RANDOM THOUGHTS, by Thomas Sowell:

Never before in history has the word "unilateral" been thrown around so gratuitously when the issue was war. Only in recent years has there been any question that a sovereign nation takes the solemn step of going to war unilaterally. What a farce to have Cameroon or Portugal deciding whether it is OK for the United States to go to war.

* * * Why do actors -- people whose main talent is faking emotions -- think that their opinions should be directing the course of political events in the real world? Yet it is a mistake that they have been making as far back as John Wilkes Booth. * * * Most people do not realize that Winston Churchill was a pariah in the 1930s, for telling people what they didn't want to hear -- namely that Britain needed to build up its military forces to deal with the threat that Hitler and the Nazis represented. What we are seeing today in the attempts to ridicule or demonize President Bush is nothing new. * * * We can only hope that whoever had the bright idea of dealing with Iraq through the United Nations will be leaving the administration "to pursue other interests," as they say.

On that last one, I'd beg to differ. When we look back on the liberation of Iraq, I doubt we'll focus all that much on the length of the buildup before the War. If Bush has discredited the UN (And as Dennis Miller recently noted, "If you have faith in the United Nations to do the right thing, keep this in mind, they have Libya heading the Committee on Human Rights and Iraq heading the Global Disarmament Committee. Do your own math here."), and banished it to history, then he's done his job.