Alas, today I had to brush up on all the child-squelching lines ("Quiet, honey, that's the Secretary of State," etc.) while I watched Powell tell the Security council its business. The best thing about it is how humiliating it must be for countries like France and Germany. They have basically said, along with tens -- if not dozens -- of Americans, "Not in our name!" So why does it chap everyone's ass when we say, "Okay, we'll do it ourselves"? Do people like Jacques Chirac really think we're just dying to come back for one more round of "Mother May I?" at the UN? Well, this week I figured out that there is no answer to any of this. The UN has shown itself to be an irrelevant gaggle of cheap bureaucrats in ill-fitting suits, hanging stupid looking earpieces off their heads (guys, call Sony), and having chateaubriand and foie gras luncheons at the expense of me and some herdsman in Tanzania. The longer we pretend we give a good goddamn what these puffed-up peacemakers and dime-store diplomats have to say, the more important we make them. Today, Powell said, in diplo-speak, the UN is about to lose its last shred of respect. Why do you suppose North Korea is so comfortable telling the IAEA (and the UN) to pound sand right now? They know who they'll have to deal with in the end.