[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Bush plans to put the UN in a halfway house, handing out AIDS meds to starving Africans but no longer involved with security questions, after the vote fails tomorrow. That's smart: keep them around, still hoping for a comeback

Yes.

[The Great Satan]

Interesting, though, that this show of unity by the "Atlantic Alliance" was quite understated, even weak. The inclusion of Spain and Portugal had a whiff of tokenism, and many allies who are already on board -- Italy, the Baltic states, Japan, Australia -- weren't brought into play, even though that could easily have been arranged. They want the vote to fail, is my guess. That will set up the need to broker the UN's replacement, which will be the work of many months, and the national topic of conversation all this summer. Meanwhile, Bush has run out the clock on an invasion -- the "blazing heat of the Iraqi summer" stories are already popping up -- so it will be a trivial matter to ease off the "imminent war" talk as we switch gears and deal with the fallout from the UN's collapse. Nicely maneuvered, I must say.