No statement is too preposterous...

...when your name is Paul Wolfowitz.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Thursday the Bush administration has been pushing for months for a new U.N. resolution to internationalize the force in Iraq, but it took the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad to change the "atmosphere in New York."

See, it's the United Nations that has come around to see things our way. Riiiiight. I guess they finally saw the wisdom in what Wolfowitz's neo-con fellow traveller Richard Perle was saying back in March:

Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The "good works" part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order. [...] We are left with coalitions of the willing. Far from disparaging them as a threat to a new world order, we should recognise that they are, by default, the best hope for that order, and the true alternative to the anarchy of the abject failure of the UN.

How does anybody take these clowns seriously? Of course, it was Wolfowitz himself who tried to get the CIA to investigate and undermine Hans Blix, in order that the US could get their invasion started.

But, according to the Washington Post's April 15, 2002 story, the CIA report said Blix "had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear power plants fully within the parameters he could operate as chief of the Vienna-based agency between 1981 and 1997." Wolfowitz, according to the Post, quoting a former State Department official familiar with the report, "hit the ceiling" because it failed to provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program.

"The request for a CIA investigation underscored the degree of concern by Wolfowitz and his civilian colleagues in the Pentagon that new inspections – or protracted negotiations over them – could torpedo their plans for military action to remove Hussein from power," the Post reported.

Yes, the United Nations has certainly come around to see Wolfowitz's point of view.

The article stressed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who normally report only through the secretary of defense, have established an independent line to Powell in recent weeks to circumvent the Pentagon's civilian leadership. Long skeptical of the hawks' optimism about the plans for postwar Iraq, the uniformed military appears to have moved toward open revolt against Rumsfeld and chief deputies Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary for Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. [...] It is not clear what bargaining chips the hawks have as negotiations begin over the terms of a new resolution. It appears that the world body - so disregarded and disdained by Bush and the hawks just three months ago - can name its price.

All hail the new "atmosphere" at the UN. What a dipstick.

UPDATE (10:52 am): Now that those cheese-eating chocolate makers have come around to support the unquestionable logic of American policy ("The US is facing stiff opposition at the UN Security Council to its plans for a multinational force in Iraq."), the Bush administration will probably be shelving their proposed new map of Europe, too.