'll explain again:

You may have noticed several Mudcatters drawing parallels between Iraq and Vietnam and predicting a similar quaqmire in Iraq. That did not in fact happen. Have you ever wondered why? It's because the opposition to the insurgency has been given an Iraqi face. When did this happen? When Allawi was officially made the temporary head of the government.

Even before this, the UN's rep, Sergio Vieira de Mello persuaded al-Sistani to let his followers join the Governing Council (under Bremer), if they wanted to. For this, and for other services to Iraq ----and indirectly to Bush----he paid with his life.

Now a fair number of Iraqis see Allawi as the Americans' man--which is a main reason he did not do very well in the recent election. But consider how much more unstable Iraq would be now with Bremer still in charge.

So who made the Iraqi face of the government possible? The loathed and despised UN.

The UN acted as an honest broker in finding an Iraqi likely to be at least temporarily acceptable to other Iraqis as successor to Bremer, whose rule had little support, for obvious reasons (the Mideast has seen colonial regimes before).

Who, pray tell, besides the UN, could have acted in this capacity? Do you think an Arab group would have been willing to negotiate with "the Crusaders"?

From a US domestic political standpoint, this was possibly even more crucial for Bush.

There was, in fact, a sizable contingent on the Right who were against Bush's Iraq adventure from the start. Patrick Buchanan, the probable head of this opposition, not only recently wrote a book titled "Where the Right Went Wrong"--an intriguing book, by the way---but has also already proven he has no problem running against his party's putative standard-bearer.

When it seemed likely that Iraqis would in fact be heading an Iraqi government, Buchanan and like-minded Republicans backed off overt opposition to Bush (especially in the form of a third party, which as I explained in another thread, is the single event most likely to kill an incumbent's chances, if that party takes votes from him)

More than this, the US general electorate, seeing an Iraqi face on the Iraqi government,--- made possible by the UN--, was convinced that there was in fact an exit strategy from Iraq (eventually)--thus it was safe to return to the comfortable obsession with homosexuals, terrorists, (and homosexual terrorists?)

Bush and the Bushites, if they had any sense and decency, would be blessing the UN every day, but of course it's a lot more fun and popular-- particularly when appealing to voters like your good self--- to curse it.

Don't worry-- I don't expect any Bushite to understand this, much less acknowledge it.

But if that loose cannon at 1600 PA Ave were to attack Iran, a similar scenario could easily happen.