WHILE WE SLEPT

Israel nabbed Hamas' top bomb-maker. The world assessed President Bush's speech. The French and Belgian reaction is unsurprising:

Pierre Lellouche, a lawmaker in France's center-right governing coalition, said the international community appeared doomed to fracture.

"We are now headed for a clash, and it's going to be the worst possible war, which is a war outside the U.N. by one, two or three powers with the rest of democracies being divided," Lellouche said Friday in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. television.

Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said France has "saved the honor of Europe" by opposing immediate military action.

"What seems to me to be most urgent now is to find ways and means to reforge a bit more suitable trans-Atlantic relations," Michel said, adding that Europe "cannot always be a follower."

And that really is a huge part of what this is all about--whether Europe will in the future be a leader or a follower. "Europe," meaning France, Belgium and Germany, will indeed lead--they'll lead the UN into oblivion. Oh, and it's also about propping up France's arms industry. As for the rest of the world, some opposition and some support:

Ismail Kadare, Albania's most famous living writer, said in an interview published Friday that his countrymen broadly favor intervention in Iraq "because we remember Kosovo," where NATO forces intervened to protect ethnic Albanians.

"Albanians expected NATO to intervene militarily against the Milosevic regime, which was similar to Saddam Hussein's regime today," Kadare told the Tirana daily newspaper Shekulli.

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A Thai lawmaker warned a war would create a "great likelihood of terrorist retaliation," but said he would side with Washington if it decides to act against Iraq.

"There really is no other viable option," said Kobsak Chutikul, the deputy leader in one of the parties in Thailand's coalition government. "For all its flaws, I would feel safer to have my children grow up in a world dominated by the United States than by any other country."

It's about time we heard someone offer this opinion. Funny thing is, we don't even care to dominate the world. We just don't want it dominating us.

Mark Steyn, who still inexplicably hasn't mentioned the JYB, assesses our war effort, and determines that we're winning in spite of opposition around the world and partisan hackery here at home. Steyn offers up a tidbit on the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that I haven't seen elsewhere:

The seizure of Mohammed is testament both to Washington’s approach to Pakistan and to what they’re up against. The big-time terrorist was holed up in the home of a top World Health Organisation microbiologist, whose wife heads up one of the most radical Islamist political parties in the country. Is it normal for UN microbiologists to rent the spare room to terrorists known to be in the market for biological weapons?

And Steyn seems to side with Rummy on the Old vs New Europe question:

My problem with ‘old Europe’ is that it’s taken on the characteristic of its capital’s most famous statue: a small boy who just stands there pissing 24 hours a day.

But back to the UN for a sec. Hans Blix and his Merry Inspectors seem set to tell the UNSC that Saddam is cooperating but not fully complying with his obligations to disarm. Which is right about where this story was back in 1991, and 1994, and 1996, from 1998 to 2002 there's a gap because there were no inspectors in Iraq, and then resuming from 2002 to the present. Nothing's changed, in other words. Will the UNSC act? Yes. It will commit suicide, and we'll take down Saddam anyway.