Through the looking glass
(Via On the Third Hand) Charles Krauthammer describes A Costly Charade At the U.N.:

America goes courting Guinea, Cameroon and Angola in search of the nine Security Council votes necessary to pass our new resolution on Iraq.

The absurdity of the exercise mirrors the absurdity of the United Nations itself. Guinea is a perfectly nice place and Guineans perfectly nice people. But from the dawn of history to the invention of the United Nations, it made not an ounce of difference what a small, powerless, peripheral country thought about a conflict thousands of miles away. It still doesn't, except at the Alice-in-Wonderland United Nations, where Guinea and Cameroon and Angola count.

For a day.

Which reminds me, I'm real thrilled at the news report that

The United Nations and Iraq said Friday the dismantling of Baghdad's al-Samoud 2 missiles could start Saturday.

and Hans Blix is

saying it's hard to understand why some Iraqi cooperation that is taking place right now couldn't have been started earlier.

Silly me, I thought the minuet was dead!