I heard the French ambassador say at the UN today that France doesn’t believe that a second resolution is necessary. On that, they apparently agree with the US-led coalition (though Tony Blair would still like one to provide him a little political cover at home).

Of course, they disagree with our (correct) position that the present one, 1441, allows us to go in and remove Saddam and his weapons by force. They have made it abundantly clear that they never meant for that resolution to be taken seriously–that it was simply a means of buying time last fall until they could come up with another means of buying time. In so doing, they continue to render the UN increasingly irrelevant, because it’s also abundantly clear that Saddam is so far beyond being in material breach at this point that he can’t even see it from where he is, sans a gravitational lens.

It would be nice, for Blair’s sake, if they can get a resolution passed, or at least get a majority for one, with a French veto. The latter would probably finally get the British public firmly on the PM’s side. But either way, it’s hard to believe that we won’t be actively sanitizing the once-Fertile Crescent of dictators and WMD within a couple weeks.