The United Nations

Cartoon by Steve Bell, the Guardian

Above: Steve Bell at his best.

Below: The president, in search of a hall monitor, asks Condi for permission to get away from all those talking foreigners.... Editor and Publisher has the latest....

And meanwhile, even staunch Bush allies like Australia's John Howard and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, are expressing disappointment in U.S. refusal to even talk about disarmament, insisting instead on focussing on keeping countries like North Korea and Iran out of the nuclear club.

I think the U.S. media generally enables Bush and Bolton's insane posturing with the constant focus on Iran and the wild and dubious accusations manufactured by dodgy think tanks whose track record on hidden nuclear programs leaves a lot to be desired.

You hear much talk about nonproliferation, but more rarely do you hear the whole phrase "nonproliferation and disarmament." The idea, in case the world has forgotten, is that nuclear powers agree to reduce and eventually eliminate their still shockingly large stockpiles in exchange for the committment of non-nuclear powers not to, er, proliferate.

Even Ronald Reagan, by the end of his reign, came around to accepting the wisdom of aiming for a disarmed world. Bush and Bolton think they know better and have reneged on all previous U.S. disarmament committments (with nary a peep from Congress). And now Rumsfeld is talking about a new generation of nuclear weapons and "preventative" nuclear war. The Bush administration has been a disaster in so many ways. It's hard to think of where it's done greatest damage. This is the area that frightens me most.