Five things that grownups should no longer believe in: Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Tinker Bell, the United Nations, and the "international community."

Let's dispense with the first three and begin with the U.N. It may not be unfair to say that belief in the U.N. was the first casualty of the 2003 edition of the Gulf War.

The U.N. was born just after World War II. Its prewar predecessor, the League of Nations, died after it failed to stand up to German Nazism, Italian Fascism, and Japanese Militarism. The U.N. was supposed to do better.

It didn't happen. The U.N. never lived up to the hope and expectations of its more idealistic founders. According to the U.N. Charter, among its central purposes was to "maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace."

But when Mao's Cultural Revolution killed millions, the U.N. did nothing. When the Khmer Rouge was slaughtering the population of Cambodia, the U.N. was silent. When genocide was carried out in Rwanda, the U.N. sat on its hands. When mass murder was waged against the people of Bosnia and Kosovo, the U.N. made the situation worse. (And, of course, when President Clinton finally intervened militarily in Bosnia and Kosovo, it was without U.N. authorization).

The U.N. turned a blind eye when Afghanistan was hijacked by al Qaeda terrorists. It snoozed while Somalia collapsed into anarchy. Muammar Qaddafi's Libya currently heads its human-rights commission — and if Kofi Annan or any other U.N. official thinks that an outrage, he's kept his opinion to himself.

Have there been any exceptions, any successes? Well, in 1967, when Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and other Arab countries were mobilizing for a war to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth, the U.N. did do something: It removed its "peacekeepers" so they would not get in the way. (It was as a result of winning that war, you'll recall, that Israel came into possession of both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories over which fighting continues till this day — with no constructive role ever played by the U.N.)

The U.N. never became a maker of international law or a source of moral authority — though through a clever combination of wishful thinking and public relations many people were misled to believe otherwise.

Instead, the U.N. has been a cozy retreat for transnational bureaucrats. Leave aside such lofty goals as peace-making, peace-keeping, and the spread of human rights. The U.N. also has been a failure at contributing to economic development. Name one country — just one — more prosperous now than a generation ago due to U.N. economic assistance.

Nor has the U.N. even been an efficient provider of relief (which is what you administer when development fails and famine strikes). As a New York Times correspondent in Africa, I saw first-hand how much superior were the relief efforts of such faith-based organizations as World Vision and Catholic Relief Services.

As for the "International Community," a term often bandied about in recent days, here's a bulletin: It doesn't exist. The word "community" implies common traditions and values. What traditions and values unite the people of the United States with the dictators of North Korea and Syria, or with the mullahs of Iran?

But, yes, with Britain and Australia, we do share traditions and values. The newly freed nations of East Europe understand in their bones why Americans say no to appeasing tyrants. Every day of its life, Israel fights blind hatred and terrorism of precisely the sort now being directed at the U.S. And in the not-too-distant future, we may find that a liberated Iraq values freedom as highly as Americans do.

The kickoff of the 21st century is very different from the era that began in 1945. It is not an exaggeration to say that our way of life and perhaps our very existence are now threatened by a witch's brew of rogue dictators, terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.

To cope with this danger, we'll need to take a hard look at old institutions and old alliances. We'll need to make tough calls about which to preserve, which to reform and which to simply toss away.

— NRO Contributor Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a think tank on terrorism formed immediately after 9/11.

THE CRIMINALS AT THE UN
& THE AXIS OF WEASELS

The criminals are getting desperate. The criminals who had sweet deals with Saddam, selling him weapons and all kinds of nasty stuff in exchange for oil. France, Germany, Russia, China, and the UN. Saddam's partners in crime. His aiders and abettors. His co-conspirators. They are demanding that the US and UK step aside after the war in Iraq and let them take over. They are trying desperately to keep the truth of their corruption and wickedness from being revealed. This cannot be permitted. Let the truth be known! Let the world see them for what they are -- Saddam's Whores!

There is no way in hell that Bush can allow Annan, Chirac, or any of the other criminals who made dirty deals with Saddam, to have anything to do with post-war Iraq. All they want to do is cover everything up. All they want to do is get their hands on the WMD, hide their complicity, and then pass the WMD on to terrorists. They cannot be trusted. They cannot be allowed to take possession of the WMD. This cannot be stressed more strongly. The depth of their corruption knows no bounds, and they cannot be permitted to pervert and destroy everything we and our coalition are accomplishing in Iraq with our blood.

Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac, and all the others who stood against the United States and Great Britain in the righteous cause of eliminating Saddam Hussein's evil and barbaric regime and liberating the people of Iraq, must not be allowed to have any participation in post-war Iraq. Their crimes must end with the fall of the regime. The coalition of the willing is disarming Iraq, and only the coalition of the willing must be responsible for what is done in post-war Iraq.

France, Germany, Russia, China,
and the UN=Saddam's Whores

Enough is enough. These criminals prohibited us from ridding the earth of Hussein back in 1991. And for the past twelve years, they have propped him up.

They sold him weapons and they sold him equipment.

They violated their own sanctions, and they smuggled contraband disguised as humanitarian aid.

They concocted the fiction of inspections not to disarm Hussein, but to give him cover and run interference for him while he turned his nation into a poison factory.

They NEVER had any intention of disarming him, and EVERY intention of using him as a proxy to wage war against the United States and Israel.

They signed on to Resolution 1441 never intending to actually enforce it, and when President George W. Bush forced their hand, they declared themselves as the bonafide enemies that they are. And now that the coalition of the willing led by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair is doing the job that they refused to do, they are issuing threats and making demands. They insist that we wash our hands of the matter so, like the jackals they are, they can sink their teeth into the newly liberated Iraq not to help it in any way, but to cover their tracks, hide evidence of their crimes, take possession of the WMD, and distribute it to whomever they will.

This cannot stand. This cannot be allowed. The United Nations and the Axis of Weasels, who refused to fulfill their duty to humanity, have abrogated all rights to the future of liberated Iraq. They refused to do the heavy lifting, so they cannot be permitted to perpetrate this fraud. They have absolutely no right to what they claim. They had their chance, and they chose to slink away rather than lead. They cannot be allowed to slink their way back.

The United States of America and Great Britain have accepted the responsibilities of liberating Iraq and protecting the world from weapons of mass destruction, and they must not relinquish these responsibilities. Least of all to those who by their actions have revealed themselves to be unworthy of trust and unable to accept a position of leadership in this world. For their treachery, the traitor UN and the traitor nations must be rewarded with irrelevancy, for that is what they deserve.

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THE CRIMINALS AT THE UN& THE AXIS OF WEASELS