US may go it alone as Blair is caught in diplomatic deadlock

Washington was forced to admit for the first time last night that it might have to start the war against Iraq without British forces because of the internal political problems heaping up for Tony Blair.
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I Vant to Be Alone
By Maureen Dowd

Just when you thought it couldn't get more Strangelovian, it does. The Bush bullies, having driven off all the other kids in the international schoolyard, are now resorting to imaginary friends.

Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, spoke to the Veterans of Foreign Wars here yesterday and reassured the group that America would have "a formidable coalition" to attack Iraq. "The number of countries involved will be in the substantial double digits," he boasted. Unfortunately, he could not actually name one of the supposed allies. "Some of them would prefer not to be named now," he said coyly, "but they will be known with pride in due time."

Perhaps the hawks' fixation on being the messiahs of the Middle East has unhinged them. I could just picture Wolfy sauntering down the road to Baghdad with our new ally Harvey, his very own pooka, a six-foot-tall invisible rabbit that the U.S. wants to put on the U.N. Security Council.

Ari Fleischer upped the ante, conjuring up an entire international forum filled with imaginary allies.
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Diplomacy fails to break deadlock on Iraq

Diplomatic deadlock in the international community over the prospect of a US-led war in Iraq today continued despite British attempts to attract more support with a revised resolution.
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Could Al Gore really have done a better job getter France on board? Germany? This is how the question is being framed today. At least by some people I read and talk to. My friend Mickey Kaus says he doubts any more diplomatic finessing could have gotten the French on board.

I don't necessarily disagree with this point. But, frankly, I think it's beside the point. Or perhaps just misses the point.

The issue here isn't that France opposes us. That doesn't bother me particularly. The real point is that everyone opposes us. Everyone.
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Bush tactics strengthen UN brake on US power

Washington only now is discovering that its efforts to override or divide opposition to what it wants on Iraq have created a coherent international opposition that before was not there. It has diminished rather than affirmed its old international leadership.
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Tide Turns Against Bush

The Iraq crisis is no longer about stopping Iraq. It is about stopping the United States.
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  thanks to thoughts on the eve of the apocalypse