An LA Times guest commentary by our Neocon friends, Richard Perle and David Frum, resident fellows of the American Enterprise Institute and coauthors of the Armagedon instruction manual, "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror" (which I commented on here).

You've really got to hand it to these guys. They are consistent. They've been calling for our exit from the UN since before Ronald Reagan. But the "tooth fairy"?

The United Nations is the tooth fairy of American politics: Few adults believe in it, but it's generally regarded as a harmless story to amuse the children. Since 9/11, however, the U.N. has ceased to be harmless, and the Democratic presidential candidates' enthusiasm for it has ceased to be amusing.

And then they throw down the gauntlet:

The United Nations has emerged at best as irrelevant to the terrorist threat that most concerns us, and at worst as an obstacle to our winning the war on terrorism. It must be reformed. And if it cannot be reformed, the United States should give serious consideration to withdrawal.

The U.N. has become an obstacle to our national security because it purports to set legal limits on the United States' ability to defend itself. If these limits ever made sense at all, they do not make sense now.

Wait a minute, Richard. They don't make sense now? Isn't that code for post-9/11? But you never wanted us in the UN ... ever!

But allow me to digress. I attributed this to Perle, because Frum probably wrote the article (and the book -- he was a speechwriter for the Chimp), but the ideas all belong to Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle, who is a consultant to Rummy and, let's not forget, a very rich arms broker. No conflict of interest there, is there, Dick?

But there's more:

The trouble is that the U.N. defines aggression in outdated ways. For the U.N., "aggression" means invasion across national borders. Send Nazi shock troops into Poland -- that's aggression. Give sanctuary to thousands of anti-American murderers, as the Taliban did in Afghanistan, that's not aggression.

You're confusing me, Dick. As I recall, the UN wasn't standing in our way on Afghanistan. And how many countries joined us? Nah. It would be easier to count the number of countries that didn't. A bit of revisionist history there, Dick.

In other words, under U.N. rules, the U.S. is obliged to let terrorists strike first before retaliating -- and might even be prohibited from striking second.

Come on, Dick. The UN listened to your case on Iraq, and you just didn't make it. Remember? The WMDs? And now you're blaming them because you couldn't make your case? Well, Dick, where the hell are they? You know. The WMDs?

We need new rules recognizing that harboring terrorists is just as much an act of aggression as an invasion and that those who are targeted by terrorists have an inherent right to defend themselves, preemptively if necessary.

Of course, it won't be easy to persuade the U.N. to adopt these changes.

Well, of course not, Dick. You shot your credibility on the WMD issue. 15,000 people dead, and you want another chance?

And finally:

In a little more than a decade, our world has been transformed, first by the fall of the Soviet Union and then the events of 9/11. Everything has changed -- except for the U.N. It remains an invention of a vanished era, designed to solve vanished problems.

Uh, Dick? You mean countries can't invade other countries in a pre-emptive fashion anymore? Weren't you watching last March?

Listen up, Dick. You too, Dave. Spend a little time brushing up on your composition skills. Otherwise, you just might end up getting published in the LA Times and looking STUPID.