Gulf War 2 A quick roundup of the important Iraq news today. USA Today has some cheering poll results:

Two-thirds of Americans say they support using military force against Iraq, says a new poll, even though most people think taking that step will cause serious problems among other Arabs. The Newsweek poll released Saturday suggests that President Bush has bolstered support for that approach and for his own performance in office with recent speeches about his plans in Iraq. Bush's job approval was at 70%, up from 61% in late August in this poll.

Even though I'm not a Bush partisan by any means, I give Bush a lot of credit for the brilliant piece of Judo he pulled on Thursday. Those poll numbers are high because Bush did something intelligent, not because someone attacked us, and I have to give credit where credit is due. Bush continued striking the right note when he clarified the US's position on UN approval here:

"The UN will either be able to function as a peacekeeping body as we head into the 21st century, or it will be irrelevant. And that's what we're about to find out," Bush said Saturday. He added: "Make no mistake about it. If we have to deal with the problem, we'll deal with it."

It seems that the US probably won't have to go it alone, though, as the UN has recognized that it's irrelevant if it can't enforce it's own resolutions:

The prize of winning full United Nations backing for swift military action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq is almost within the grasp of Tony Blair and George W Bush. Seventy-two hours of unrelenting diplomatic pressure since the US president's address to the UN general assembly last Thursday has resulted in almost unprecedented fast-track unanimity within the 15-nation Security Council. With the Iraqi regime showing no sign of allowing unconditional access to weapons inspectors regardless of the hardline language expected in a new Security Council resolution, the prospect is now war: war in the same country and against the same dictator that Bush's father, also the US president, engaged in back in 1990. The uncertainty on Tuesday, when Blair addressed the TUC in Blackpool, has all but disappeared with the UN appearing to fall behind the Bush-Blair policy of giving Saddam no way out this time.

What I find funniest about this whole thing is that a lot of the guys who condemned Bush for unilateralism are either strangely silent now or else contorting themselves into knots to somehow condemn their former friend, the UN. Their gyrations are irrelevant in any case...it's time for Gulf War 2. Looks like Derbyshire will have to eat his words...