Saletan over at Slate is a bit more hawkish than I would have expected. Still he does clear away alot of the rhetoric surrounded by the whole Iraq debate.

The Senate debate on Iraq boils down to this: Whom do you trust less—President Bush or the United Nations?


Nobody's putting it that way, of course. Democrats don't want to show disrespect to the president, and Republicans don't want to show disrespect to our allies. But if you scrape away the pomp and platitudes, that's the question that drives the debate.

Here's the key paragraph of the war resolution senators have been discussing: "The President is authorized to use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force, in order to enforce the United Nations Security Council Resolutions [previously passed against Iraq], defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security in the region."

Does anyone want to give a gun to Boy George?