Steven Den Beste is at his best when he discusses international politics from his engineering perspective. I had planned on writing a summary of what this week's vote at the UN meant, but Den Beste has already done a great job. Go read it yourself if you have time (Den Beste is many things, but concise is not one of them). The two cent version is below:

So... what the US got today was full authority to carry out reconstruction in Iraq, and to work on creating a new government there without being hassled by UN meddling or idiotic lawsuits, and France and Germany and Russia got to pretend that the UN still mattered and to avoid finding out just how badly they could be hurt financially if the US really got pissed off. The UN acted "unanimously" because it gave us what we wanted, and as a result the UN gets to pretend that it's part of the process.