As war with Jihadistan and the associated conflicts with the “Axis of Evil” triad heated up this week, President George Bush marked his victory in winning congressional support for possible preemptive military action against Iraqi WMD threats, making plain the U.S. intent. Surrounded by a bipartisan group of Senate and House leaders, the President said: “Our desire is to help Iraqi citizens find the blessings of liberty within their own culture and their own traditions. Iraqi people cannot flourish under a dictator that oppresses them, threatens them. Gifted people of Iraq will flourish if and when oppression is lifted.” Conspicuously absent from the signing ceremony were Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle!

On Tuesday, that dictator, Saddam Hussein, tried to convince the world that he is the rightful leader of Iraq, with a nationwide “vote” returning him to another seven-year term. Some Leftmedia reports treated the “election” as a real one, without adding that Saddam’s 100% margin may somehow someway have been related to mandatory voting, required voter names and addresses on ballots, and no opposition candidates (the old Soviet model).

And as the UN debates weapons inspections and military action, Saddam, having already agreed to “unrestricted” inspections, has announced that Iraq reserves the right to terminate any such inspections should it determine that the U.S. is manipulating inspections to serve its own ends. This is only the latest contention between Iraq and the UN since Baghdad agreed to renewed inspections, and could bring inspections to a grinding halt before they ever begin. The announcement from Iraq comes one day after a letter delivered to weapons inspectors, which appears to ignore the details of an agreement previously reached.

And U.S. efforts to defeat and disrupt the terror networks are meeting fierce resistance from our “allies” serving on the UN Security Council. France’s President Jacques Chirac claimed that no evidence exists demonstrating a link between Iraq and al-Qa'ida, saying, “The main aim of the international community concerning Iraq must be disarmament.” Hey, it’s one of those “hide in plain sight” things – the recent Jihadi attacks are occurring now to assist Iraq and to prevent its disarmament, just as clearly and certainly as messages from Osama bin Laden and his henchmen, released these past two weeks, make explicit mention of their support of Iraq.

President Bush responded: “The time has arrived once again for the United Nations to live up to the purposes of its founding to protect our common security. The time has arrived once again for free nations to face up to our global responsibilities and confront a gathering danger.”

Of course, as we have made clear previously, Western European leaders (Tony Blair not among them) are afraid of their own shadows because of the number of Islamic extremists spawning in their suburbs for generations. France has significant Islamic colonization.

In other “triad” news, we are shocked – SHOCKED – to report that North Korean officials admitted that their impoverished Communist dictatorship has been conducting a secret nuclear weapons development program, in violation of agreements with the Clinton administration to abandon its nuclear WMD aspirations. The Leftmedia headlines all expressed great surprise at this revelation, but the only thing amazing about this story is that North Korea actually admitted it – after some very good evidence was placed on a table in front of their diplomatic delegation. U.S. intelligence was already aware of the fact that five years ago the North Koreans refocused their weapons development program from making plutonium to developing enriched, weapons grade uranium.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cited a CIA brief which acknowledged that the Communist regime “may have one or two [functional weapons],” and went on to say, “I believe they have a small number of nuclear weapons.” The irony, of course, is that the North Koreans’ access to the necessary uranium (in addition to access from Pakistan), was made possible by the nuclear non-proliferation agreement brokered by the Clinton administration in 1994. As a part of that agreement, the North Koreans were promised nuclear reactors to meet their strained energy needs. Weapons grade uranium, in turn, can be produced from such reactors. So much for the diplomacy of appeasement.

Further illustrating the perils of inaction against our terrorist enemies, a C4-laden car bomb in Bali in Indonesia Saturday murdered nearly 200, most of them Australian, and three Americans victims. Indonesian Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil has publicly concluded, “We are sure al-Qa'ida is here. … The Bali bomb blast is related to al-Qa'ida with the cooperation of local terrorists.” These events, coupled with last week’s attack on a French oil liner and other such terrorist activity globally, have resulted in a growing concern over the resurgence of terrorist activity at home and abroad. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country.