US Senate takes slap at UN

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Senate Votes to Reduce U.S. Dues to U.N.
By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer, from SF Gate

It's more rare than not when I find myself at odds with the Cowboy Prez on international issues. And it's no surprise that in the center of that internal battle lies the UN.

Bush and Democrats were pushing to maintain a spending cap of 27.1 percent for UN peacekeeping missions... set to be reduced by a 1994 law (yes... under Clinton) to 25%.

Bush and the UN-supporting Dems lost the battle, 57 to 40, and the Senate voted to reduce the spending cap as a show of distrust of the UN and it's current scandals.

HOORAY! Frankly, we *are* the peacekeeping forces by and large. And any dollar less we pass on to the international unelected ones, fraught with corruption, is a wise dollar NOT spent, IMHO.

Ironically enough, note how Joe Biden, in this case on the same side as the Cowboy Prez, still finds a way to fire some personal arrows. With friends like this in Congress, who needs enemies?

But Sen. Joseph Biden, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the 25 percent cap could lead to the United States falling behind in its U.N. dues, as it did in the 1990s. He said it would compound problems caused by Bush's nomination of John Bolton, a sharp critic of the United Nations, to become the new U.N. ambassador, he said.